Married!

We just dropped the family off at the airport for their flight back to the States. And Matt and I are staying in Iceland one more night before an early flight to Paris tomorrow for our honeymoon.

Everything went great! The wedding was so fun that when it was over I asked if we could do it again!

Here's some shots from Iceland! Doug, our awesome photographer, will be a little horrified because they haven't been retouched yet, but I just couldn't wait to post a few!

Matt & I at the airport in Los Angeles, ready for adventure!

Family photo with Uncle Donnie's shiny Alfa Romeo, before getting in a less shiny van to the airport in Boston

The Blue Lagoon
After arriving in Iceland, our first real stop was at the The Blue Lagoon.

The Blue Lagoon

Chillin out (warming up?) with the family in the Blue Lagoon

Looking lost in the Lagoon

Matt & Ma having a good time.

Sean enjoying the Lagoon

It's cold outside of the water, put me back in! =)

Doug's self portrait -- with Matt in the way.

Matt & I and a poof of smoke.

Yum!
We had dinner at 3 Frakkar at our first night in Reykjavik. They serve traditional Icelandic cuisine. Some of the brave members of our groups tried offerings like Whale and Puffin. Someone even tried to order the horse but they were out!

Waterfalls!
On our drive to the east side of Iceland, we stopped at the waterfalls Seljalandsfoss and Skogafoss.

Me & the Gradys

Since Doug was always taking pictures, here he takes a picture of everyone taking a picture of him! But I only have Doug's pictures at the moment, so you'll have to stay tuned to see the pictures they took.

There are kind of a never ending string of pictures of us being silly.

We are so over beautiful waterfalls.

I don't think it's good to try to eat the bride before the wedding.

Rainbows are good luck!

Hey, check out that pretty hard to miss waterfall over there.

On The Road

Aimee feeding an Icelandic horse. Icelandic horses have long flowy manes.

This is Matt, looking confused, in front of the gas station where we accidentally left him. Don't worry, we came back.

The Grady kids somewhere -- I don't know where -- because I was sleeping in the car when this happened.

Here are the two cars we rented. I'm only showing them to you because Doug decided to shoot them like a car ad.

Guesthouse Hali
We stayed at the Guesthouse Hali which was the nearest to our wedding location. The house has been owned and operated by the same family since the 1800s.

Dinner with our wedding officiant Johanna and her husband.

Dinner cannot stop Matt & I from being silly.

Matt and his brothers after dinner

Matt's back on the ground and the moon is bright.

The Day Of The Wedding!

This outrageously friendly dog befriended Doug & Matt while we were taking pictures.

Matt getting ready.

Me getting ready. Aimee was the best helper ever!

Grammy Grady was looking good and ready to go while we were dragging our heels.

Laurel's reaction when she saw our wedding location.

You want to see it too? Well you have to attend the Reception! We'll premiere the pictures of the wedding there. But we'll put them up on the blog after that =)

If you really want to see the wedding pictures though, you could probably just search the internet. We were the star attraction at the iceberg lagoon (you think the icebergs would be) -- the tourists couldn't stop taking pictures of us!

Anyway, that was a very quick wrap up from the hotel in Keflavik. Hopefully I'll be able to write more soon! We're off to Paris!

Jökulsárlón

People versus icebergs

Wedding day is less than two weeks away!! We are getting married at Jökulsárlón, so we thought we'd tell you a little about it. It's a glacier lagoon, where parts of the Vatnajökull glacier break off into the water (that's the glacier in the back of the picture there).

It's a six hour drive west from Reykjavik, on the other side of Iceland. It's in the middle of nowhere pretty much. The last town we pass is 80 minutes away and has 160 inhabitants. It'll be us and the seals.


A shot from the James Bond movie "Die Another Day"

Also, from the wikipedia entry: "A number of films have had scenes shot at Jökulsárlón, including Beowulf and Grendel, Tomb Raider, Die Another Day (James Bond), Batman Begins and A View to a Kill (James Bond). The lagoon was a waypoint during the first stage of The Amazing Race 6. Good Morning America was broadcast live from Jökulsárlón on November 13, 2006."

They actually froze the lake to drive on it for "Die Another Day", it's not normally frozen.


Leonardo DiCaprio and the polar bear Knut at Jokulsarlon for the cover of Vanity Fair. They probably won't be there for the wedding, but who knows?

When we asked for permission to get married there from the owners, I was under the impression we were the first to ever do so (I have found two other couple online who have taken wedding pictures at Jokulsarlon, but neither were actually married there). Well, here's to breaking new ground!

Oh Iceland

Icelandic Horses say Chill Out!

So Iceland is a country that only has 300,000 people. And they seem to be really laid back (which is actually a bit of a detriment when you are trying to get someone to get back to you). This extends to their wedding-related 'red tape'.

So it took a long time for us to understand this, but it seems all you have to do to get married in Iceland is present some forms and things 5 days before your proposed wedding date. Then a week later you can get a certificate that says you were married. The officiant doesn't need to sign anything - you don't need to even show any proof that anything happened! Totally odd!

But we're not going to be there 5 days before we get married, so Matt called and asked - what should we do? Well, in perfect Icelandic laid back style a guy named Baldur replied - just hand the stuff in when you get here.

Well, ok.

So as far as we know, we should be legally married in the end. But it's all a bit laid back.

Getting Married in Iceland

Two weeks before the rocking Philadelphia Reception, Matt & Alison will be getting married in a small ceremony the remote reaches of Iceland.

Why Iceland?



Matt & I had been planning the wedding for a few months before we got officially engaged. And then when we were officially engaged and started to tell people about it, the big question we kept getting was 'Why Iceland?'. For whatever reason, I didn't actually expect people to ask me this question and I didn't have an answer!

I think it started with our desire to have a small destination wedding. That seemed the most 'us'. And we looked at the map. If my memory is correct, I think this rather large decision consisted of me asking 'Do you want to get married in Iceland?' and Matt saying 'Sure'.

When people started to ask, Matt's go-to answer was often 'because our families are Icelandic'. Ahh, Matt humor. Mine is generally that I think the idea of me getting married at all is so crazy that this is the only thing that does it justice.

The Iceland Trip



Iceland is a pretty outrageous place. They have volcanoes, glaciers, geysers, waterfalls, black sand beaches. There's no other place like it. We'll only get to see some of it, because we're dragging our immediate families (the only people we would dare impose this slightly grueling trip on) to fly 5 hours from Boston, then drive 6 hours to the beautiful middle of nowhere, get married, then drive and fly back.

There are no hotels where we are going, just 'guesthouses'. And shortly after where we stop, the road is no longer paved. Iceland only have 300,000 inhabitants and most of them live in the main city of Reykjavik, so evidently the rest of the country is rather sparsely populated.

Iceland is not *that* cold.



Greenland is all ice and Iceland is green. Evidently Eric The Red, after being exiled from Iceland, named his new home Greenland so people would move there. It will probably be 50 degrees when we get married, far from toasty, but not freezing either. Since Iceland gets the jet stream, they don't get as cold as Boston or New York.