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March 31, 2012

My thoughts on our wedding/marriage

Ok so most of you who are reading this know by now that, yes, we got married in Vegas. It is only a few days from where I am up to in the trip report at the moment, so full details of the day (and the wonderful day after) are coming very soon.

Ironically, the place that I met most of the people that are reading this was on a Disney Wedding planning forum. So I feel the need to explain myself a little and let you know the plans we have for the future.

I have always, my whole life, said that I would get married in Disney, but from past conversations that Gary and I had, Vegas would have always been the second choice. We have said ever since we got engaged, that we were so excited to have a Disney wedding, but how cool would it be to get married in Vegas, it's a shame we can't have both... (or can we...?)

So the Walt Disney World wedding had been planned for at least a year (only in my head of course, nothing has been booked) I knew when and where everything was going to happen. I love Disney and it is such an important place to me, being a Disney Bride was everything I dreamed of. All our friends and families had been informed of the date and were looking forward to is as well.

Then other things in life happen. Again, most of you will know what a terrible time I had at the start of 2011. I don't feel the need to write it all down here, but life was seeming pretty crap. The one and only person who helped me though all the bad stuff was of course Gary. I'm not going to be all over the top and sentimental and bore you all with how much I love him and how he holds my whole world together, because I'm sure you all feel that way about someone.

Right when the bad stuff seemed to be over, I felt the overwhelming urge to be married to him right then. I thought I couldn't love him any more than I already did, but I just felt like I couldn't wait any longer and needed him to be my husband as soon as possible. We talked about it then, it was about 3 months before we were due to go travelling and we had always said how fun it would be to get married in Vegas, it seemed like it would be the right time. The only thing that put us off was the fact that our family and friends would not be there.

To be honest, in the next 2 months before we went away, things in our lives seemed to be going so well that we forgot about it. We were so happy and excited about going travelling and I even bought my wedding dress and continued to plan our Walt Disney World wedding (with a little voice in the back of my head telling me that it totally could be a vow renewal). Even when we were in Orlando on the trip I was excitedly saying to Gary that the next time we would be there would be to get married.

Then the time came to go travelling, and if you have been reading this the whole way through, you will know we had the time of our lives. It's funny because so many people have told me stories about couples breaking up after they travel, but we felt that it made our relationship much stronger. I can't even tell you why, about a week before we were going to be in Vegas, our wedding idea that we had talked about months before, just popped into my head again. I spoke to Gary about it and he reminded me why we decided not to do it (family and friends not being there) but the more we spoke about if over the days that followed the more we realized that being married wasn't something we wanted to wait another 2 years to do.

Of course I really struggled with the fact over the next few days that we were keeping it from our parents, and would we be letting people down. At one point we were considering telling only our parents and having the Disney Wedding as planned and hoping that no one would realize it was a vow renewal.

Anyway, full details of the wedding day will be here soon so I wont go into too much detail about the day now, but we do not regret it one bit. We got to have some amazing people that we met on Trek America there with us, and when we told our parents when we got home, they were really happy for us. The full truth to all our friends and everyone else in the world came out about 3 months after the wedding and now I feel silly for thinking that people would be annoyed at us. Vegas was fun, and crazy, and I would not change the experience we had there for the world. It was the happiest time of my life.

So now what are the plans...

Well, we are in a lot of debt from our trip, which I do not regret one bit, because it was worth every penny. So the Disney plans are currently kind of up in the air. We are considering making it a non-Disney vow renewal, still in Florida, but we really don't know for sure right now, at least until I get a full time job. We are hoping it will still be next year, but really cant be certain on that purely because of money. I have my dress of course (felt like a traitor going to pick it up from the store pretending that I was still engaged when in fact I was married) and I adore the dress of course and I can't wait to wear it.

We also got to have our Honeymoon in Disneyland which was of course amazing, and will also be coming up on the trip report in the next few weeks. We got to wear the 'Just Married' buttons which was really cool, I've waited so long to have one of those. The only awkward time was the morning we had our Engagement Photos done, knowing that we were already married, HAHA.

