Now that wedding week is over, I thought I would show you what comes after…. the honeymoon! (Get your minds out of the gutter — I wasn’t going there!] Matthew and I went on a cruise to Mexico for the week following our wedding.  It was the perfect time to unwind and spend some quality time together (and that is his love language).

Dressed up for formal dinner... check out the shoes!

Most cruise lines offer one or two formal dinner nights as a part of their trip.  I love getting dressed up,  so I was very excited for this!  My wonderful hubby is not the most excited about dressing up, but he does it for me.  However, always remember to pack your dress shoes — don’t leave them with your tux.  He had his nice, but black and white, shoes on for our formal dinners.  Thankfully we just laughed about it and no one freaked out!

The Newlywed Game & free drinks were the best part of this snorkel excursion -- the visibility was horrible, and I learned the my new hubby could not breathe in a snorkel mask (he breathes out through his nose and pops it off).

We had 3 ports of call on our cruise,  the first of which was Cabo San Lucas.  We decided to go snorkeling, and took part in a “Newlywed Game” on the boat (there were 4 newlywed couples on our snorkel group and about 25  newlywed couples on the entire cruise).  The staff had the husbands answer questions about the wives and if they got any wrong, they had to do push-ups with us on their backs.  One couple got all 4 right; while Matt got one wrong, I think.  The question — “What does your wife like to drink” — his answer was, “Um, anything with alcohol?” Wow.  What does he really think?  haha The correct answer was coffee. And to our surprise, one of the servers jumped on my back while Matthew did push-ups so he lifted both my and his weight (and his own) — he did do it though, I have one buff hubby!

The second port of call was Mazatlan and we were told there was nothing to do there.  We wanted to get off the ship, Matthew was going a bit crazy, so we just took a little rickshaw thingie into the center of town.  We were told to check out this shrimp place, so we did. The shrimp was very tasty — even I liked it!  Garlic butter makes anything delicious!

We also found a little info booth in the center of town — which gave us coupons for free margaritas!  It’s always worthwhile to check out the info booths in different cities, they often have coupons.

We had to wear bandannas during the rhino ride -- dust got everywhere!

The third port was Puerto Vallerta and we splurged on a rhino tour.  Matt has been painting these for years so it was fun to actually drive one ourselves!  I thought it was hilarious that we stopped for beers about halfway through the tour.  And at the end they let us taste their different tequilas — we both liked the coffee flavored one.  The three types that we tried had been aged for awhile, so they were incredibly smooth!

The view during part of our rhino tour.

One other thing that is wonderful about cruises is that all the food is included!  Matthew was definitely a fan of this, as he likes to eat.  We also sat at a table with three other couples for our “official” dinner time.  I highly recommend getting a table with other couples, as it is a lot of fun to meet new people. If you need some time alone, you can always skip the official mealtime and eat at one of the casual restaurants.  Two of the couples at our table were actually great contacts for Matthew as they own auto shops in So Cal (and at the time he was doing custom paint full time).

Our dinner group and wait staff.

What did you do for your honeymoon?  Do you have any recommendations?  Or places not to go?