Honeymoon in Costa Rica, or The Adventure Begins

Seattle,  2014.

We are planning OUR WEDDING!

Fancy dresses for me and our four daughters!  My hot husband in a dashing tuxedo, looking like a magazine cover!  An epic party with all our friends and families!

Fancy food!  Fancy drinks served in fancy glasses!

FLOWERS EVERYWHERE!

And it only costs a bazillion dollars and your first born child!  Um, no.

Ahem.

Planning, shall we say, is not my strong suit.

As I started investigating All The Things, the first thing I noticed was the expense.

It was … sobering.

Thousands of dollars for a poofy dress to wear ONCE?  Most of these dresses cost more than my first car!  Matter of fact, most of them cost more than my CURRENT car, and I wear her every day!

And I have to buy four more dresses for our bridesmaid daughters?  Seriously?  Four girls, four different personalities, opinions, and complexions -  united only in the guarantee to hate anything I pick.

A VENUE.  We didn't reserve a venue a year in advance, and it would be $900 just to get a room at the library for a few hours.  And the park?  Nuh-uh.  All the spaces are already reserved!  Shoulda booked last year!

The stuff!  Flowers and centerpieces and gifts and photography and accessories and invitations and postage and a quadrillion other things I've never heard of or thought about.  To this day, I STILL don't understand "chair swag."  Or why a table might wear a skirt.

It would make a saint cuss.  And I ain't a saint.

As my fiancé and I looked over the budget, nausea rose and my eyes started to gently cross.

"To hell with this," I said, "Let's spend the money on our honeymoon!"

"Works for me," he said.

We had very simple (cough cough) honeymoon criteria.

It must be:

• new to both of us 
• tropical
• very romantic  
• off the beaten path 
• but not too isolated
• not too touristy
• but connected to high speed internet
• somewhere we can have adventures 
• or just lounge around on the beach
• luxurious
• and inexpensive.

Easy, right?

RIGHT?!  SAY "RIGHT."

August 23rd, we held a small, beautiful wedding at our house.

There were flowers everywhere, thanks to all my friends' mad skills.

All the girls all hated their dresses.

The food was delicious and the photographer got drunk.

We planned our honeymoon for January 2015, when the Seattle weather and my winter depression were at their worst.

We booked tickets to Costa Rica, and found a gorgeous little beach lodge on the Caribbean side that was perfect for us.

With the lush jungle all around, and a beautiful, isolated beach in front, Kenaki Lodge was like something out of the movies.

And, SCENE!

Pura Vida!