Regardless of this, I am SO HAPPY. Being married to Gary is the best feeling ever, and we are finally moving out of my parents house into our own place in May, so we have a lot to look forward to.

Day 58, 14th October 2011. Grand Canyon, Arizona

It had just started to warm up a little bit and I could feel myself starting to fall asleep when the alarm went off at 5.30am telling us it was time to get up. I must have had almost no sleep, and I had been drinking the night before, so I was clearly not in the mood for going on a hike at this time in the morning. However, it would mean we had more time to relax later so I was prepared to do it, because the other group weren't getting up until much later.

It was still quite cold so I put lots of layers on, knowing full well that I would get hot when we started hiking and have to take them all off. We got dropped off at the start of the Bright Angel trail at 6am, but for some reason it took me, Gary and Kirsty ages to find where we were supposed to start it from so we didn't start the hike until 6.25.

While we were looking around we saw a deer :)


Start of the Bright Angel Trail


The Bright Angel trail had a number of points that you could go to, one being right at the bottom of the canyon. We were going to see how far we felt like going today. I really wasn't in the mood for a full day hike, plus I was tired already from no sleep last night, and I wanted to do some serious wedding talk with Gary later as well.






So the 3 of us started walking and we were warming up almost immediatley. I wanted to stop about every 10 minutes to take another layer of clothing off. The sun was rising so the shadowy patterns over the Grand Canyon kept changing.


To be honest, I wasn't crazy about this hike. I truly feel like the best views we got of the Canyon were from the top of it, so I felt like it was a bit of a waste walking down into it. Of course it is a cool thing to do, but I didn't feel rewarded with the views of 'getting to the top' as I did with the other hikes we did. 



Gary with his Gatorade (I miss this stuff so much), it kept me alive when we were in the USA and I loved all the different flavors it came in, I wish we got them all here.


After about an hour and 45 minutes we reached the half way point, which was 3 miles in. We knew it was going to take longer to get back up so I said to Gary that I didn't really want to do any more. Kirsty decided she was going to go the whole way down, and I know we could have if I could have pushed myself, but I really just couldn't be bothered. No other excuses really, I just didn't feel like it.



People doing it on horseback, now thats a good idea, although kind of scary because it was quite a rocky terrain and I'd be worried about the horse slipping or me falling off it.




The thing I hated most was that we went downhill first and then uphill, so the hardest part was at the end. I really struggled with it, and it seemed a lot steeper than it had been on the way down, even though it cant have been.




Cute little squirrel






It took us 2 and a half hours to get back up, the last 20 minutes were the worst and all I wanted to do was keep stopping. I wish I'd had more will power on this day, but I just didn't.


Mountain goats



We were back at the top by 10.35am, so we had the whole day ahead of us to relax. Mark said he would only do one pick up and that was later in the day so we got a bus back to the visitor center, where we could get a taxi back to camp. While we were waiting for the taxi, Gary bought us some burgers from a cafe that were so gross, so I told him off for wasting money (haha I was so grumpy this morning, I don't know what was wrong with me) and I looked in the gift shop for a while.

I bought some normal cheese from a little food shop so that I could make sandwiches when we got back to camp. The taxi picked us up and it was only $10 for the cab ride which was really good because it took quite a while to get there. The taxi driver was a really nice old guy, I found that the people who we met in and around the National Parks are some of the nicest people I have ever met. They were all so friendly and nice, I  miss Americans.

