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Cassie + John : Reception Part 1

July 30, 2010 by Jensey 29 Comments

Are you sure you’re ready for this? Make sure you’re all caught up!

Cassie & John : Wedding Part 1

Cassie & John : Wedding Part 2

Instead of a typical reception, Cassie and John treated their guests (and us!) to a Disney Cruise. Why? Because they are awesome. This may surprise you, but even though I’ve spent my life being a Disney geek, I’d never gone on the Disney Cruise Line!

Our adventure started with this building- Note to 1st timers on the Disney Cruise- If you still have your suitcases by the time you get to this point, go find a cast member! No one took our bags, so we stood out lugging all of our gear and what not through the security check point & then all the way to our room! Now we know. :)

Once we got to the boat and started to explore (my favorite part of the whole cruise experience!), we spotted Shelley from Impressions channeling her inner Kate Winslet. :)

We met up in Cassie and John’s suite for the life vest drill. Nope, you won’t see photos of me in my life vest! ;)

As I mentioned above, Shelley from Impressions was also on the cruise with us. She played wedding coordinator on the trip and worked her tail off arranging group events and dropping off things to the guests’ rooms, like these adorable welcome bags! Each bag had Cassie and John’s wedding logo on the outside and held matching beach towels and water bottles inside. :)

Then we hit the top deck to shoot the bon voyage party. It was freezing and windy, but still super exciting. :)

Seriously… How cute is that photo on the left?!

I didn’t know until our first dinner that we would have the same wait staff every night. Lucky for us, we loved our waiter! :)

The next morning, since we were docked in Nassau, Cassie and John invited their guests to play a straw market game! Everyone met in their suite to draw a name of another wedding guest, kinda like secret Santa.

From there, we all headed out to the Straw Market, where everyone had a $2 budget to shop for the person they were assigned. The tricky thing is you can’t find anything there under $2, so everyone had to haggle with the vendors like champs. Or cheat. ;)

I, in the meantime, did some shopping for my little sister. :)

The newlyweds shared their ginormous suite with some of the wedding party. All of the wedding guests got magnets with their names on it for their door, as shown below, and cute message boards. Kinda made it feel like a grown up summer camp (and let me tell you- I loooooved writing on that message board!) :)

Here are some photos from the gift exchange- Someone got John a hot pink bracelet. :)

On our next cruise, I’ll definitely be hitting Atlantis. For no other reason than the fact that one of my all time favorite movies, Holiday in the Sun, was filmed there. Yes, the Mary Kate and Ashley movie. Shut up.

Nathanial, I love you. <3

This was by far my favorite restaurant on the ship, Animator’s Palate.

After dinner, we caught Toy Story the Musical, which of course, I loved.

The sets were amazing! :)

The only thing that bugs me more than child actors are when adults are cast as children. Like this. No thank you, sir.

NEXT : Cassie and John Reception Part 2

Filed Under: Disney, Travels Tagged With: animator's palate, cruise, disney cruise line, disney wonder, nassau, toy story the musical

Africa : Travel Preview

July 12, 2010 by Jensey 60 Comments

I still can’t believe it. We’ve been back for about 2 days now, and I’m *still* looking at Nate every now and then asking, “Remember that time we were in AFRICA?!” The whole trip was such a whirlwind- While it feels like it went by so fast, when we were there, it felt like we’d been gone for months. I’m so excited to bore your faces off with way too many photos and stories from our trip, but it’s gonna be a while, seeing as I’m taking some personal time off and not yet ready to start editing the 170 GBs of memory cards we shot on! After going through the photos, these are my favorites at the moment. Except I’m not posting my absolute favorite yet, ’cause we have to save something to be desired. :)

For those of you who don’t know the story, Nate and I went to Africa and spent 2 weeks safari-ing in Tanzania. Our best friends got married while on the trip, those previews to come Wednesday. :)

I love this first one- The giraffes were kind enough to arrange themselves in near-symmetrical order. :)

I’m pretty sure this was taken the morning after our first night at camp- Aka, the night I thought I was gonna die. Much more on that later. :/


As one of our many amazing thank-you gifts from Lorie and Jon for coming with them, they surprised us with a hot air balloon ride over the Serengeti. Just sayin’.


Not sure where yet to have this on canvas in our home, but I’m excited. :)

Pretty cool, no? Can’t wait to share the rest in the coming months! :)

Filed Under: Personal, Travels Tagged With: africa, serengeti, tanzania

Disneyland Paris : Travel

July 11, 2010 by Jensey 19 Comments

Welcome to the last chapter of our Paris Chronicles! ;) Just incase you missed the previous posts:

The Roots do Paris Part 1

The Roots do Paris Part 2

A lovely Paris engagement session with our best friends!

The Roots do Tennessee (Just incase you were interested in that, too!)

Though I’d been to Disneyland Paris in the past, it was long before they opened the Walt Disney Studios park! On our first day, I was dying to get inside and see what it was like. :) The park is really different- You walk through this main building with a couple shops and a quick-service food place to get to the rest of the park.

I think the reason I love going to other parks (well, just Disneyland and Disneyland Paris, I suppose) is that it all feels like a dream. I know Walt Disney World like the back of my hand, and I love learning new lands and seeing how even though so much is the same, it’s all just a little off. Like the Partners statue being in a different park, or Sorcerer Mickey’s hat being so tiny!

Me new favorite quote. <3

I love their Sleeping Beauty Castle! I think it’s so much prettier than Cinderella Castle, though I admit it may just be one of those ‘grass is greener on the other side,’ things.

The best thing about it is the huge breathing dragon found in the dungeon. :)

The Queen of Hearts isn’t sweaty here, just wet from rain. So gross!

We were excited to be “painting the roses red,” ok?!

I wasn’t buying Jack Sparrow. :/

The biggest waste of money, ever… Their Blue Lagoon restaurant! It was such a horrible experience- The food was terrible, it took us over an hour just to get our drinks, and to top it all off, the service lights on Pirates of the Caribbean turned on, killing the only thing this place had going for it- The atmosphere!

My favorite, Phantom Manor. <3

So pretty!

Nate and I came back again just before our trip was over.

I will say I was bummed with their shops. I’m pretty much the easiest guest ever when it comes to Disney merchandise because I wanna buy everything, but I think the only thing I came away with for myself from DLP were coffee mugs. (Well, hot chocolate mugs, here in the Root home!)

I know that Disneyland Paris often gets a bad rap, and I dunno, I kinda love it. I think it’s so unique and even though it’s much simpler than all the other parks, I think there’s something really sweet about it. I love going to hang out more than do stuff. While I wouldn’t make a trip to Paris just for Disneyland Paris, I wouldn’t ever take a trip to Paris and not go. Does that make sense?

I’ve also heard people complain about the cast members. I’ve always found them to be just fine, but you have to remember the cast members are French! I’ve never had a problem with the French being rude to me, I think it’s because I try really hard to speak to them in French first, breaking out my high school French! Once they saw me struggle for a few minutes, butchering their language and miming out what I could, they’d always jump in and answer my question in English. :) So I think just like here in America, so much of their attitude reflects your attitude. If you’re getting frustrated and yelling at them in English, they’ll do the same back to you! *Gets off soap box.*

Whew! So there you have it, folks, our trip to Paris! Don’t be bummed it’s over- Make sure you come back next week for a preview of the fun we had in AFRICA! :)

Filed Under: Disney, General, Travels Tagged With: disneyland paris, phantom manor, walt disney studios park

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