Going 110mph on I-70. Me, crawling back into our car trunk to arrange our luggage while Trevor is at the wheel. Silence between Trevor and I, for 4 hours straight. Me, basically crying the entire drive. This is how the first day of our honeymoon started, and let me tell you the amusing story on how we got there.
The week of our wedding was exhausting. Trevor and I were both working on last minute details and running errands all week. Thursday we were busy decorating our venue. After that, my sister and cousin Rayne came up and stayed with us for the weekend. We got our nails done, met with the caterer, finalized last minute details, ran to Hobby Lobby several times to pick up things we forgot, went to the jewelry store to get my ring professionally cleaned, and the list went on and on. I had no idea how busy we would be the days leading up the wedding.
Friday night after our rehearsal dinner, I hosted a bridesmaid slumber party and Trevor and the groomsmen stayed at a lodge for a last bachelor hurrah. We both stayed up late that night hanging out with our friends and having a blast. Saturday was our wedding, so we were both up early that day and then up late into the night again hanging out with friends and celebrating. Then when Sunday came, we had to go back to our venue to pack up our things, and we spent the rest of the day opening gifts and packing for our honeymoon. Our flight was set to leave at 9:30am from D.C., so we set our alarms to wake up at 3:30am when we finally went to bed at 1:00am.
I remember my alarm going off at 3:30, and I shut it off and closed my eyes for a second. When I opened my eyes again, I saw slivers of sunlight streaming through our bedroom blinds. I woke up in a panic as I jumped out of bed, looked at my phone to see the time being 5:30, and screamed at Trevor that we overslept by two whole hours. We jumped out of bed and literally hit the ground running. Luckily we had our luggage by the door ready to go. We were originally going to take the Jeep to the airport but when we realized that it needed gas, we decided to take my car instead because we could make it to the airport without filling it up.
Our minds were in a frenzy as our GPS projected our arrival time at the airport to be 9:05am, when our flight was scheduled to leave at 9:30am. That didn't account for the time we had to spend parking our car, actually getting inside the airport, going through security, and making it to our terminal. Plus on top of that, we would be driving on the D.C. Beltway at rush hour on a Monday. Our traffic odds couldn't have been worse.
As soon as we hit the highway I called American Airlines to see if we could possibly change our flight to a later time. I thought that maybe if I played the “newlyweds heading off on our honeymoon” card that they would be sympathetic and accommodating. The woman on the other end of the line told me that there was a later flight that day, but since we booked our flight in February that she would have to upcharge our tickets from the price it was originally in February to the price it was now. The upcharge was $3000. Each. I felt even MORE sick in my stomach as the woman told me this, and then as I started to get teary-eyed I said to her “We can't afford that. What do you suggest we do?” And she said, “I think you should get to the airport and try your hardest to run and catch your current flight, that's your best option.”
Trevor and I thought we were done for. I was so upset, but I was also angry at American Airlines for not helping us in the least bit. Trevor and I decided at that moment that the only thing we could do is to pray that we made our flight, even though we were both doubtful. For our luggage, we packed a carry on and a checked bag. We immediately knew that we wouldn't have time to get a bag checked at the airport. We decided that we needed to pack our things into two carry on bags that wouldn't have to be checked. As Trevor was driving 110mph, I unbuckled my seatbelt and crawled into the backseat of my little coupe car and got into the trunk. I opened our bags and started making decisions on what items were staying and what was going. Instead of bringing everything we wanted, our honeymoon attire became very minimalistic. That was just the price we had to pay for waking up late.
So our clothes were now consolidated into two carry ons. I climbed back into the front seat and pulled up the airport parking situation on my phone. I pinpointed exactly where we needed to park our car in order to get the closest to our terminal as possible. The parking in the parking garage was much more expensive than the economy parking that we were originally going to take, but that was just another price we would have to pay for being late.
So Trevor and I had our game plan as we continued to speed towards D.C. Thankfully, we made that drive so many times for work that we knew the route like the back of our hand. We also knew the quickest way to the airport and knew how the flow of traffic worked, which was in our advantage. We still didn't think we would make it though. I was so doubtful, that I started brainstorming alternatives instead of going to Hawaii. I started looking up flight options to the Florida Keys and decided that if we weren't going to make it to Hawaii that we would go there instead.
Around then, we had made it to the Capitol Beltway. Surprisingly, traffic wasn't any worse than normal. We were thankful for that. However, once we merged onto the George Washington Memorial Parkway (which is the quickest route to the airport), we hit standstill traffic. Of course. Trevor and I just took deep breaths and knew that the situation was really out of our hands.
We finally got around the traffic and made it to the airport. We drove straight into the parking garage closest to our terminal and found a spot right about at 9:05am, just as our GPS originally projected. From there, we took off. We sprinted through the parking garage and into the elevator. We ran towards security, our flip flops flopping so loud as we ran as fast as we could, our carry ons in tow. Security saw us running and the woman said to us, “I take it you are in a hurry?” and then she let us go to the front of the line at the security check. That woman was our lifesaver.
We hurried through the security checks as quickly as possible, and then took off sprinting towards our terminal. Of course, it was the one at the very end of the airport. People were staring at us as our flip flops were clanging against the floor, but we didn't care. As we made it to our terminal, the flight attendants checked our boarding passes and let us through. As we got to the plane, the LAST PERSON was boarding. We literally JUST made it, and as we sat down in our seats out of breath, Trevor and I gave each other the biggest hug and were in such disbelief that we made it. I could have cried tears of joy that we were on our way to Hawaii and didn't have to go to Florida after all. We probably talked for an hour straight about how we just couldn't believe that we made it.
So many factors could have influenced if we made the flight or not. Thankfully, my car was full on gas. If we would of stopped for gas, we would have missed our flight. We were able to consolidate our clothes into two carry ons, because if we would have checked our luggage we would have missed it. If we would have gotten pulled over for speeding, we would've missed it. If security wouldn't of let us go to the front of the line, we wouldn't have made it. We were so thankful that we made our flight and that our marriage was officially off to a good start.
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