Honeymoon: Part 2

“Conversation like television set on honeymoon...unnecessary.”
- Peter Sellers

Some say a honeymoon starts at the wedding but I believe it starts instead at The First Night. The First Night is in my humble opinion, one of the coolest things that God has ever designed. For us it was magical. First of all, we planned a wedding reception that would be a maximum 3 hours. We were so set on this that we had our limousine (rented for the day) arranged to pick us up three hours after the reception was to begin. Also, we started our reception early enough that we wouldn't get back to our "first night" suite too late.

Immediately after we got engaged I went "first night room shopping" with my best man. The room had to be extremely romantic, close, exotic, and just oozing sensuality (not cheeziness). Marriagi's Theme Suite Hotel fit the bill perfectly. Located in the Winnipeg Exchange district, it has only has 8 super premium theme rooms, but they are all amazing. I booked the Sahara Suite which has among its amenities: a huge bed with Arabian canopy, jacuzzi, palm trees, ivory white steam/shower, modern TV/stereo system, bar area, two person hot tub, and fireplace. Marine stereo speakers are inside the steam/shower unit. With the Moroccan statues, pictures and artwork at every corner and with incense burning in the air (if you like it), it's truly an exotic and sensual experience. Rooms purposely don't have a phone and the hotel is full of character and luxury. It was $250 a night back then but worth every penny.

Anyway, it was my job to choose and surprise Jobina with the place for our first night. After we left the reception we just drove around in the back of our limo for an hour relaxing and talking about the days events. Eventually I mentioned to her that I had forgotten to get a place for our first night until the last minute and almost everything had been booked. Luckily (I told her sheepishly) I had found one place but it was downtown and pretty run down. I apologized profusely and she looked disappointed but said that she was OK with whatever. When we drove up to Mariaggi's (which looks completely unassuming on the outside) she looked a little concerned. After we were inside though, and were shown to our room, she was shocked (in a good way) at the luxurious accommodations and I knew my ruse had worked. The hotel person proudly wanted to show us every exotic detail of the room but after a few minutes of that Jobina got extremely impatient and politely told him to leave.

Ironically, I had arranged my best man Jason to drop off our luggage and some refreshments for the evening but he was a few minutes late. So here we were, waiting for him to stop by. That 10 minutes or so was probably the longest 10 minutes of my life. Finally we opened the door to our room and found that he had discretely dropped off our stuff outside our door. We quickly grabbed everything and threw it into the room. After that . . . fireworks.

May Light increase!