Honeymooning in Panama City

Panama City is much larger than I expected. Unfortunately, we only had 2 days in Panama. We were not really able to make it out of the city. Next time we will need to get to some beaches, do some scuba diving, and some hiking in the mountains. It seems like a more interesting country than I thought before going.

We stayed in Casco Viejo (the old city). It is beautiful. The area has been restored (mostly) and it is quite a tourist locale. The coffee and food were great. Especially the coffee. Wow. I want to go back just for more coffee. There was even a Belgian beer cafe right next to our apartment. We had booked the Portobello Room in Casa Antigua, but they gave us a honeymoon upgrade to La Muralla. We had our own private entrance to the rooftop patio.

We took a bus tour to the Miraflores Locks. It was an incredible sight to see a ship pass through. A short time later on the bus we saw the same ship heading out to sea.

More photos here.

Enjoying some wine and overlooking the Panama City skyline:


At the Miraflores Locks:


Enjoying some Belgian beers:

From Cancun to Panama

Lexey and I left on our honeymoon on the 12th of December on a red-eye to Cancun via Miami. We arrived in Panama City, Panama on the 20th of December. I will not be recounting what happened between the 12th and the 20th here in a public forum. Ask if you are interested.

Photoboop!

At the wedding I setup an automatically publishing Photoboop. The way it worked was that there was an iPad sitting in a box on the floor below it. That iPad was running ShutterSnitch configured to upload all photos received immediately to my Zenfolio account. The camera attached to the Photoboop was my D90 with an Eye-Fi card in it, configured to upload photos to ShutterSnitch on the iPad.

It worked very well. Not all of the photos made it. For some reason there was no LTE connection at Maggiano's Little Italy so they were uploaded only over 3G. I blame this as the culprit for not all the photos making it.

People at the reception seemed to have fun taking photos and then showing other people the photos from their phones within minutes. Overall, I am glad we set it up. It was no wedding video booth, but good enough.

The entire set of photos is here.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Wedding Reception

Maggiano's in Littleton turned out to be our reception location. They were very helpful getting everything setup with 1 day of notice and be able to have our band, Willie and the Po' Boys. Thanks to Wynkoop for helping us look for a venue and finding one that turned out so well.

More photos here.

Poppy on the dance floor:


Our first dance:


Mom and Lenny:


Dad and Lexey:


Oh yeah, and Uncle Bubby:

Post-ceremony photoshoot

After the ceremony, Bernadette asked all of the immediate family to stick around for some photos. Then Lexey, Lindsay, Shaun, and I went to Renegade Brewing for a beer before finishing up the photos.

More photos here.

Family:


Beers at Renegade:

Wedding Ceremony

The location for the ceremony, Artwork Network, had a little more time to figure things out for us. They had a little over 24 notice, but were also extremely helpful and easy to work with. Bernadette did another great job shooting photos for us in a great location.

More photos here.

Wedding Rehearsal Dinner

So many people have heard about how our wedding plans got screwed up because of the floods in Estes Park, Lyons, and many of of the other nearby areas. Our changes were dramatic and quick, but not serious in the way the floods were. We are thankful that our friends and family were all able to remain safe.

Thursday evening we started re-planning the entire ordeal about 7:30pm. Shaun and Stacy were here to help which was great even though much of the time there wasn't anything for them to do but wait. By the following morning we had made hundreds of phone calls and lined up a few different options. It was time to make a decision. Lexey and I were both pretty frazzled. The stress and hectic nature of it all was wearing on our sleep deprived minds. We took a walk with Koura down to Cherry Creek to see how high the water was and make some decisions.

We picked the Arthaus for the rehearsal dinner. It was now about 10am. By the time we we able to get back and call them it was almost noon. We wanted to start things there at 5pm. Fortunately, the people there were so helpful. They had to take down their exhibition for us and everything. It worked so well. Some photos of the party from Bernadette are below...

More photos here.

Sean with one of the beers he made for us:


My parents and the Torts (who made it out of Estes Park at the last minute):


Lenny and Grandma Sharpe: