Jen Caputo

My Other Wedding

Little known fact. Our wedding in Mexico wasn't legally binding.  Well we knew that but most other folks didn't. So a few weeks ago, we flew down to Florida to make it legal. Adam's parents came too. We flew in on a Thursday and while Adam slept, my dad and I took his parents on a tour of Hutchinson Island (where my parents live).

But first, we made a stop at the Fruit Stand to buy dozens of Honeybells and Grapefruits.

Then we went to bathtub beach (it was cold!)

Followed by the House of Refuge

Since it was so cold on Thursday, we'd had enough of outdoor activities so we headed back home to make some cocktails with those delicious honeybells.

Here's Adams mom, Trish, enjoying one in my Aunt Sherry & Uncle Steve's condo where they were staying.

The sunset that night

For dinner, we went to the one and only chain restaurant that Adam and I enjoy. Bonefish. We LOVE Bonefish. Our appetizers below: Mussels, Sesame Seared Tuna, and Bang Bang Shrimp. It was also happy hour when we got there meaning a round of drinks for 6 people only cost $15! Florida happy hour sure is awesome.

The next morning, Adam and I got up early to go to the court house to get a marriage license.

Remember Charlie?

For lunch, my dad cooked up bucket after bucket of stone crab that they caught in their crab traps along with some leftover bonefish.

Now that's a legal-wedding day lunch to write home about!

At this point, it was time to get dressed for the real wedding and head back to the Stuart courthouse.

My grandparents (who weren't able to come to Mexico) were able to come to this wedding!

They did the quick 5 minute legal ceremony in this gazebo outside of the County Clerks office.

It was casual Friday at the office :)

  

After the 3pm ceremony, we headed to Conchy Joes for Happy Hour!

Our favorite part of Happy Hour is the .50 oysters and clams (steamed or raw, we eat 'em raw!)

Then we went back to my parents condo to kill some time. My parents neighbors (Ed and Edie) brought up a bottle of champagne so we squeezed a bunch of honeybell and grapefruit juice and made mimosas. (Ed is a florist and he made the bouquet I was holding out of some flowers that Adam's parents picked up on a grocery store run)

For dinner, we went to Courtine's (a french restaurant in Stuart). It was delicious. Almost everyone got one of these three things.

Rack of lamb

Lamb Shank

Or Rib Eye (this one was stuffed with blue cheese!)

The next morning, Adam's parents had to leave. They weren't too upset to go though as they were catching a flight to Tahiti!

We bummed around for a bit and then headed to a chili cookoff for charity. They just happened to be serving Churros so  Adam and I decided to recreate this picture from our real wedding:

The next day we woke up bright and early to go out Deep Sea Fishing.  About an hour in, we caught this Dolphin

But then we didn't catch anything else so we went back home and went swimming.

Monday was our last day in town but my mom had to work so my dad took us to this beer and wine bar they thought we'd enjoy called Vine and Barley.

They had a great tap list and Adam enjoyed a few samplers.

 

We got a meat/cheese plate to share for lunch.

For the wine, you got to serve yourself! You purchased a pre-paid card and then got to fill it with a taste (1oz), a half glass (2.5oz) or a full glass (5oz). The amount of the sample was deducted from your card and you could try as many as you wanted. It was a really cool concept!

 

Well that was it for our second wedding vacation. We flew home Tuesday morning on a 6:30am flight and had to go straight to work from the airport.

My Del Sol Wedding Photos

The other day, Matt posted his favorite photos from our Playa del Carmen wedding on Del Sol's blog along with a slideshow of some other faves.

So, now it's my turn!  Here are my favorite photos from Del Sol!

 

 

 

(This is the only picture we have of Adam with this jacket on!)

 

 

Friends checking out our photo wall before the wedding.

 

 

 

This one makes me misty eyed.  My dad and uncle.

 

Deciding which shoes to wear

Time to head down to the ceremony!

I loved my wedding planner, Erica!

Jimmy passed out beers at the beach.

 

 

 

 

 

 

All of our guests!

 

With our immediate families

Our matching shoes

The mariachi walked the guests back to the villa. Do you see Cozumel off in the distance?

We took the tricycle back, the neighbors cheered us on, even shouting "Go Blue" when they spotted our shoes.

My uncle took advantage of our feet cleaning station.

 

 

Gringo the cat, checking out the candles.

Making fresh churros

 

Adam and Armando love the Don Julio 1942

We didn't have a wedding cake, we had churros. Our friend, Erin, insisted we play Lady and the Tramp with one.

First dance

 

Father-Daughter dance

Mother-Son dance

You gotta love this action shot of Nick

My dads feet - completely off the ground!

Now that's how you get down.

I wish I could remember what we were singing

This looks like an episode of Glee to me

Adam and I toast with Matt from Del Sol. Isn't he a cutie?

The End

Thanks to Matt and everyone at Del Sol for capturing such perfect memories of the best day of our lives! I obviously had a lot of favorites :)

Wedding Vacation Recap: Day 8 - 11

The rest of the days were spent recovering, relaxing, and not doing too much so I'll just throw 'em all together in one post.

Day 8 - Monday

The day after the wedding and we slept in later than we did the entire time we were down there - 8:20am!!!

Some left over wedding food was heated up for breakfast, friends stopped by to say their goodbyes and we spent the rest of the day either in the pool or the ocean. You knew it was a rough night for some when the first beer wasn't cracked until 11am. Every other day the latest one was opened was 9am

We stopped by and visited our friends down at Xaman Ha.

In the evening, people stopped by for a few cocktails. Adam's aunt, dad, and brother worked on taking the picture wall apart.

Dustin came to taunt me with his memory card so that I could get copies of all of his pictures

And then we just cooked up more wedding leftovers for dinner.

Day 9 - Tuesday

A lot more people were leaving today and we had to check out of Casa Chaac. We moved a few houses down to Casa Vista del Mar where Adam's family was staying. My parents moved down to Xaman Ha.

We swam in the small pool at Vista del Mar for a while, and then we all went down to Xaman Ha's much better pool
Xaman Ha pool:

We all decided to get together for dinner and went back to La Cueva del Chango to try their fresh juice margaritas.
On recommendation, we started with the tangerine and grapefruit - both delicious but we think we preferred the grapefruit a little more.

