RAFTING!!! The Rios Tropicales Pac-3 trip was PERFECT for us. We rafted for a few hours on two different days with a day at the Rios Lodge in between.

We got picked up at our hotel and then bussed an hour or so to a base where we had breakfast and then took another bus to the place where we started our rafting journey.


The river was beautiful:

We stopped for lunch along the river & ended up at the lodge in mid-afternoon. Our room was a cute cabin-feeling room with a private bathroom and a waterfall just outside our window!

During our time at the Lodge we did some hiking with the group and some relaxing in hammocks:


We also did some exploring on our own:

On our last morning at the lodge we got to do the Canopy Tour. This included not-comfortable, yet safe harnesses, helmets and gloves.


Here we gooooooooo:


And finally, more rafting. This time we did level III and IV which were pretty exciting! In the raft with us was our guide, Diego, and our new friends from TX, Cliff and Pam.

We went on our honeymoon way back in December & since I’m so far behind, I’m going to keep the recap brief & full of photos!

We flew into San Jose, CR late on Friday 12/18 (like, midnight) so all we did that night was sleep. The next morning we woke up bright & early to catch a flight to Drake Bay for a few days at Rancho Corcovado.

Rancho Corcovado is a family run resort on the beach. We were served homemade meals every day and we had a guide that took us on our 3 tours along with 3 people from Brussels, Belgium! This was the view from our room:

We visited the Corcovado National Park to hike:

We talked our Belgian friends into having a couple beers at the local bar:

We went snorkeling at Cano Island:

Chris & I got to see these Macaw’s in the tree on the beach in front of the resort!

Our last day in Drake Bay we went on a Mongrove Tour where we saw many birds:

And caiman (like crocodiles!):

We walked the beach on the last night and got this beautiful photo of sunset:

The next day we flew back to San Jose:

We spent one night in San Jose, walking around the Central Market & eating a nice dinner before we were picked up for our Rafting adventure…stay tuned for Part 2!

We have been married SIX MONTHS already! Wow, the time really has flown by. We’ve been busy traveling, camping and working on projects around the house. I thought this would be a good time to post a recap of my wedding blog entries. I definitely wrote them out of order originally - so I decided (for my sake) to write a recap post. Maybe someone else is interested too (and maybe not!).

Getting Engaged
* We’re ENGAGED!
* Engagement Brunch
* Engagement Photos

Pre-Wedding Planning
* Finding the perfect dress!
* Venue Hunting: Pt1, Pt2
* Selecting the Venue
* Creating a Guest List
* Hotels & Registry’s
* Choosing a Hotel & Guest Bags - Roseville Radisson
* Save the Date Cards
* Invitations!
* Flowers & Colors
* Finding an Officiant
* Looking for a DJ (we were happy with Instant Request)
* Checklist on 11.28.08
* Checklist on 12.3.08
* Checklist on 1.19.09
* Checklist on 3.4.09
* A wedding nightmare - 10.6.08
* The Candy Buffet!
* Researching Indoor Portrait Photo Options
* Escort Cards
* The Photobooth
* A Travel Theme

Pre-Wedding Parties
* Shower @ Jayne’s - 2.15.09
* Bachelorette Party - 3.7.09
* Couples Shower - 3.20.09

Wedding Weekend Festivities
* Friday Morning @ Aveda
* Rehearsal Dinner @ Barley John’s
* Wedding Traditions
* Pre-ceremony photos
* The Ceremony
* The Cake
* The Reception
* Day After Post

Minimoon & Honeymoon!
* Minimoon in Vegas - Venetian

We have our honeymoon scheduled for this winter. We’re going to COSTA RICA!!! It’s going to be amazing, we are really looking forward to it, and I’m sure you’ll find some photos of the trip right here on NikkiLynn.net when we get back!

I don’t really know what to say about our Reception except that I hope everyone had FUN! We really wanted to just have a big party with our family & friends to celebrate our love. Of course we had the photo booth and the candy buffet which were big hits, but we also did some dancing (with music by Matt from Instant Request)! Murzyn Hall was the perfect location for us…plenty of room to fit everyone, a great bar area separate from the dance floor and the flexibility to bring in whatever food & drinks we wanted!

Here are some photos from the reception:
Dinner from Buca’s

My sister’s super nice speech

My dad’s equally as nice speech

Father/Daughter and Mother/Son Dance


Photo booth - the line started immediately at 7!

Dancing, Dancing, Dancing!






Is it 11 o’clock yet?!
Also known as, I think I snapped at my dad at least a couple times asking to see what time it was. Sorry Dad!

I think he forgave me, thank goodness!

