The Honeymoon Phase

We’ve come to the end of our wedding story! The night of the actual wedding Jason and I treated ourselves to a stay at the Ritz-Carlton, which was fabulous! And the next day, after getting our things together and saying goodbye to our families, we headed out on 10-day honeymoon trip. We did what any sane 22-year-old newlyweds would do…ROAD TRIP!!! We knew we would be too bored staying in one spot for more than a couple days so we decided to pick 6 places instead! Yes, six. Brace yourselves for a jam-packed post. The first stop was Sanibel Island in Florida!

(Side note: these are all from an old point-and-shoot and my photography skills were pretty sub-par back then, but I chose not to Lightroom them and just show you the real deal!)

As we headed out on the open road, we were completely unaware that we were actually headed to the completely wrong location. When we arrived at the “Sanibel Hotel”, we were dismayed to find that we were in St. Pete Beach, several HOURS away from where we thought we were staying. Guess who’s mistake that was? Yup, he never let me live it down. After talking to the nice lady at the hotel about how misleading her hotel name was and begging for a refund, we left for the REAL Sanibel Island, with no idea what we were doing or where we were staying.

Miraculously, we happened by this beautiful resort and decided to see if we could get lucky with a vacancy. It was in the middle of the night, there was no staff anywhere to be found, and we were quite skeptical. But the place sure looked pretty, even in the dark!

We eventually tracked down an employee who was awesome and booked us a room right away. We went to bed feeling very lucky and felt even MORE lucky when we woke up to see this beautiful sight:

This place was like our HEAVEN. We couldn’t have planned it better if we tried. To this day we reminisce about being there and talk about how we’re dying to go back. We enjoyed everything the resort had to offer, including a poolside bar, several restaurants, and an amazing spa.

And look, I even have food pictures to show you! I was taking pictures of my food LONG BEFORE I had this little blog. It’s a part of me. I also remember every single thing we ate. I’m crazy like that.

Cuban sandwich with plantain chips

Fish tacos with fries

Continental room service breakfast!

After a couple wonderful days in Sanibel, we headed over to the next door island of Captiva for our first taste of a real beach! We stayed at the South Seas Island Resort and had a room right next to the water, which was great.

Two things happen when we go to the beach. I lounge. Jason looks for sea shells.

We ended a hot day in the sun with nice big servings of ice cream! An ice cream parlor and a bunch of other fun stuff was on the resort property so it was super easy for us to navigate.

Next stop was Amelia Island, up in northern Florida! I had been to Amelia Island before with my family and knew it would be perfect for empty stretches of beautiful beach.

Amelia Island is WONDERFUL. There are massive stretches of beach where there is literally not a single person in sight. So incredibly relaxing and awesome.

After some time in the sand we went into the town of Fernandina Beach to explore and get some more eats!

We even rented some bikes for a leisurely ride! It lasted about five minutes before I remembered that I hate riding bikes.

And after our exploring we went back to the beach for a nice sunset stroll. Such a great feeling having nothing to do at all but enjoy life!

We packed up from Amelia Island and went further north to an old favorite of mine: Savannah, Georgia! I’m in love with Savannah and have been many times but Jason had never been so this was the perfect trip. We stayed at this perfect little B&B called the Green Palm Inn that had amazing food and the sweetest innkeeper you’ll ever meet.

We had gotten in our beach time by then with our previous stops, so we had a different kind of fun with some leisurely shopping and sightseeing in Savannah. It’s such a beautiful Southern town, I fall in love all over again every time I go there.

And the FOOD. Oh the food. Awesomesauce.

Fun fact. I ate shrimp and grits every single time I saw it on a menu during the honeymoon, which wrapped up to 4 times I believe. I was on a roll. But THIS shrimp and grits from Vic’s on the River was the best. I can still taste it…

We also took a trolley tour of the town, which was a great way to see all the beautiful historic homes and other sights.

We had such a nice time and so many great meals that we regretted our decision in only staying a couple days. But we were excited to get to the next stop of the honeymoon: Hilton Head, South Carolina. Our stay in Hilton Head was only a day and we ended up skipping the beach (it was MOBBED with vacationers) and going dolphin watching! It was pretty amazing to see so many wild dolphins.

My camera died a few minutes into the trip, but I managed to get a fin before the battery ran out.

The next and last stop of the honeymoon was Charleston, South Carolina! Charleston is kind of the Carolina version of Savannah and has its fair share of beautiful sights and good food. We enjoyed a tour of the city by carriage and it was awesome.

We stayed at the historic Francis Marion Hotel which had wonderful old fashioned charm, complete with very southern doormen who opened the door for you every single time you came near.

We enjoyed the last day of our honeymoon strolling around Charleston and wishing that the trip would never end.

The memories from that week and a half will never leave me. It was like being incredibly high on life for 10 days straight. The relaxation, the incredible food, the beautiful sights, the time spent with the love of my life…all of it was incredible. On the drive home we witnessed the most gorgeous sunset that either of us had ever seen in our lives. It kept changing and becoming more beautiful and striking the further we drove. I like to think it was God’s way of blessing our future and letting us know that there were many more beautiful things to come in the life we were sharing together. I couldn’t stop saying “Wow.” out loud and just feeling thankful with all my heart for how blessed we were.

Thank you so much for allowing me to share all this and get it out into words! I hope you all enjoyed taking the journey with me. And I hope I didn’t kill you with photos (I literally left out thousands so consider yourselves lucky 😉 ).

Thanks for reading!

-Lauren

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To read more about our wedding…

Part One: Planning for the Big Day (engagement story and wedding planning)

Part Two: You Only Get One (morning of the ceremony)

Part Three: Jumping the Broom (wedding ceremony)

Part Four: Party Like it’s 2010 (wedding reception)