Sorry for the overall crappy quality of these pictures, I didn't turn the flash on because I didn't want to ruin the mood of the beautiful jungle like setting.

The salsas

We started with an appetizer of this sesame seared tuna on a tostada

I got the tuna with a hibiscus reduction

And here's the sesame seared. It was really good but everyone agreed it needed some kind of sauce

We went back to the villa and looked at wedding pictures that I'd pulled off of various people's cameras and then went to bed.

Day 10 - Wednesday
Adam and I got up to go visit our friend the juice cart guy. On the way there, we walked through the ruins to check out the lizards and I realized I didn't have any pictures of them yet.

We handed him our pitcher and asked him to fill it full of grapefruit juice.

120 pesos for the fill.

He's located on 10th, just south of Benito Juarez

He had the pitcher about 2/3 full when he ran out of grapefruits so we babysat his cart while he ran to get more. He gave me a glass of orange juice as a thank you.

Then we went to the bakery and waited for them to make a fresh batch of soft pretzels which we took home to everyone.

On the way back to Vista del Mar we kissed my parents goodbye as they were flying back to Florida.

Like the last few days, we spent the rest of the afternoon swimming, trying to finish all of the leftover booze we couldn't pack up, and reading gossip magazines.

After we showered, Adam and I went up to the upper most roof deck of vista del mar with a few glasses of Gran Centanario Anejo (GCA as it came to be known this weekend) and watched the stars come out.

Then we all got cleaned up for our last dinner together - at Carboncitos

After making and enjoying the Agua de Jamaica and creating many cocktails with it for the last few days, I was excited to see they had a Jamaica cocktail on the menu. I think it was called the Firefly. So I ordered it. I saw that you could make it a double for 20 extra pesos so I did that.

Unfortunately, this drink just tasted like sugar. It was so sweet, I couldn't stand it. Russ took care of it though and traded me a beer. Oh well for being adventurous!

Same thing for Maggie unfortunately, she ordered some kind of mango thing I think

She was not a fan either as it was also way too sweet. Mental note: no mixed drinks at Carboncitos next time, we'll stick to beer!

The salsas are always a hit

As were the coconut shrimp in a tamarind sauce

Adam got the Arrachera tacos - also very good!

This shrimp with cactus didn't get rave reviews (complaints of too salty) and Russell unnecessarily took one of the bill.

We walked back to Vista del Mar, had a few more drinks, then hit the sack as we had a cab coming at 10:15am.

Day 11 - Thursday
We had walked up to the cab stand yesterday and arranged a guy to come pick us up at 10:15am. He was there 10 minutes early and charged us 500 pesos. We were planning on taking the bus but the 10:30 would have gotten us there a little too late and the 9:15 was too early.

Bye Playa. At least it was rainy when we left.

 

And now for some things that didn't fit in elsewhere.

The cats
We had 3 strays hanging out on the patio the entire time we were at Casa Chaac. We called them gringo, taco, and Holyfield (so named because of his clipped ear - turned out they all had clipped ears though)
They were all very affectionate, except for taco, and were even invited to the wedding.

Gringo & Taco hanging out on the porch

Gringo would stand right outside the door but never came in even when we had it wide open

Gringo saying Hi at the wedding (at one point, there were 4 cats at the wedding)

The evening after the wedding Adam and I gave Gringo and Holyfield some leftovers.

We have 2 cats at home so we all thought it was pretty awesome to have some surrogates on vacation (except for Maggie and Erin who hate cats).

Casa Stavola 1
Dustin took these two shots from his villa - Casa Stavola, I thought they were pretty cool.
Sunrise:

A beer with our coozies with the Cozumel ferry in the background.

Random
Thomas has 2 ties and is in my brother's room (it was a loft)

These pictures of my parents make me laugh

 

These ones of my mom make me laugh even more.

 

 

Max's hoodie was awesome. I miss him.

The collection of stuff in this picture is really funny.  A few ties, a handful of coozies, a dozen glasses, 4 beers, dirty napkins, 2 cute ladies, etc.

 

Sigh... I want to go back!

Wedding Vacation Recap: Day 7 (Sunday - The Wedding!)

As much as I tried to sleep in, I was up by 7am. My parents went out to breakfast and brought us back some nutritious Mickey D's sandwiches for us to eat

Adam and I stayed back to work on some liquids we needed for the wedding. First, I made the Agua de Jamaica as it would need the longest time to cool. It's basically a hibiscus iced tea if you've never had it. We wanted something special that was non-alcoholic for the pregnant ladies. It wound up also being delicious with tequila and a little lime.

Then we made a simple syrup to use to sweeten cocktails in case some people felt they need it (just a sugar/water mix). But we forgot to give it to the bartenders and it turns out they brought their own anyway.

Then we worked on our cilantro cucumber lime syrup that would go in one of our signature drinks: Cool as a Cucumber.

Erica was over by 10 with people to set things up in the garden (although they did a lot if it the day before)

Adam's brother Aaron, his girlfriend Maggie, and my brothers fiance Betsy, worked on the photo walls

This is what it looked like when they were finished (there were 2 walls like this):

(I got the clips at Ikea). This was our version of a slideshow that people could peruse at their leisure.

At 1pm, Doranna came over to do my hair and makeup

Matt & Jonathon of Del Sol showed up around 2:45 and buzzed all over the house taking pictures of everything. They even followed Adam into the bathroom to watch him shave! By 3:30, my handsome groom was ready to go:

I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing at this point so I got dressed too.

The garden was almost ready

One of the signs carrie made us

Our cocktail menu:

Our Tequila Tasting Menu

The bar is ready

Floating candles from Artvela

Just about done

It's almost 4pm (the time of the ceremony) so we send our brothers down to the beach with 6packs of beer to pass out to the guests. We asked Matt (the photographer) what we were supposed to be doing and he didn't know so he suggested we just head down there. You'll notice a theme here. We had planned so much of this wedding but had no clue what we were supposed to do when it came to the actual ceremony.

Here are our guests arriving

See the rainbow?

 

We're hanging out at the back of the beach trying to figure out what we're supposed to be doing (we had no actual rehearsal). Someone suggests we have both of our parents walk us down the aisle so we decide to roll with that. We hand the rings to our brothers and ask them to stand next to us and be our ring/beer bearers.

