"The Day After" & Packing for CR

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The morning after our wedding, my husband and I awoke to a gorgeous view and a beautiful day! The city of Chicago is such an exciting sight.

Hello, Chicago. I'm a married woman now! 

We quickly got ready for brunch with our guests downstairs. We had invited all of our guests to have brunch with us between 9 and 11, so we wanted to be there for the entire time. Naturally, I was rolling out of bed around 8:45... so I did not have proper time to get ready. My hair was all kinds of funky from being in a curled side bun the day before, and I didn't have time to condition the teasing out of it in the shower, so I threw on a headband and called it good.

My friend Allison and me

After brunch, we ended up standing around with my family trying to figure out next steps. We packed a lot of things into our car sand then my husband and I went to get the dog from where we had boarded her. We told her mommy and daddy are married now. She approved. 

Soon after getting home with the dog, my parents showed up. We had to do a quick run to the florist to get a few things they had taken care of for us after the reception. We also snapped a quick pic with our suuuper huge rustic wooden cross (which hung above us during our wedding ceremony).

Obviously I am a bit more thrilled than my main squeeze

After we got back from the florist, we said goodbye to the pup and sent her on her way with grandma and grandpa. A bit of lounging ensued, and we opened some cards and looked at a lot of the photobooth strips. Then our friend Eric called with a pretty wonderful proposition. We met him at Twisted Spoke for a drink and some food.

I had been a little dress-conscious leading up to the wedding, so this was my first day in a few weeks that I felt like I could have whatever the heck I wanted. I started with a Bloody Mary called "The Smokin Salma" and had their Chupacabra Tostadas for dinner. Both were delicious... and also Heart Burn City. I survived. 

We also convinced Eric to take all of our fruit from the apartment. We were leaving for a week and didn't want to deal with it. He obliged. More food for him, less work for us. Win-win.

After getting home, I realized that I needed to finish packing for Costa Rica. I had initially packed a few days before the wedding, because I was stressed about having it on my mind and wanted to get it out of the way. I will probably never do that again. I ended up not being able to remember what I had packed, so I found myself adding lots of items to it "just in case." Finally, I realized I had far too much stuff, so I cut my losses and forced myself to unpack EVERYTHING and re-organize it.

Yes, I would consider myself a visual packer. I have to see everything laid out before I put it in my suit case. #lessonlearned 

I took over the dining room table and eventually the Eames chairs... all in the name of packing. 

This was what I was looking at, somewhere around 10pm, when I loudly declared to my husband that it was going to be a long night. I have no idea why it took me so long to strategize my way through packing, but efficiency just wasn't in the stars for me that day.

I also ended up with far too much packed jewelry, so there were some cuts to be made there. Who will stay and who will go? Decisions, decisions.

Around midnight, I was down to this. There are a lot of plastic bags in there for things like sun screen, bug spray, etc - the necessities for a rainforest vacation. I put all my shoes in my Tory Burch dust bag, so let's hope I don't look back on that as a mistake. Topped it off with my RL sunny hat and a good book and voila, countless hours of packing were behind me!

I hopped in the shower and headed off to bed around 1:00am, with a 4:00am wakeup call ahead of me...

WHAT ABOUT YOU?

• Are you an OCD packer?
• Do you pack in advance or do it on the fly?