When we got back to camp there was no one there apart from Steph and Dean. It was just the 4 of us there on our own for about 5 hours and it was really nice to have all the space to ourselves. Me and Gary both had showers and then we just sat around not doing much for the afternoon, we had about 5 hours of peace. I painted my nails and also did Steph's. Me and Gary had a look a bit more on the Wedding Chapel website to decide what we wanted to do, trying to figure out how much it would cost, and which wedding chapel was the best one. 
Afterwards, Gary had a little nap and Steph went off to do some laundry, and when I had a chance to think I kind of freaked out a bit worrying that people at home would be really mad at us for not telling them we were getting married. Thankfully, I had a really nice chat with Dean about it and just realized that I should do what makes me happy, and of course marrying Gary is the happiest thing I can imagine, so I managed to throw all my doubts aside and forget them.



Steph's nails


When Steph got back from the laundry, we were starting to get a little bored so we painted Dean's nails while he slept on the bench



He loved them LOL. One hand said I Love Gary and the other one said I Love Nick. At some point in the later afternoon everyone else got back, and me and Gary went to do some laundry. We had been meaning to do it all day while it was quiet at camp but we had ever quite got round to it. The weather when we were there was so weird. During the day it was really hot, and as the sun started to set it all of a sudden went from really hot to really cold in the space of 5 minutes, so at one point I had to run back to the tent to change from my shorts and t-shirt to jeans and a sweater.

While we were away from the others in the laundry room, we rang the Little White Wedding Chapel and booked our wedding for next week, after checking with Mark exactly what date we would be in Vegas. We were going to be there for 2 nights, and we had a party bus thing booked for the whole group on the first night so we decided to do it on the second night. We didn't book anything fancy with the wedding, just the chapel, a small bouquet for me and a photographer. There was a free limo included in the chapel price (only in Vegas LOL) and the minister was also included, we just had to tip him on the night. We paid over the phone there and then, it was under $300. It was such a surreal crazy experience just sitting there being like 'Oh my god, we just booked our wedding'!!

We went to dinner with Kirsty, Amelia, Steph and Leah to a cowboy style steakhouse near the campsite, as we didn't have any food to eat around camp. It was such a nice meal! I had chicken, and all the others had steak. All the meat was so nicely cooked, it was the best chicken I have ever eaten. It came with proper cowboy sides, corn on the cob, a jacket potato and a biscuit (which is not the same as a biscuit in the UK lol)




After the lovely food, we started walking back to camp and it was getting so cold already. I was really not prepared for another freezing shivering night like last night so we discussed maybe all of us splitting the cost of a hotel room. It was not something we could really afford but there was no way I was going to spend another night being so cold like that again. 

When we got back to camp, I went to get our laundry out of the dryer and then packed up some stuff in my rucksack for an overnight hotel stay. There were 6 of us that went to stay in the hotel, me, Gary, Kirsty, Steph, Nick and Dean. It was only 5 minutes walk from the campsite, and we just got one room so it was only about $20 each. Steph and Dean went into reception to get the room so it looked like it was just those 2 staying in it while the rest of us just waited outside for them.

When we got in the room the boys watched TV and me and Kirsty made some bracelets, but everyone was so tired that we all fell asleep pretty early. There were 2 huge beds in the room, so Nick, Steph and Dean slept in one, and me, Kirsty and Gary slept in the other. Some people were going to sleep on the floor but because the beds were so big it didn't make sense to. I took my phone charger so we cold make the most of the electricity and charged my phone all night.

I had such a good nights sleep compared to last night, I pretty much feel asleep as soon as I laid down. I was really hot because I was sleeping in between Kirsty and Gary and there was no air getting to me, but compared to how cold I was last night, I couldn't complain.

Day 57, 13th October 2011. Monument Valley - Grand Canyon, Arizona

The alarm went off really early this morning, as we had to be ready to leave by 6.30am, so we could go and watch the sunrise. We were of course asleep in the van, and I think we were the first ones up. Me and Kirsty walked to the toilet and then got all our stuff ready for the day. It was horrible not having any running water so we couldn't even brush our teeth. We had hand sanitizer to be clean, but because it was so dusty it felt like there was a layer of dirt on everything. 

At 6.30am, Jordan picked us up and drove us to the spot where we would be watching the sunrise, it was so beautiful. It was definitely the best time of day to see Monument Valley, even if it was really cold!