Time to walk down the aisle!

Maria did our ceremony.

My brother holding my beer, his beer, my flowers, and a ring! He was responsible for a lot!

Adam's brother approves too - not quite sure where his beers are!

The family looks on

I didn't go the traditional diamond/wedding band route. My engagement ring was a pearl, it's on my right hand now. My wedding ring is a 3 carat natural sapphire. I'm not a diamonds kind of gal (not since seeing Blood Diamond at least!)

You may now kiss the bride!

We did it!!!

 

The new family

With Adam's family

And mine

Notice the classy matching footwear

Adam's Aunt Karen

The mariachi serenade us

Jim got this great shot of the beautiful sign that Carrie made while we checked out the surf.

Then the mariachi walked the rest of guests back to the villa while Adam and I got on a tricycle and Matt took us to the ruins in Playacar for a few portraits. (We don't have the pro pictures back, it'll be a few weeks but I'll be back with them, I promise!)

The guests in the garden

We ran up to the balcony of Casa Chaac and Jonathan walked out onto the edge of the pool with a bunch of equipment to get a good shot.  But then he fell in the bushes. Oh no! Melissa to the rescue!

Our entrance plan was that the guests would line the walkway, a tricycle would pull up with us on it, and then our guests would blow bubbles at us.

Our friend Erin took the guests through a practice run!

To get a sense of the feeling, listen to our entry song right here:
Sigur Ros - Hoppipolla

Our turn!

Everyone thought it was so fun, they made us do it again!

So now it's time to party! Let's check out the food.

Ceviche

Guac & Pico

Fruit

Taco Stand with Pastor

The chicken/steak stand

And I can't find any pictures of the fish taco stand but it was everyone's favorite. I'm also not finding any of the churro stand so I guess we have to wait for the pros pictures for those.

You can see them in the background here though:

Here's Erin with 2 of the amazing Del Sol Photographers (Jonathon on the left and Matt on the right). I CANNOT wait until we get the pictures back from them!!!  Aren't they adorable?

So, there comes a time near the end of every wedding when all of Adam's friends take their ties off, tie them around their heads, and spend the rest of the evening this way. But our wedding was a strictly no tie allowed wedding. How could they keep their tradition if they weren't wearing one?

Dustin to the rescue!

He brought one for every male in attendance

And then they all danced to Beyonce. It was awesome!

Adam with his dad and brother

Erin got a hold of someone's tie too

Hi dad

This is Erica, our superhero wedding planner. She is a goddess and we LOVE her! If you are reading this and you are thinking of getting married in Playa, get a hold of Erica of Weddings in Playa. She will make it happen!

How's it going, Armando? (He was in charge of making sure everyone got to taste all of the tequilas) Your bar isn't quite as neat as it was a few hours ago

Look, Max the chihuahua came back

So we've been dancing, we're sweaty.. at this point, people start putting bathing suits on. See the people sitting on the edge of the pool?

I love this one! If you've been paying attention, you'll notice most of these people are in new outifts/bathing suit cover ups

With a bunch of people in the pool, I gave Dustin my underwater housing and told him to get some good shots.

Yes, the boys wore ties swimming. But Erin couldn't let them have all of the fun. So she jumped in the pool too. In her dress. That's her in the middle

Upside down!

Have you ever tried to drink a beer underwater? Adam's brother did!

Rachel was our dancing queen all night long, even in the pool!

Outside of the pool, somebody looks seems to be looking for trouble in her soaking wet dress...

She found it!!!!!  (That would be vodka that PD is feeding her)

 

What do you guys think about Erin?

Karyn, what is about to happen with those shoes?

hmm....

 

Oh my word!!!

 

Looking back I'm wondering where these shoes came from because I didn't think anyone wore heels to the wedding... Did Karyn go back to the condo to get them just to make PD put them on?

The groom is in a bathing suit now too!

And pretty soon, I was in too

Nick and Carrie are champs - they did so many things to help us out throughout our wedding weekend that we'll never forget. Carrie painting our signs, Nick cooking everybody dinner, Carrie running all over downtown Playa with me while we followed a man who swore he knew where we could find a Mezcal we were looking for, and both of them hanging out till the end - they rock! Love you guys!

And then we had to work on balancing the candles on Adam's brother

And I think that's the end of that. I was so sad to see these lights turn out...

I know I'm extremely biased but I'm pretty certain this was the best wedding ever! LOL! I am totally utterly in love with my wedding. As far as I'm concerned it was absolutely perfect.

All of these pictures come from the cameras of: my mom, Adam's mom, Dustin, Jim, Erin, Laura, and some are mine. None of these are the professional shots yet. I can't wait to share those with you as soon as I can though!  Thanks to all my friends for doing such a great job capturing nearly every special moment of the night!

As a reminder, here are some wedding credits.  I cannot explain in words how highly I would recommend all of them:

• Wedding Planner: Erica Bressan of Weddings in Playa. She set up almost everything else from the furniture, taco cart, lights, dancefloor rental, chefs, mariachi, beach fee, minister, bartenders, waiters, etc!
• Location: Casa Chaac in Playacar Phase 1, Playa del Carmen, Mexico
• Photography: Matt Adcock, Jonthan, and Melissa from Del Sol Photography.  Note: They did not take these pictures, theirs will be much more AMAZING and I may have to re-write this whole post :)
• Hair/Makeup: Doranna
• Mexican glasses used for wedding favors and center pieces: Vidrio Soplado
• Frames and photo clips: IKEA
• Dress: Nordstroms.  Suzi Chin Maggy Boutique Pleated Jersey Dress. This is a LONG story. We'll save it for another day.  The short of it is that I wound up buying this dress less than a week before the wedding. And it was perfect.
• My Jewelry: Custom made from Erin Gallagher.
• Liquor: We bought it at Covi in Playa on the highway.
• Custom coozies: Get Imprint

So... what did you think of my wedding?

Wedding Vacation Recap: Day 6 (Saturday)

Saturday morning, most people went out to breakfast at La Cueva del Chango. Everyone loved it. (If you ever go to Playa you must have breakfast here. This is the place we ate on Day 2 as well.)

