Thursday 4/23
I had to work a half day on Thursday (my work vacation is really weird. I get three weeks, but I need to take two weeks in a row so it only gives me a week to play with... kinda annoying. Chris couldn't take that much time off of school, so we decided that I'd take a few days off for the wedding and then we'd do a honeymoon over the summer) The plan was that Chris would take the car and drop me off at work. Then he'd go to school and make sure that everything was set up with his sub, then he'd go to the gym, finish packing the car, get the rings cleaned and pick me up.
I have to say that the best thing I could have done was go to work. I know that sounds weird, I hate my job, but it was a really good distraction and I liked knowing that I could get all of my work ducks in a row before I left for a few days. I got slammed at about 11, so I quickly made my "last single girl post" and got as much done as I could. I left work with a lot of "good luck's" and "congratulations". Then I walked out to the car...
The whole car was still packed and Chris had to add a few more things. There was literally not enough room for me to sit. There was a box on floor where my feet should have been and I needed to have a box on my lap.
I ended up sitting indian style on the front seat with a box on top of my legs. (I apologize for the lack of pictures of this. It was pretty amusing and REALLY uncomfortable) We get on I4 at exit 9. By the time we got to exit 32 I couldn't feel my leg at all. So we stopped and got out of the car. Chris decided that since my legs are longer, I'd drive and he'd be squished in the passenger seat. I re-arranged some things so that he could put his feet down and we were on our way. Al half hour later we arrived at the Grand.
When we got there I explained to the security lady that we were moving in and we headed over to the valet place. I thought the bell hop was going to faint when he saw our car... We left the two big boxes for Diane and the welcome bags in the car since we had to drop them off elsewhere, everything else came out our bell cart. We went to check in and I was REALLY hoping to be upgraded to a suite. We weren't upgraded to a suite, but we were upgraded to a king sized bed, which was nice. We had to wait a little while for our room to get ready so we went to Gasparilla's to have lunch. Chris had some wrap thing that he loved.
We called our parents to see where they were. My parents had just rented their car and were driving, Chris's mother was just checking into Coronado. We told them that we were going to get into our room and then go over. We walked around the resort for a little while, went to the WP and to check out the gym and finally we were able to get to our room. I expected a little more from our room. I think I had built up the Grand in my head so much that I expected a lot more. Don't get me wrong... the room was lovely, the balcony was lovely, the view was lovely. But it was a smaller than I expected. We checked in and started to unpack.
Bridal Party Gifts
Chris read a magazine
We heard from my parents who had checked in already and we hopped in the car to go visit them and drop off the welcome bags. We brought all of the bags upstairs to my parents room and Dad put directions to their breakfast in the family bags and we delivered the bags to the front desk.
Chris and I went to meet his family who were at the pool and we dropped bags off to them. We answered some questions about where they needed to be and when and planned out how they were going to get to the tux shop the next day. We finally left Coronado at about 6 and went to All Star to drop off the remainder of the welcome bags.
We got back to the Grand and went to the Grand Floridian Cafe for a quick dinner (I think Chris had salmon and I had soup... I don't remember though and I was tired...) We went back to the room and watched Grey's and went to bed.