The moon was still up






Gary, being Gary, decided it was a good idea to climb up this huge rock called a 'Mesa'. I was so worried about him because he climbed up so high, I could hardly see him.. in this photo he is still climbing... if you can spot him!






Gary stayed up there the entire time, so I had to keep worrying about him in case he fell. Luckily he didn't but I was glad when he got down. We then went to have some breakfast, the Navajo's had got some breakfast laid out for us which was so nice, and there were grapes! I was so excited about the grapes, we hadn't eaten any since we were in California, I don't know why, but I was so happy to have them, I ate loads. Thanks Navajo's!

Jordan then drove us back to the entrance of Monument Valley and we went straight to the gift shop to firstly use the running water in the bathrooms, and secondly spend as much money as we would in the store. We were always trying to be careful with money while we were there, but now I'm home I wish I'd have bought more stuff. 

We stopped a few times on our drive back to the entrance to take some more photos. Monument Valley definitely looked better in the morning light than in the evening.





On the way out of Monument Valley, we stopped at a navajo jewellry stand on the side of the road and spent some money there. It was all traditionally hand made by the navajo people and they had so much nice stuff. I got a bracelet and Leah bought me some earrings as a late birthday present. It is really nice stuff and I still wear it now.


When we got in the van, I charged my phone, and we started driving into Arizona. We stopped for lunch at a place called Cameron Trading Post, and there were loads of shops there. After we had eaten we had about an hour to explore so we all did some more shopping. I only bought a few little things including some dreamcatchers and a cute little purse. Gary said I had spent too much money (I only spent about $30) and thought that he deserved to buy an iPad because I'd spent so much... 

After a few more hours of driving we reached the Grand Canyon. Mark drove us to a viewpoint area and made us close our eyes when we got out of the van, so that we didn't see it gradually, and we could just open our eyes and see it all at once. I was a bit dubious at first, knowing Mark's track record I was worried someone would fall of the edge, but it was a really cool way to do it.



The Grand Canyon was of course amazing, but for some reason I wasn't as impressed with it as I was with Monument Valley. It was still beautiful though, and it was cool to see a place that is so famous worldwide. We spent about 45 minutes at the viewpoint taking photos and having a look around.







Then we drove to camp to set up. It took about half an hour to get there and it was late afternoon by the time we had set our tents up. Mark had decided we would have a picnic while watching the sun set tonight, so we wold have to leave camp before it got dark. I was stressing because I thought we only had half an hour before we had to leave and I wanted to have a shower, but then I realized that we had moved into a new time zone earlier today and we actually had an hour and a half. I don't know what I was doing when everyone else changed their watches, but I clearly missed the memo, haha.

It was so nice to have a shower after feeling so dirty from yesterday, the only annoying thing was that they were pay showers. A quarter a minute, I know it's not much, it was just annoying to have to try and find a load of quarters. This has just reminded me of the other reason I collected quarters. Early on in the trip I decided to collect pressed pennies (like the ones you get in Disney) where ever I could. I actually got loads of them, maybe I should count how many... I know, I'll do a blog post with them all when I finally finish the trip report. Anyway, I was always worrried that I would see one and not have any quarters or pennies for the machine, so I became a coin hoarder and wouldn't let Gary spend any and had a bag full of them. So I was sad to have to use my precious quarters on the showers. 

I had a bit of time to spare after and used the wifi at camp to look up Vegas wedding chapels. We didn't have time to really look into it properly so decided that tomorrow we would have a proper think about it and decide if we should do it. When we were all ready to go we went to Mather Point to watch the sunset. We took photos by the entrance sign on the way in... I'm totally annoyed with Gary for putting his legs like that over the sign.


The sunset was nice but really busy, but I suppose you have to expect that at the Grand Canyon. And the fact that the sun wasn't actually setting in the direction we were facing so we couldn't actually see the sun.