I didn't go though because a handful of us went to get mani/pedi's instead.

It was 400 pesos for a Spa Pedicure + French Manicure. We went to Pretty Nails in the same complex as the Blockbuster on 10th Ave between Calle 8 and 10.

After that, we all met up at PG's Sandbox to watch the Michigan vs. Purdue game (this game was the reason the wedding was Sunday instead of Saturday)

Here's what the place looked like before we took over.

And just after 11am

We must have been ordering at least one bucket of pacifico per minute because they actually had to send someone out to buy more!

There were lots and lots and lots of shots of tequila to be had (I know I know, just yesterday I was saying how Adam and I don't do shots.  But these were tequila, and they were free, and we were in Mexico!!!!)

And lots of shrimp tacos and these appetizer platters ordered:

Erin got this large Mudslide like drink

And the results:

By the time we left, my uncle had traded his michigan cap to the bartender for a hat and local firefighters T-shirt. My dad and his friend Chris (the blonde guy in some of these pictures) were both Dearborn Firefighters for 30 years so they bought shirts as well.

The funny thing is, we had the rehearsal dinner with the open bar on Friday so that people would have a day off to recover before the wedding. The folks at PG's made sure that didn't happen though as 44 drunk people wandered down 5th stopping for more drinks, shopping, and chatting with the locals.

Isn't that right dustin?

We walked all the way back to Casa Chaac from PG's which probably took about 2 hours after the stops, the trying to find people who ducked into stores, the spying my aunt and uncle doing more shots of tequila inside a jewelry store, etc...

When we got back we were all covered in sweat so we jumped in the pool and made more drinks of course.
Tonight was the night we were going to cook all the fish they caught deep sea fishing. Our friend, Nick, is a chef so he volunteered to cook it up and anyone who wanted was invited over to eat it.

Nick was head chef, and my dad and uncle steve were his sous chefs. I video taped the whole thing for Nick's podcast (The Sauced Chef)

Teaching us the best way to chop cilantro for the chimichurri sauce

While some were cooking, the rest of our family was outside working on the centerpieces

Uncle Steve is telling me about his Pico de Gallo

He grilled the fish. Some was spiced with chili peppers, some with just salt and pepper

All in all, we served rice pilaf, guac, pico de gallo, chimichurri, tortillas, cucumber salad, and the fish

And dessert

Food coma:

Gotta sneak one in of me and my daddy!

Adam's Aunt Karen had just arrived and hadn't gotten to enjoy the pool yet so she took a dip.

And then we kicked everyone out so we could get a good night sleep before the wedding...

Wedding Vacation Recap: Day 5 (Friday)

On the agenda: day trip to Akumal and then our rehearsal dinner at El Bistro.

The bus was scheduled to pick us up at 8am so everyone was up bright and early. At 7:15, Erica called to say the bus would be there at 7:30. I said there was no way we'd get 30 people ready to go in that amount of time so she said he would try to find a place to wait for us.

At 8am, we were all waiting for him to show up and he was nowhere to be found. 8:10... 8:15.... finally Adam decides to walk around and try to find him. A few minutes later we see a bus drive up and Adam is in the front seat. Apparently the driver parked around the corner and fell asleep.

Nice! By the way, it cost us $390 to rent the round trip charter for 28 people (in case you are ever looking to do something similar). Load 'em up!

Look, we're almost there!

The bus dropped us off at the arches

And then we just had a short (2 minute) walk the rest of the way.

We entered through the Akumal Dive Shop where you could rent a mask snorkel for maybe $7, flippers for $5, life vest for $4, something like that. Or for $18 you got all of it, plus a locker, plus a shower, plus someone would take you out and show you stuff.
Nobody wound up getting that package. You definitely didn't need a guide.
We were on the beach before 9am, it was a little overcast and we were the only people there.

We picked out a spot right in front of Lol-Ha, rented chairs, and everyone geared up.

I swam out ahead of everyone to check it out and within about 10 minutes I was just about pissing myself to see this!

Adam and I

And here's more tortuga! This guy had some friends

As we were swimming back in we saw this guy:

Spotted Eagle Ray I think?

We saw lots of good stuff out pretty far. To give you an idea, here is a picture of the beach from the distance we'd swam out. We didn't have flippers or life jackets but we are fairly decent swimmers.

Every single one of our friends who got in the water saw turtles and nobody had a guide. We just swam straight out from Lol-Ha. The rest of the people that didn't want to snorkel rented beach chairs for 50 pesos.

A few of us went and had lunch at Turtle Bay Cafe.

The food was great, except for this, which two people got. It looked like it would be delicious - a scramble with goat cheese, chaya, etc. But it wasn't...

French Toast

Some kind of Vegetarian supreme breakfast thing that everyone loved

Steak and Eggs (the most expensive thing on the breakfast menu)

The fish sandwich

Crab cakes benedict

The other folks ate at Lol-Ha

We went back snorkeling again but we had to meet the bus back at the arches at 2pm.

Here we all are right before we had to pack up.

And, the bus ride home. Running dangerously low on beer despite a few runs up to the Super Chomak.

We got back to the villas around 3 and had time to kill. Here's some folks hanging out at Casa Stavola 1

When we got back, we found 2 more stragglers had arrived as my Aunt Sherry and Uncle Steve were lounging by the pool. We hadn't had enough water though and were still getting a huge kick out of the waterproof camera so we all jumped in too.

We finally dragged ourselves out of the pool and got ready for our rehearsal dinner at El Bistro (in La Tortuga hotel). About 10 people were just arriving on Friday so we'd be seeing them for the first time at dinner. But a few surprised us and came over for cocktails beforehand.

Hi Lynn and Rob!!!! I haven't seen these two for about 3 years, they are my oldest college friends!

Carrie worked on our wedding signs

Jimmy made people drinks (even though we had 2 hours of open bar coming up!)

Maggie (Adam's brothers girlfriend and our translator for the week) tried to call a cab for 30 people

Look, we found a big one! (We actually wound up with this same driver 5 times over the week)

Even though we had an open bar package, I was worried how they would get 50 people drinks as soon as we got there and figured it might take a good 30 minutes before everyone had a cocktail. Oh man was I wrong! They greeted us with trays full of Blue Margaritas, Frozen Mojitos, and Pina Coladas - all fantastic (and that's coming from someone who does not at all enjoy 99% of the frozen drinks she tries)

 

Hey, there's my Uncle Bill - they made it!!

