Puttin on the Ritz

When I last left you all I was at our friend Brent's condo down in sunny Orlando, Florida, getting ready to head over to the Ritz Carlton where the wedding festivities would take place. I don't know about you, but I've never stayed at a Ritz Carlton hotel before, so I decided that in addition to sharing with you about Brent and Karin's beautiful wedding, I also need to share the Ritz Carlton experience. And, rather than having one extremely long post, I'll break it into two and get more than one post in this week. So first, let me share with you my weekend at the Ritz Carlton.

Around noon on Friday, Derek, Jeff (another groomsman), his wife Stephanie and I packed up from Brent's condo and headed off to the hotel. As we were driving up the long driveway to the hotel, Jeff said, "We do not belong here." Even just driving up the driveway everything was so perfect and fancy we felt like we were crashing some real fancy party we weren't invited to.

* On a side note, later that night Derek said when Jeff said that as we were driving in, he thought that this is what it will feel like when we get to heaven - everything will be so beautiful and perfect and we will feel like we don't belong there, that God's perfectness and holiness and beauty will be so much more than we deserve or ever could have imagined. I kept this thought with me throughout the weekend, reminded that as beautiful as this place is, it will pale in comparison to heaven one day. Derek also made the point that the only reason we did belong there was because of our relationship with Brent, and the only reason we will belong in Heaven is because of our relationship with Christ. Anyways, I thought that was also cool to think about.

So, continuing, we pulled up to the hotel and apparently at the Ritz, parking your own car isn't even an option. Nor is unloading your own luggage, taking it up to the room yourself or unloading it from the luggage rack into your room. Needless to say it is important to have plenty of cash on you when you arrive. We checked into our room, even though it was only about 1:00, apparently it is never too early to check in there. Our room had a balcony overlooking the pool, the lake and the golf course. Below are a few pictures. They don't do it justice. Also, the weather was in the mid 80's, sunny with low humidity, which made everything even more perfect. I will just let the pictures do the rest of the talking here.

View from our window:



The Ritz pool:




A few of the lazy river (my favorite!)























More beautiful scenery:


I didn't take any pictures of the room and I should have because it was gorgeous, especially the bathroom. I love fancy bathrooms, that may be weird. But here I am lounging in the robe and slippers they provide you. Getting ready in that robe on Friday and Saturday nights was a treat, I would have been happy to just hang out in my room in the robe all evening.


So I think I will finish the post here. Stay tuned for even more beautiful pictures of the wedding. It was such a beautiful wedding I can't wait to share it with you all!