Our Wedding

We had a very simple wedding ceremony at White Dove Wedding Chapel in Wendell. Just Shelley an Me, Scott Carpenter (the minister), and my parents. The chapel was very nice, and the ceremony short and sweet. A thunderstorm passed over while we were giving our vows, and cleared back to a nice sunny evening in time for us to leave afterwords.

These first two pictures are close-ups of Shelley's bouquet, taken at home before the ceremony. It's a collection of pink roses, white lilies and orchids, some ivy, and a few other flowers (the white rose-like ones). I wore a matching boutiniere of ivy and orchids. All the flowers came from Fallons in Raleigh.

Ladera Resort

These are various views of the buildings that make up Ladera Resort. The buildings are all local stone and concrete constructions, with a lot of beautiful local woodwork thrown in as well. The resort is all strung out in a line along the top of a ridge. You arrive at one end, near the Dasheene restaurant and the pool. The units continue down the row from unit A poolside to unit X at the far end. We stayed in unit S, a deluxe 1-bedroom suite.

Ladera is located on the southwest side of the island, near the town of Soufriere. (A French name meaning "sulfur in the air" so I'm told.) We arrived at the Hewanorra airport at the south end of the island in Vieux Fort, and took a 1-hour taxi ride up the narrow, twisty mountain road that was the main highway around the island. One taxi drive joked that he had a Ph. D. in driving, for Pot-hole Dodging. :)

Someone else has another nice Ladera website found here. This site has less photos, but also does not have the java problems the first one does.

Scenic Views from Ladera

All of these photos were taken from our room. The views were all very nice. Truely the most impressive place I've ever stayed, in that respect.

Our Room at Ladera

We were in unit S, a one-bedroom deluxe suite with private plunge pool with waterfall. The suite consists of a patio area with sofa, chair, and coffee-table, a reclining lounge chair, and a small barr-table with two high chairs. The patio area was two-thirds covered by the roof and open to the west side. The bar table stuck out from under the main roof, but had a small cover of its own.

The bedroom portion of the unit was down three stairs behind the sofa. The furniture included a four poster bed (6"inch foam mattress) with an insect-netting canopy. There were two end tables and a small closet with safe in the floor. The east wall of the bedroom had three louvered doors that lead out onto the balcony. The balcony also had two chairs where we could sit and look out over the inland-side of the resort.

Off the bedroom was the private bath, consisting of a large sink/vanity, a toilet, and a step in shower to one side.

Animals Seen at Ladera

We read somewhere before we left that the open structure of the Ladera suites would provide us with a close association with critters. The bug netting over the bed should convince anyone of that! Every night at dusk, the chorus of frogs chirping would begin to last through most of the night. In the morning, we'd wake to the chicken crowing and/or cow mooing from a nearby house.

Below are the pictures I managed to catch of some of the animals. We also saw a hummingbird that visited our flowers at least once a day. There were a number of black or grey starling-like birds that would beg scraps at meals. (Including one at the Hilton we called "Stumpy", a grey bird that was missing one foot.) I saw a brief glimpse of something that looked like a yellow oriole, and a pair of what looked like perigrine falcons. There was also some sort of hawk that circled over the valley now and then. In additon to the songbirds below, we saw little pale-yellow bellied birds that would sing up a storm. There were also numerous swallows out in the evenings eating bugs.

We saw two very large toads out at night, both were a large handful in size. One took a swim in the koi ponds, and the other was content to sit under a spotlight an eat the flies that came by.

Plants Seen at Ladera

This is a collection of various flowers and plants we saw around the resort.

Reception July 8, 2000

I didn't take very many photos at the reception party, and most of those are food pictures. Shelley's sister Rae Lynn came out from Texas and did a fabulous job setting things up for us.

The wedding cake was made by A Sugar Gallery by Veronica. The bottom layer was almond pound cake with lemon filling, and the top layer was choclate-amaretto cake with raspberry puree filling. The whole thing was covered with a smooth layer of rolled fondant icing. The gold bows were even edible.