By the time everyone finished their first round of drinks, their ordered drinks had shown up!

Love these lights down there. I want to decorate my patio at home with them!

Green is my favorite color so I had to get the all green picture with Kendall!

They let everyone wander around so here are people checking out the pools.

Ok, ready for some food? Our guests had the choice of 2 menus:

Fish Menu

• Smoked salmon cake with mascarpone cheese and mango coulis.
• Pear Salad with Gorgonzola Cheese, agave honey and balsamic dressing.
• Grouper fish Filet on lobster sauce with butter vegetables and Mexican rice
• Crepe flambé with vermouth and organic jam.

Green Salad & Filet Mignon

• Caprese brusquetta
• Green Salad with Agave honey vinegar.
• Filet Mignon on a Mushroom sauce
• Moka Cake

Everything was INCREDIBLE! I can't say enough about this food. Yum yum yum!

The Appetizers (Smoked salmon cake with mascarpone cheese and mango coulis on top and Caprese brusquetta on the bottom)

The Salads

The entrees

We were getting a little full at this point so I asked Jose to wait a bit before dessert. He said no problem since he had a show planned for dessert anyway!

Here he is preparing us the Crepes Flambé !

Rambo was making one too!

Thanks guys!!!

Here it is all finished.  Yummmmmmmm!!!!!

And the mocha cake was delicious too!

Our open bar was scheduled from 7-9pm, at 9:30, Jose came over and showed me the time and asked what we wanted to do. I said, oh wow, that's fine, just tell everyone open bar is over. He said "Well, how about I do a last call?" So so generous!!!! They continued serving us until at least 10pm.

We were completely blown away by the service, food, drinks, and generosity of the folks at El Bistro - thank you so much guys! Especially Jose and Rambo, but you were all fabulous!

If anyone is thinking of taking 40-some people out to eat and you want to really impress them, (or if you're just looking for a romantic meal for 2), this is definitely the place to go! El Bistro @ La Tortuga Hotel in Playa Del Carmen.

A group of us decided to walk back along the beach and maybe find some entertainment.  We made our first stop at Zenzi.

Some people did shots

And tried to get Adam and I to do one too (we declined, we are not really shots people)

Why aren't all bars like this?  comfy couches right in the sand, shoes optional!

Oh my! This would not be the last time PD wore Erin's shoes.

There was a little dancing (while I played with dragging the shutter)

After that we left Zenzi as the drinks are so overpriced (and this answers the question I posed a few photos up. All bars aren't like this because if they were, nobody could afford to drink). We were going to go to Fusion for some live music but there was a set break as soon as we got there so we just went home.  But not before Erin stopped at every lighthouse station, climbed up it, and played Baywatch first.

Big T wanted in on the fun too.

  

Ok, just one more days recap till the big wedding post!

Wedding Vacation Recap: Day 4 (Thursday)

My brother woke up super early and headed to the juice guy with two pitchers. One for Orange juice, one for grapefruit. Adam fried up some eggs, chorizo, and various left overs and we all had breakfast on the patio.

As soon as we were finished a few of us got in the pool and I decided to try out the underwater housing that Adam's mom and I bought for our Canon G9s.

We were going snorkeling in Akumal the next day so everyone wanted to practice. Does anyone else find this picture hilarious?

All this practicing my mom did and she never even got her hair wet in Akumal!

I get a big kick out of this one taken half under, half above the water.

 

As we're swimming, we hear some more familiar voices - look, more friends are here!

At noon, a driver comes to get my family + 2 friends to go out bottom fishing. I would say they had a much more successful day!

My mom had a double hook above.  She did that twice!

Loads of red snapper and trigger fish

A majority of our friends are now in town so it was too many for us all to go out to dinner together. So we form dinner groups and we get together to figure out where everyone is going.

Everyone comes over to Casa Chaac for cocktails

Then we try to figure out where everyone's decided to go to dinner. Surprise, surprise, we've all chosen El Fogon. So, what the hell, 30 gringos invade El Fogon.

Dave tried to order a double margarita. He got a double double-margarita instead.

They were actually delicious!
And I'm not sure what happened here, but Erin got two drinks too.

We have a lot of beverages!

Food!

We decide to walk back and some folks stop at an ATM. Everyone in this picture is named Erin/Aaron.

We stopped for walking beers of course.

Wedding Vacation Recap: Day 3 (Wednesday)

My family booked a deep sea fishing trip and promised to come back with lots of food to feed everyone.
See how hopeful they are, here in Puerto Aventuras.

They paid for a package that included half trolling and half bottom feeding and were looking most forward to bottom feeding as they'd heard it was much better this time of year.

But this is all they catch

And they aren't allowed to keep it for some reason. They keep asking the captain to take them bottom fishing but he says he didn't bring any bait and doesn't know how?!? They aren't happy but figure it was just a bad fishing day. Until they get back to the port and every other boat is loaded with fish and the people are all raving about the bottom fishing. This makes them very angry since the package they paid for included a few hours of bottom fishing. They go and complain and a different captain offers to come pick them up the next day at noon and take them out bottom fishing.
They were all very excited to see the dolphins in the port though.

Apparently someone accidentally dropped a beer coozie into the area where the dolphins were. The joked to the dolphin "hey, wanna flip that up here?" It circled it for a few seconds, then stuck its nose underneath and flipped it up to them on the dock. They couldn't stop talking about it when they got home. Had they caught 100 fish, I think they would have still enjoyed that moment with the dolphin even more.

Meanwhile, Adam and I with his parents went to have breakfast at Nativo.

The smoothies were so good. Nobody could remember which one they ordered so we just shared them all. Wow! Addicting

Breakfast was:

Chillaquilles (Adam said they were his fave in Playa), arrachera quesadillas, and a spinach and cheese omelet with practically an entire harvest of spinach!

After breakfast we walked across the street to the DAC market to pick up a few things and then across Constituyentes to the Mega for more produce, pool floats, more beer, and more grapefruit soda (on our quest to find the best...) We also picked up rotisserie chicken, fresh made tortillas, queso, a few salsas and even though we'd been making our own guac so far, this one looked pretty good and we were feeling lazy.