PCHS Class of 1996 - Friends from WAY back

The end. It really, truly was a great day!

Chris & I entered a Wedding Photo Contest on Startribune.com and the time has finally come for the voting!! If you have some free time today, we’d love to get your vote(s).

Our ceremony was short & sweet and perfect for us. We found Rev George via an online search and after our first meeting we knew he was the guy for us. His company, Budget Weddings, has an online tool for putting together your vows with some sample texts to get you started and on the day of the ceremony he coordinated everything including wedding party, readers and the DJ. It was great.

After the welcome and us stating our intent to get married, we had a hand blessing ceremony which involved us crossing our arms and joining hands to make an infinity sign and some really nice words being read.

Then, Liz read Love by Roy Croft:

I love you,
Not only for what you are,
But for what I am
When I am with you.

I love you,
Not only for what
You have made of yourself,
But for what
You are making of me.

I love you
For the part of me
That you bring out;
I love you
For putting your hand
Into my heaped-up heart
And passing over
All the foolish, weak things
That you can’t help
Dimly seeing there,
And for drawing out
Into the light
All the beautiful belongings
That no one else had looked
Quite far enough to find.

I love you because you
Are helping me to make
Of the lumber of my life
Not a tavern
But a temple;
Out of the works
Of my every day
Not a reproach
But a song.

I love you
Because you have done
More than any creed
Could have done
To make me good,
And more than any fate
To make me happy.

You have done it
Without a touch,
Without a word,
Without a sign.
You have done it
By being yourself.

Then we said our vows!

I can’t find a copy of the vows but hopefully I will and then I’ll enter them here.

And, before it was over Jill read The Art of Marriage by Wilferd A Peterson:

In Marriage,
The little things are the big things.
It is never being too old to hold hands.
It is remembering to say “I love you” at least once a day.

It is never going to sleep angry.
It is at no time taking the other for granted;
the courtship should not end with the honeymoon,
it should continue through all the years.

It is having a mutual sense of values and common objectives.
It is standing together facing the world.
It is forming a circle of love that gathers in the whole family.
It is doing things for each other, not in the attitude of duty or sacrifice, but in the spirit of joy.

It is speaking words of appreciation and demonstrating gratitude in thoughtful ways.
It is not expecting the husband to wear a halo or the wife to have wings of an angel.
It is not looking for perfection in each other.

It is cultivating flexibility, patience, understanding and a sense of humor.
It is having the capacity to forgive and forget.
It is giving each other an atmosphere in which each can grow.

It is finding room for the things of the spirit.
It is a common search for the good and the beautiful.
It is establishing a relationship in which the independence is equal, dependence is mutual and the obligation is reciprocal.
It is not only marrying the right partner, it is being the right partner.

And then, finally, it was time for our first kiss as husband and wife!!

The party started immediately following the ceremony with the drink and candy bars opening immediately and not closing down until 11pm!

What would a wedding day be without tons of photos? Probably less stressful, but I don’t know. I have REALLY enjoyed looking back through our wedding photos over the past (almost) six months!! Here is a sampling of some of them. Many more are available here for viewing in my gallery.
FAMILY @ Cowles Conservatory


JUST US @ Sculpture Gardens & St Anthony Falls



GOOFING AROUND
I loved how Chris looks SO happy during this series…

It was a lot of fun taking the photos and I got exactly what I wanted…some nice family portraits and a bunch of great photos of just Chris & Me!

It’s true. One of the things both Chris & I love is to travel to new places. We had both done quite a bit of traveling before we met, (in fact I traveled to China with my family about a month before we started dating) and we included travel in our lives shortly after we started dating. Our first (and second) road trip was down to St. Louis less than 6 weeks after we started dating! Since then we’ve been to Chi-ca-go, Nashville, Nassau, all over MN and of course our European adventure last fall.

So, we were out to dinner for a friend’s birthday a couple months after we got engaged and of course the wedding planning came up. I think the first idea I had was creating passport invites…and from that someone said ‘you should go with a travel theme!’ Chris wasn’t so sure about a themed wedding, but I ran with it. These are different parts of the wedding that were inspired by this theme idea:

Passport Photos: The photobooth was a perfect tool to incorporate within the theme. Don’t the black & white photobooth photos look a lot like grainy passport photos?!? I think so. My aunt Julie made the sign to hang outside the photobooth and it looked like this:

Check-In Table:
We wanted to make sure that everyone got to sit at a table with people they at least had something in common with…or who we thought might be able to enjoy a meal together, so we decided to do place cards. I wasn’t sure what would make sense for the Travel theme until I remembered something I had seen as a Save the Date - Boarding Passes! This worked as a 2 for 1 deal because we were also able to write up a little Thank You to our guests which normally would have been on the program (which we didn’t have). Here’s what they looked like:

And, then we had to figure out how to make sure everyone got theirs. Well, I decided that putting them in a suitcase would work perfectly and after a couple tries, we came up with this wonderful arrangement:

The two bottom suitcases belong to my Grandparents and actually have my Grandpa Chuck’s name on them still which was an unexpected way for him to ‘be’ at the wedding even though he passed away three years ago.

