Wedding Day: The Drama

The drama all began a day before the wedding was supposed to happen. They resort started evacuating certain rooms, one of them being ours as we were one of the closer ones to the waves. Their solution was to move us to the Long House which was a big house consisting of 3 rooms and a big living area space, along with my sister, her boyfriend and J's parents. I, however, was not happy with the decision to move us and said no, we are not moving. I was too much in love with our Rock Cottage and I wanted to J and I to stay in there. The staff just laughed and said fine, you can stay. At dinner, we watched the loud and choppy waves but I kept on saying that it didn't look that bad and we were fine.

the scenery that night
(Photo by Punam Bean)

When we went to bed that night I was sure that we'd be fine. As it were, all night J and I would wake up every few hours and check and sure enough, we were good. No water, no nothing. Until about 7:30AM when J woke up he put his foot down and said "Oh Sh*t." I jumped up to find the entire floor covered in water. First thing I did was to run to the closet to make sure that the water hadn't reached up to my wedding dress, which thankfully, it hadn't. We had done a good job putting everything up off the floor the night before so nothing was damaged.

Rock Cottage 2 before the "excitement"

I looked at J and he said that we better get out of there and ask them what to do. We just weren't sure if that was going to be the worst of it or not. We walked out to waves slamming against the rocks and our patio and I pretty much ran to the main walkway as I was afraid it was going to come sweep me up. As soon as we got to the main walkway I heard frantic calling of my name and Sonia, our wedding coordinator was frantically trying to get to us to evacuate us. She and a bunch of the staff ran back to the cottage with us and grabbed all of the stuff out of the room.

I then went into the dining room where we found both our families wondering where we were. The dining room was right by the waves so we spent the entire morning just watching the gigantic waves. That day was supposed to be the day that we got married and the wedding coordinator kept on telling me not to worry, it was still going to happen. The waves would calm down.

Punam and Andrew then came down to the dining room and I asked how they were and she said they were fine as they were in one of the pillar cottages which are all high above the ground. I was so relieved that at least some of my guests didn't have to get evacuated.

That is, until slowly one by one, each of our guests were told that it was too dangerous but now they had no more open rooms and would have to move them to a different hotel. I was pretty much freaking out at this point and a million thoughts were running through my head. And then, Punam headed back to her room to get her laptop and when she came back, it was like a nightmare come true. If you read her blog post, you'll know that she walked into a big ol water flood in her room and everything was soaked. The waves were so strong that it literally blew the door off! Punam and Andrew really kept it together even though all their belongings including all her camera equipment were soaked. I think back about how calm they were and I am so grateful because I don't know how much more I could've handled. There were so many factors that I just had no control over and just did not know what to do.

This was the pillar that Punam and Andrew were in.
Can you believe how high that wave went to crash down their door?

Once it was determined that everyone else had to be evacuated (the 3 parties that were in the Long House were still okay) I decided that I didn't want half of our families in one resort while the rest of us stayed at Tensing Pen. I also decided that the wedding could not possibly happen that day and had to put it in my mind that it would need to be pushed back a day. The next hour was trying to find a place that had enough rooms for a party of 13 that wasn't near the water. Sonia found a place for us but being a picky group, we didn't want to stay at just any old place, I mean there might be a hurricane but we still have standards right? So a few of us decided to go look at the resort before committing to it. Keep in mind that we weren't the only resort being evacuated, all the other ones that were on the cliffs were being evacuated too so there were only a handful of resorts that we could go to.

It took us about 45 minutes to get there and I had been trying to keep it together most of the day but the car ride seemed to increase my anxiety and I was getting pretty emotional. After all, I was supposed to get married THAT day and it was approaching the time that the ceremony was supposed to have started. Before we left my family was saying "you might as well look at the new place to see if you can have your wedding there." And with that in mind, I cried my eyes out the moment I stepped foot in there. I feel bad because it wasn't such a horrible place but it really wasn't what I wanted. It's just that it was no Tensing Pen. There was no amazing view of the ocean, there were no cute little cottages, there was no cliffs.

The pool looked nothing like this.

the pool at Tensing Pen

What they had was a pool in the middle of the main building with a swim up bar and all you can eat buffet right next to it. (This was an all-inclusive resort) Not so bad if you are prepared for it and that's what kind of place you are wanting to stay at, but it was all pretty much the exact opposite of what I wanted. All the staff in the lobby saw me crying and they all tried to make me feel better which made me feel even worse because I shouldn't have been making them feel bad. Once I calmed down the manager brought me and J to a wedding that was going on that day which was being held by the pool and she told me that we could have our wedding there. I then looked and saw all the half naked people at the pool bar (a.k.a uninvited guests) watching the wedding that was going on and I just knew at once that there was no way I could have my wedding there. Once we were alone I told J that it was either a wedding at Tensing Pen or no wedding at all. He agreed with me.

We did decide however to move everyone over and just stay the night there just so we could all be together. Much more drama happened with that but I won't go into details. Let's just say, the process of getting the rooms wasn't easy.

I didn't sleep well that night but I wished with all that I had in my heart to give us the wedding day that we had been planning over a year for and had flown all the way down for.

all photos by style-ish unless otherwise noted

*my disclaimer is that there is nothing wrong with these kinds of weddings as I'm sure many people have gotten married there and had a wonderful time. It's just that I had certain expectations for my wedding as I think most brides do and what was presented to me was completely different than anything I had ever imagined. Plus, I was a tad bit emotional that day :)