It was hot so we all headed back to Casa Chaac to go swimming. Adam made me a Mojito to sip while i floated and read a gossip magazine!

When my family was back from fishing we dragged everyone to the ocean. The water was so warm that pretty soon, both of our families and all of our friends were out jumping waves. Our drinks were running low and as we got out of the ocean we saw some movement up at Casa Chaac. After a brief second of panic that someone was in the house, we realized it was two of my girlfriends who had just gotten into town. We were hungry, they were hungry, so we headed back up to the villa for some spontaneous appetizers.

My mom shredded the rotisserie chicken while my brother and his fiance squeezed dozens of limes to make a pitcher of margaritas.

We pulled out the guac, the tortillas, some chips, the queso, sour cream (there is nothing like the sour cream you can get down in mexico!), salsas, sliced limes and the shredded chickens and everyone made their own tacos.

There is 1 litre of tequila in that margarita pitcher
Cheers!

Hence, after that pitcher, everyone lazily and drunkenly lounged around the pool.

Our other friends came over and Dustin managed to get out here:

To take this picture:

After a few more hours of lounging, we cleaned up and got ready for dinner. As we were waiting for the cab, this little Chihuahua dressed in a hoodie named Max ran up to us.

This would be the first of many times that Max came to visit us. Max loves a party and wanders around Playacar until he finds one. He even came to my wedding! (Where his owners finally came to find him. But not 15 minutes after they took him home was he back).

We went to dinner at La Bamba Jarrocha (A Rick Bayless recommendation) since everyone was craving fish and we didn't get any from the deep sea fishing excursion.

Erin ordered the Sangria. She loved it. I am not a fan of mexican sangria (every single one i've had is mixed with lemonade)

We ordered the large fish platter (I think the one for 5-6)

And a fried snapper and fried grouper.
It was so much food! Here's Adams dad with the left overs

(which got turned into fish tacos for lunch the next day).

We went home and had more cocktails I'm guessing.

Wedding Vacation Recap: Day 2 (Tuesday)

As everyone knows, it is impossible to sleep in in Playa. So we're out the door by 8:15. We stopped by the offices of Playacar Vacation Rental to drop off the gift baskets. People will start arriving today!!!

While we still have the car, we drive north to La Cueva del Chango. (Located on Calle 38th between 5th and the beach)

Oh man, do I LOVE this place. We lucked out and got the table next to the turtles!

The kitchen:

I ordered the oatmeal. I would eat this every day of my life. It was so filling, I couldn't even eat half of it!

We ordered a side of the fried bananas with cheese and sour cream - these were so unique and delicious.

And Adam got this 2 egg thing with all kinds of sides. Chaya, mushrooms, oaxaca cheese, ham, beans, etc... He loved it. Especially the mushrooms.

The morning light shining into this place was gorgeous!

We'll be back twice more before we leave. One more time for breakfast and once for dinner.
On the way back, we stop at this fantastic fruit market:

It's located here:

We bought fresh squeezed juice, garlic (as both Mega and Walmart were out), avocados, Dried Jamaica flowers (to make Agua de Jamaica for the wedding), loads of peppers, and mint (for mojitos)
We took everything back to the villa, then had to go turn in the car and walk back to Playacar. Even though we had to meet Erica at noon, we were so hot, we jumped in the pool for 20 minutes.

Erica came over with the 2 chefs who will be working the wedding and we finalized the menu.
We had rented 2 Taco Carts, a pastor spit, and a churro cart. We would do steak, chicken, and fish tacos. The Al pastor tacos with pina, guac, ceviche, rice, beans, salsas, fresh fruit (fruit cart style), and churros pressed fresh to order. Everything would be cooked out on the carts in the garden made to order except for the cold stuff which would be pre-prepared.

We then begged Erica to take us to Vidrio Soplado and she agreed and laughed at how awful their map was. The only way she found it last time was by calling them.

Ok, so even though the map says Vidrio Soplado is at 80th, we're now here, heading North out of Playa:

(Calle 106 - that road sign off in the distance is for Grand Coral)
At that point, if you look to the left, on the other side of the road you see this:

Yay! We found it!

All of the green glass is still on sale so we buy 25 each of three different styles plus 4 green pitchers. I think it was less than 1300 pesos ($100) for all of it. It was going to take them a while to pack it all up so we leave and it's all dropped off to us at the villa tomorrow. Here's a sneak peak of what they will look like later in the week as they're ready to become our centerpieces/wedding favors:

On the way back, we stop at a hardware store to buy wood and nails to make signs for the wedding. Here's our friend Carrie painting them Friday evening.

Erica drives us back to Casa Chaac, we relax for a few minutes, it rains but only for 3 minutes

and then - look some of our friends and family have arrived!

The new people who've just arrived are in need of a Walmart run so they leave to shop and hit up El Fogon while we have a dinner with our family at Yaxche.

We started off with the delicious lime tortilla soup. 70 pesos....a bit much for soup but it is super yummy.

My mom got some kind of seafood pasta thing

I got the crispy duck tacos

Adam had a sour-orange marinated pork thing. It was just ok.

Someone got this shrimp thing

But the big winner was this flank steak. It melted in your mouth. Nobody could believe the cut of meat. Absolutely incredible.

It had been another long day for everyone so we headed back to Casa Chaac for some cocktails and then hit the sack.

Wedding Vacation Recap: Day 1 (Monday)

We fly out to Cancun the Monday before our Sunday wedding on a 6:30am flight out of chicago. Check out the sunrise over the chicago skyline taken from the tarmac.

Our flight took off a little early and we landed 30 minutes prior to the scheduled arrival. We zipped through baggage claim and security, straight to the avis counter and took a shuttle to the Avis lot.

We wanted a car for the first day only because we had a ton of running around to do for the wedding. We got a car through avis for about $25 but after the $25 one way drop off fee plus almost $50 for insurance it winded up costing us $96 for a day with the car. Oh well.

Our first stop - lunch. Terminal 5 in chicago has no food or drinks past security so at this point we are starving. We decided we couldn't wait until we got to Playa so we got off the highway in Puerto Morales and had lunch at this place (the only place that looked open!)

