In honor of our three monthiversary today, I wanted to start to share our honeymoon. More to come!

On our wedding night, we had booked a hotel close to the airport so we could take the shuttle in the morning for our 6:00AM flight to Miami, and then from Miami to Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic. My brother had taken us to my parent’s house first so I could change out of my dress and Andrew out of the suit he rented. My dad would take it back in the morning when he returned his. As I’m gathering all of our suitcases, my phone starts to ring, which I think is bizarre because who would be calling me on my wedding night? I answer the phone and get an automated message informing me that our 6:00AM flight was delayed, so we would miss our connection in Miami. They had booked us on a flight to leave Monday morning, have a 23 hour layover, and fly out Tuesday. Today was Saturday.

Uhm what?

I’m beyond peeved, at the moment. I explain everything to Andrew, and he takes the phone and calls the airline back. The lady on the phone that he gets is not very helpful, nor does she seem to care that it’s our wedding night. She reschedules our connection to leave on Monday from Miami, but says that there are no other flights earlier than that. Andrew wants some form of refund because our resort is already paid for, and we are losing two days of our honeymoon. She offers a voucher for a discount on a flight that expires in a year. He informs her that we aren’t traveling anywhere in the next year and she replies, “That’s the offer on the table. Take it or leave it.”

Andrew is pissed, but he accepts the vouchers because they’re better than nothing. My parents are home by now and my mom just encourages us to go to our hotel and relax and sleep in the next morning. I’m really bummed about losing two days of our honeymoon, but there’s not much we can do so we get our suitcases and check in to the hotel.

The next morning, we sleep in until about 9:30 and then we’re not really sure what to do with our extra day at home. My out-of-town family are still here for the day, so we go on a free brewery tour at Anheiser Busch and spend some time with them. I felt bad for Andrew that we were spending out first day of our “honeymoon” hanging out with my family, but I think he had a good time. We got free beer samples, but neither of us really like beer so we gave them to my uncle. ;P

For lunch we ate some of the leftover sandwiches my mom made for me and the bridesmaids the day before. We also had so many cupcakes leftover! Andrew was happy there was still some batman cake for him to eat. After we finished eating, we had to figure out where we were staying for the night. Andrew and my family believed the airport should at least compensate us for our hotel and we never received a new itinerary, so we didn’t have any of our flight information. Since we didn’t have much luck before with calling, we just drove to the airport to speak with someone in person.

The lady who helped us was so nice and – surprise! –actually helpful, but she was confused as to why we were just now coming up to the airport. Andrew and I looked at each other questioningly and told her we weren’t told that we had to come to the airport. She apologized and gave us our boarding passes, seat assignments, and then vouchers for food and hotel for the night. With all of our travel plans in order now – thank you Lord! – we joined our family for dinner at a local Mexican place. After we finished eating, we hugged everyone goodbye – for real this time! – and checked into our hotel room.

It was raining, and as we were unpacking some of our things, I heard a drip, drip, drip. I sighed and followed the noise to the window, which was leaking profusely. Andrew called the front desk and they moved us to the room next door. That window was leaking, too… so they moved us to a room inside the atrium which just had windows to the pool below, and we were good.

3:30AM the next morning came way too early. We groggily threw some clothes on and headed down to the lobby to wait for the shuttle. Andrew did not feel good, and kept near a trash can. He dry heaved a few times and, as his new wife, I kept thinking along the lines of, “I am your wife! I need to fix you! Make you feel better!”

We went through the airport on autopilot, checked in our baggage, made it through security, and boarded the plane. I was nervous about making our connection in Miami, but we made it with plenty of time. Just as we were about to take off, Andrew starts checking his pockets and frantically looking around him, and then utters an expletive, which is weird because he normally doesn’t curse.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

He looks up at me sheepishly and then says in a really quiet voice. “I lost my wedding ring.”

The laughter that bubbles out of me surprises both of us, but once it starts, I cannot stop laughing. He gives me an exasperated look and then sits back in his seat. “You lasted,” I say between giggles, “a day and a half with your wedding ring.” That may be a new record! He thinks that he lost it in the bathroom at the Atlanta airport when he was washing his hands. Well, at least he washed his hands!

He apologizes over and over but I just shake my head. What can you do? He was really disappointed about it and really mad at himself, but it really didn’t bother me too much. I tease him and I still giggle now about it – thankfully we picked a fairly frugal ring to begin with so it wasn’t a huge hit in the gut financially. Jokingly I say, “Now you just sit and think about what you’ve done for the next three hours.”

I am just so relieved that after everything we had to get through to sit on this plane that I am just doing that, sitting on this plane with my best friend going someplace new. And after three hours, we are finally in the Dominican!