Mark laid out the food, and loads of tourists thought that it was like an official thing and they were asking if they could eat it too. It wasn't exactly dinner, more like a snack, so I was still hungry, as usual. We did have more grapes though, so basically all I are on this day was grapes.


Dinner with a view, it was cool to say that on this day we saw the sun rise in Monument Valley, and the sun set in the Grand Canyon.



Once the sun had set we went back to camp, stopping at a supermarket on the way to get some snacks and gatorade for our hike tomorrow. We were leaving really early so we had to have everything ready tonight.

When we got back to camp, it still felt quite early, so Gary asked around to see if anyone wanted to do anything tonight, and a few of us decided to go bowling. There was a hotel just around the corner from the campsite that had a bowling alley in it and we decided to go there a bit later on.

It was getting really cold, compared to how warm it had been earlier, so I went to get changed before we went out. The only good thing about it being a bit colder was that I got to wear some of the new clothes I had bought, my cute new jumper from Forever 21 and my new jeans too.

While I was changing, Gary spoke to Nick and Dean about us potentially getting married in Vegas and asked if they would come. They were really excited about it, and I called Leah into the tent to tell her about it too, she was shocked and was asking if I was really being serious, and said that she would of course love to come. We didn't want everyone to know what we were planning, so we both had agreed on inviting just 4 people. 
Kirsty had obviously been my best friend from the start and we had spent every single day with her so she was of course no.1 on the list. We also got along great with Leah and she had been so friendly and lovely to us, so that's why we decided on her. Nick and Dean were in the other tour group and they were Gary's best 'boy' friends on the trip as we only had one other guy in our group, Matt, but him and Gary didn't get to know each other that well. Since our first group had left us, Nick and Dean had always been really good friends with Gary even though he wasn't in their group, so of course those were the 2 boys he wanted to tell about the wedding.

We didn't end up going bowling until about 9.30pm. There was just 6 of us, me and Gary, Steph, Amelia, Nick and Dean. It was so cheap at only $4 a game, so we played 2 games. At one point everyone had gone to the bathroom or to get a drink, so it was just me, Nick and Dean, they told me how excited they were about the wedding, which I thought was so sweet. It made me feel really happy because we were going to be keeping it a secret for a while, so it was nice to have come enthusiasm from the people that did know. Of course we couldn't talk about it all night because Steph and Amelia didn't know.

Steph doing some bowling


Steph won the first game of bowling, and I came last (joint last with Nick) and Gary won the second game, in which I came last again. There was one really funny time where I just carelessly and gently rolled the ball because I was past caring about the game and got a strike... I think that was the only time I did well in the game.

We were all drinking and having fun, and during the second game, me, Steph and Amelia started having a good chat that we didn't really care about playing it any more. I have talked a lot on here about how me, Gary and Kirsty didn't really get a chance to get to know the people in our group very well, and this was the time that it really started to change. I talked to Steph and Amelia a lot about what had gone on and they told me their end of the story in regards to the person who had said bad things about us. It was really nice to chat to them and we all got to see how we had all had bad impressions of one another but now that had changed. They seemed to appreciate the fact that we didn't go straight to them and start bitching about a certain person, the same way that person had bitched about us to them.
We had a lot of fun and I was so glad that I was feeling way more a part of the group, I wish Kirsty would have been there too but she was really tired this night and had gone to bed early.

Me and Amelia







Boys being silly



When we were finished bowling, we had a drink in the bar, and Me, Gary, Amelia and Nick walked back to camp while Steph and Dean stayed in the bar. We had a really fun night and I'm so glad we did it. We got back to our tent at 12.30am and I had the worst night ever, it was SO cold. I had so may blankets and stuff but nothing seemed to make a difference, so I hardly slept.I was shivering all night, and the fact that I had been drinking means it made it harder for me to sleep too, so I felt like I was awake all night just being ridiculously cold. Not good when you have to get up at 5.30am the next morning.