We started with guac. Too onion-y for me. The only beer they had was Corona - boo

I got a steak tostada and a pastor taco

Adam got a chicken quesadilla

The rest of the food (besides the guac) was pretty tasty! The check (that's about $17 USD):

We walked down to the beach before heading out. There was nobody out there!

Except this sad little 3 legged dog

Next stop - Vidrio Soplado to pick up glasses for the wedding. According to this map:
::: El Nuevo Triangulo de Cristal :::
It should be right on the corner of Calle 80 and the highway.
An hour later and we have not found it despite having driven up and down every street near Calle 80. We're starting to bicker so we give up and hope Erica can take us the next day.

We stop at a grocery store on Colosio just West of the highway. Prices aren't that great but we did grab a little beer.

At this point, we were just going to head to Casa Chaac and drop off our stuff but we spotted Covi and since that was our next stop anyway, we decided to go there first.
They are undergoing major renovations but are nearing the end of them and are almost ready to re-open. In the meantime, you just order at the counter.

Erica had negotiated us some nearly wholesale prices to stock up for the wedding and we already had our spreadsheet with everything we wanted to order from them. Here's what we got:

10 - TEQUILA GRAN CENTENARIO PLATA 700 ML
2 -TEQUILA GRAN CENTENARIO REPOSADO 950 ML
3 - TEQUILA GRAN CENTENARIO AÑEJO 695 ML
14 - TEQUILA JIMADOR REPOSADO 950 ML
2 - TEQUILA DON JULIO 1942 750 ML
3 - TEQUILA HERRADURA AÑEJO 750 ML
10 - LICOR CONTROY DE NARANJAS 1000 ML
10 -RON HAVANA CLUB BLANCO 750 ML
1 - RON HAVANA CLUB AÑEJO 7 AÑOS 750 ML
1 - RON FLOR DE CAÑA AÑEJO 5 AÑOS 750 ML
1 -VODKA OSO NEGRO 1000 ML (hoping nobody would want to drink vodka in mexico. We were wrong - we wound up buying 6 more bottles...)
6 - VINO TINTO CHILENO MAI CABERNET SAUVIGNON 750 ML
5 - VINO BLANCO CHILENO MAI SAUVIGNON BLANC 750 ML

Adam hands him his credit card to check out. Declined.
Hands him another. Declined.
I get mine out. Declined.

We had already called our banks to tell them we were in mexico and would be charging a lot for our wedding but they thought it was suspicious anyway. Adam spent 30 minutes on the phone with the credit card company before it finally went through. At this point, we'd been at Covi for well over an hour. While Adam was busy on the phone, they took me on a tour of the new facility - it's going to be gorgeous!
Finally, let's load up the car!

Whew, ok, that was a stressful few hours, let's go check into Casa Chaac. At this point it's 4pm. We landed at 9:30am so it's been a long day. All the stress melts away when we get to casa chaac though. I love it so much more than I remembered it! This is going to be a great place to have a wedding.

We grab a few beers, throw our bathing suits on and take a quick dip in the pool before we have to unpack.
Couldn't relax too long though as we had a ton of shopping to do still. We drive over and park in the Walmart parking lot and then walk to El Fogon.

Oh how I've missed you El Fogon.
They always start you out with:

and then the bean soup comes out. Yum!!!!

I got the arrachera norteña, Adam got something similar but with Pastor that the waiter recommended.

You will see one of these again later - at our wedding!!! We were so in love with the pastor at El Fogon, we asked Erica to get us one for the wedding - and she did!

We went to walmart, filled 2 carts full of beer, checked out, loaded up the car, came back in for produce. Very disappointed, bought a bunch but then decided to go to Mega.
Mega had limes twice the size of those at Walmart for 1/5 of the price. They also had grapefruits at 1.5pesos per KG! Holy Crap. We bought about 100. I'm not lying. Our family are big grapefruit eaters/drinkers so we used them to make fresh squeezed grapefruit margaritas all week.

When we got home, we assembled our gift baskets for our guests.

All of our guests were staying at villas or condos in Playacar Phase 1. We got two different sized coolers depending on how many people were staying in each villa and then filled them accordingly. We figured the coolers would come in handy to help people carry beer to the beach.

Each cooler contained:

• 1 950ML bottle of Jimador Reposado
• 1 3L bottle of grapefruit soda
• Limes
• 1 Bag of sea Salt
• Recipe cards to make a Paloma with the above ingredients
• Beer
• Custom Beer coozies
• Chips
• A welcome letter and a print out of our wedding map.

Quantities of most things varied depending on the number of people staying together (anywhere from 2-4 in a condo to 6-8 in a villa).

My friend Rob is demoing how to put a paloma together (note: this did not happen on Monday, Lynn and Rob didn't get there till Friday, just wanted to show you how it went down!):

Add tequila, Juice of half a lime, A pinch of salt:

  
No Rob, we said a pinch! Yikes...
Top with grapefruit soda, stir, and enjoy!
 

But since Rob added way too much salt, he had to get some sugar out... Oh man.. this is not how you make a drink Rob!

The recipe card:

Wedding Vacation Recap: 1 year before

I'm going to be recapping each day of our wedding vacation but I'm going to start at the beginning.  Come back tomorrow for Day 1 (November 8th)!

Our journey to Playa started a few years ago as I had discovered and fell in love with the photography of Matt Adcock of Del Sol Photography. They are local to Playa del Carmen and made me fall in love with the location. When Adam finally proposed (after 7 years together) I knew I wanted to get married in Playa and I knew I wanted Del Sol to shoot my wedding.

So exactly a year ago, we took our first trip down to Playa. We met with 5 wedding planners and every single one of them was exactly the same. They wanted to put me into one of their packages in some resort and call it a day. I had one more appointment scheduled but as we only had 2 days left in Playa, I emailed to tell her to forget it, we just wanted to enjoy the beach (convinced all wedding planners down there were the same). She wrote back and said "Well let me come meet you on the beach".