Table Decorations:
Each seat had a candy bar at it and the wrapper was our wedding program. There was a compass rose on the front of it and our family names on the back. Additionally, we created bags for the candy buffet and frames for the photobooth strips and those were set out in different trunks and pails.

We also had photo albums in the bar area of some of our vacations together and my dad worked Travel into his speech as well. It was really fun having a theme to go with and I think our guests enjoyed the details too!

As we were going about planning our casual reception, I thought it would be interesting to have cupcakes instead of cake. I mean, no plates or silverware, already portion controlled…perfect, right? Well, not to Chris. That boy wanted cake like I couldn’t believe, so cake it was! We actually only ended up going to one bakery before placing our order but lucked out because the final result was beautiful and delicious.
Cake Tasting
We did our cake tasting at Jack’s Bakery in Brooklyn Park on a Saturday afternoon. It happened to be a Saturday after a Friday night of drinking, so Chris didn’t enjoy it as much as he could have, but he survived. We got a mini cake (half white, half chocolate) and some different filling flavors to taste.

This is the sample photo we choose to go with, but with square layers rather than rounded.

And this is the final result (we went with Raspberry Mousse filling).

Each side had a word - Love, Honor, Cherish and Respect:


Cake Cutting
After we ate dinner we proceeded to cut the cake and take a taste of it. That’s all we ate too…never sat down to have a piece! I had told Chris that he better not wipe any cake on my face - and then I ended up putting some on his. Oh well, he was in a good mood that day & it was okay!


Dad’s suit was the worst victim of the cake
Unfortunately, my dad didn’t fare as well in the cake war. After we finished cutting the cake, he promptly took it away to the kitchen, but before he could make it…a part fell off, straight down the front of his suit! Doh. Luckily, Shelly had packed some shout wipes or a tide stain stick or something and he was able to get it pretty clean right away. A trip to the cleaners later and he says you can’t even tell.

And this is what happened to the top layer at the end of the night…on the ground outside my parents house! Oh well, we will re-create our wedding night dinner next March and get a new cake that will probably end up tasting way better anyway!!

As I was preparing to marry my favorite person in the whole wide world, our main theme was “we want everyone to have fun!” which actually turned out okay, but fairly non-traditional. However, mixed into those plans came some very traditional pieces to our wedding.

First, the very famous bridal saying…Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue.
Something Old: My something old is a gift from my mother. She told me that Paka (what I called my maternal grandfather) gave this locket to his mother who then passed it along to her grand-daughter - my mom. This is extra special because Paka passed away when I was a junior in high school.

Something New: There are many things involved in the wedding that were new, but I selected my dress as my something new. I had a great evening dress shopping with my mom and my sister, and even though I wasn’t originally planning on wearing a bridal dress, I am very happy with my choice!

Something Borrowed: This was the last of the four items that I found. I don’t remember who came up with the idea, but I emailed many different ladies asking if anyone had a clutch I could borrow for my wedding day. My mom’s best friend, Jayne, was quick to respond and she had quite the collection for me to choose from. The one I used was beautiful, simple and perfect. It was fun to have something from Jayne to use during my special day because she and her family are special to our family…like another aunt, uncle and two cousins!

Something Blue: My something blue wasn’t what most people would expect. I went on a serious hunt for some blue shoes and I found some! They’re kitten heel (which is perfect because Chris isn’t much taller than me…and after I hurt my foot), shiny blue with a little blue fly pin on them. I’m hoping to wear them again someday, with jeans or another dress. We’ll see!


The Veil
The next more traditional thing I choose was to wear a veil. I choose the single layer Elbow length veil and wore it over my up-do hair. I have known a lot of people who have removed their veil following the ceremony, but I figured that it was the ONE day I’d ever wear it so I might as well rock it all night long!


Being Given Away
The final tradition I’m going to make note of is that I choose to walk ‘down the aisle’ to meet Chris with my Dad. I always knew I wanted him to walk with me as I prepared to get married and he did a great job. We didn’t have the officiant ask ‘who gives this girl away’ or anything, but he passed me off to Chris and also shared the Father/Daughter dance with me.