We were staying at the Playa Maya and at 10am the next day, a beautiful, fiesty, Italian woman named Erica came shuffling across the sand. She says "First of all, I don't have any packages so just tell me what you want and we'll make it happen". I rattled off a few things, she says "Oh yes, and we could also do this and this and this". All things that were in my head but I hadn't said yet. In 10 minutes Erica had us convinced we could actually pull off our dream wedding (Erica Bressan of Weddings in Playa).
The next day (our last day in Playa) she came to pick us up and take us to look at Villas to hold our estimated 50 guests. All of the other planners said 50 was too many for a villa and we couldn't do it. Never tell Erica she can't do something.

She found 3 villas in Playacar Phase 1 with the capacity to hold us. But one was an instant match - Casa Chaac. It sits on 4 properties, sleeps up to 10, has an infinity pool overlooking the ocean and a huge yard with tons of room for a party. The reception would be held in the garden and the wedding on the main beach of Playacar. This is how it looked when we went to visit it last year:

And here we were on the main beach of Playacar on November 14, 2009. Exactly one year to the date before the wedding!

My Wedding Shower

A few weeks ago my mom (with help from my grandma and aunt) threw me a beautiful wedding shower back in Michigan. It was so great to be surrounded by the women I love most in the world.

My Aunt Peggy did the gifts for everyone:

My mom bought these delicious cakes - probably the best carrot cake I've ever eaten! My cousin, Julie, made the chocolates with raspberries in the center - they were the crowd favorite!

 

My mom, myself, and my Aunt Karen

 

A big hug from Aunt Dianne while my cousin, Lindsey looks on.

 

This is my Aunt Peggy and I with our Aunt Ginny.  Aunt Ginny passed away over the weekend :(  I am so thankful that my mom held the shower so early and that Aunt Ginny was able to attend. She will be dearly missed.

 

Jen (on the left) is one of my best friends since 2nd grade!  Gerlinde (on the right) has been a family friend since before I was born. She used to babysit my brother and I all the time. I probably hadn't seen her in over 10 years so it was definitely such a treat for her to attend my shower.

 

Betsy is my brother's fiance, I handed her my camera and made her play photographer for most of the day.  Here we are comparing our oven burns.

 

Look at all the presents!

 

Jen sat next to me while I opened my goodies and wrote down what everyone gave me. 

 

These are my adorable cousins, Lindsey and Kim.

 

Thanks for the wonderful shower, mom!

 

I got so many awesome presents but I didn't want to just post a bunch of pictures of me holding them up.  I registered for some pretty odd things, so instead, I thought I would start a new feature on the blog showing how I have been using all of my awesome gifts! 

 

I'll start with this Chicago Metallic Professional Nonstick Perforated French Bread Pan that my cousin, Gloria, gave me.

I've been really into bread baking lately but had yet to successfully make a baguette.  I couldn't wait to try the pan out.  I used the master recipe from Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day which is a fairly wet dough so I lined the pan with parchment paper.  I formed my dough and laid it in the pan, covered with plastic wrap, and let it rise for about an hour.

Then, I took the J.A. Henckels Twin Signature 8-Inch Bread Knife that I got from Aunt Peggy

to make slashes in the bread.  (after I sprinkled it with some Herbs de Provence that Adam's parents brought us back from France!)

Roughly 25 minutes later I had these beautiful baguettes! (which I sliced with the bread knife as well, of course)

I was so excited with the results!

And that vase - that is a Vera Wang vase that came from Aunt Sammy! 

Adam had just happened to pick up some flowers for me at the grocery store and I thought they would accompany the bread nicely :)

I'll be back soon to show you how I used some more of my fantastic gifts! 

This post brought to you with thanks to my mom, Grandma, Aunt Peggy, cousin Gloria, and Aunt Sammy. (and cousin Julie, Betsy, Jen, etc.)

Save the Date Sneak Peak!

Woohoo!  Our Save the Dates arrived yesterday. They're magnets and I got an awesome deal on them thanks to ebates and VistaPrint!

Working on accumulating addresses so we can get these in the mail this weekend!

Wedding Planning: The Photographers & Location

Well, now that the kitchen is complete, a lot of you have been asking me what's next.  Of course a lot of you already know that next on our list is planning a wedding :)

Adam and I have been together for almost 8 years, and you can imagine that with a minimum of 2 weddings a year, we've been to plenty together.  We have had amazing times at all of them but for our wedding we want to do something really different. You all know how much we love to travel and how much we love to throw parties so a destination wedding seemed only fitting.

Enter Del Sol Photography.

I have been stalking their blog for over a year now. It was a wedding I spotted on their blog back then that took place in Playa del Carmen that had me instantly smitten and sure of two things:

1. I wanted to get married in Playa del Carmen
2. I wanted Del Sol to be our photographers.

I was able to convince Adam of the former fairly quickly.  But the second, well that took a bit of effort - not that he didn't love their photos, it's just that they are expensive.  Like... really really really expensive.  Like 1/3 of the budget expensive.  But, the photos are the one thing you will have to remember the wedding by for decades to come, right?  After all the drinks are drank, the flowers have wilted, and the party favors are tossed away - the pictures remain.  So go big or go home right?

With Adam about 80% convinced of my plan I booked a trip down to Playa del Carmen. We came home the other night.

We had appointments with wedding planners every day we were down there and on the last full day, we got to meet up with Matt and Sol!  I was completely starstruck as I spotted them walking over to us. I mean.. these are the people that were named by American Photo as one of the Top 10 best wedding photographers in the world for 2009!  In the world!!!!

They were so cool though, we talked tequila, beers, and camera gear, they even bought us Margaritas!  What I thought would just be a quick 15-20 minute meeting (since I couldn't think of a single thing to ask them) wound up being almost an hour and a half!

As we walked away from our meeting Adam said "OK, we've gotta get them"

Eeek!!!!!

Well that happened....

It's been well over 7 years so I was definitely thinking this may happen someday soon, but I was certainly not expecting it at the Great Taste of the Midwest in Madison this weekend (that would be our favorite beer festival)

But as we posed in front of the capital for a picture, Adam dropped to one knee (and I instantly moved to stand right in front of the capital so it's not in any of these pictures...)

And just like that, I'm engaged!

And now I know why Adam was pissed when I told him I didn't want to bring my SLR to the festival... hehe Sure makes me wish I would have planned my outfit better, or dealt with my frizz ball of a head of hair (it rained all morning and then instantly became 90 degrees so I was nice and sweaty at this point)

My ring: