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By Dina Gan I Was a Virgin Bride“I’m afraid we have a problem,” said the TSA officer, holding up my plastic baggie filled with three-ounce bottles of contact lens solution and hair spray. What now, I think. Just seconds before, I had to toss out perfectly good sunscreen lotion because it wasn’t in its original container. “The problem is,” said the officer, breaking into a grin, “there is no problem! All of these are good to go!” “You scared me!” I said. “Happy Halloween,” he said, handing me my plastic baggie. Indeed, my fiancé, Will, and I were flying to the Caribbean on October 31 so we could get hitched the next day. We had a morning appointment on a beach in the U.S. Virgin Islands, but November 1 is a holiday there, so we had to make it to the courthouse by 5pm on Halloween to pick up our marriage license. Our flight was set to arrive at 2pm, so we thought we’d have plenty of time. As we settled in at the gate to wait for boarding, we heard an announcement that the pilot had called in sick and that another one would need to be brought in, a task that could take up to 2 hours, depending on where the back-up pilot lived. “It’s a sign,” I said to Will. “We’re not supposed to elope. We’re supposed to wait and have a big church wedding on July 7, 2007, like we planned.” “It’s not a sign,” Will said. “We’ll make it.” “I think we need to call Tina just in case,” I said. Tina was our wedding coordinator. She works for Weddings the Island Way , through which we made all of our wedding arrangements, such as they were. Our wedding would be simple – just Will, me, and the sea. Plus the minister, a photographer, and our wedding coordinator, the latter two doubling as witnesses. But now it looked like a sick pilot would mean we’d have to change our plans. I called Tina and let her know we might have to reschedule. “That’s going to be difficult,” she said, citing a cruise ship wedding party on Thursday and a fully booked weekend. “It would be better to just go ahead with the ceremony as planned and have the paperwork signed after the fact.” “Is that legal?” I said. “Lots of people do it,” she said. “You’d be surprised how many couples forget to go to the courthouse before their wedding down here.” Reassured, Will and I bought coffee and bagels and waited for more news about our flight. An hour later, a new pilot showed up. We were boarded by 10am, which meant we’d make it into St. Thomas by 4pm, leaving us a solid hour to get to the courthouse. Seven hours later, the morning’s troubles were a distant memory, as we relaxed with rum cocktails aboard the private ferry to the Caneel Bay resort where we’d spend the next three nights. We did make it to the courthouse in time to get our marriage license, so we felt triumphant sailing away across turquoise waters from St. Thomas to St. John, the least developed of the three U.S. Virgin Islands (St. Croix is the third) and the one comprised mostly of national park land. 
Gliding into Caneel Bay was like arriving at a secret
port hidden amid hills of tropical green fringed by
golden shore. We were led down the wooden dock and
guided through a canopy of bay rum trees by a resort
staffer who briefly explained the resort’s layout, and
then drove us by golf cart to our room at one of the
resort’s seven beaches. The resort sprawls over 170
acres but has just 166 rooms, and since it was not yet
high season, the acre-per-person ratio felt magnified.
We were dropped off at the door of our one-story unit and as we entered the white room furnished in dark brown woods, we felt instantly at home. The room was spacious, with stone tile flooring, plantation shutters and a vaulted ceiling. The patio led out to a grouping of sea-grape trees whose thin, gnarled branches arched over a grassy path, framing a perfect slice of ivory sand called Scott Beach. I began to grasp why “understated elegance” is a phrase often used to describe this resort. Caneel Bay’s luxury is not in its modernity (there are no phones, TVs, or radios in the rooms), but in its ability to evoke an immediate sense of tranquility. I felt as if I had been invited to stay at the seaside retreat of a rich uncle, and that uncle happened to be Laurance Rockefeller, the man who opened the resort in 1956. Even now that Caneel Bay is managed by Rosewood Hotels and Resorts, the place seems to have preserved its chic, mid-century roots. One notable update, however, is the addition of Alex Chen as executive chef of the resort’s acclaimed restaurants, Equator and Turtle Bay Estate House. Will and I were excited to sample the Caribbean-Asian cuisine at Equator, but for now that would have to wait. We had ironing to do. We unpacked, and after preparing our outfits for the next day, we opened a fine bottle of pinot noir and snacked on cheese and fruit, all of which were unexpected wedding gifts from the resort. Anxious but happy, we didn’t feel the need to leave the room till morning came. 
Getting to Hawksnest Bay the next day carried a bit of
stress, as we discovered that the relaxed pace of St.
John is not an asset when you actually have to be
somewhere on time. To add to the confusion, there are
two Hawksnest beaches, a private one on resort
property, and a public one further north. After a
light gourmet breakfast at Caneel Bay’s Beach Terrace
restaurant, we had to take a shuttle back to our room
to change, then shuttle right back to the main
building to catch a taxi to the public Hawksnest
beach. Our ceremony was scheduled for 9:45am, and at
9am, we were still waiting for a shuttle back to our
room. Using the green telephone at the shuttle stop, I
called the front desk and asked if someone could pick
us up in a golf cart.“We have a wedding to get to,” I said. “Ours.” The woman assured me that the shuttle would be able to take us to our room but she’d dispatch a golf cart to transport us from our room to the taxi stand. I thanked her and as soon as I hung up the phone, the resort shuttle pulled up. By the time we reached our room, we had exactly 15 minutes to get ready. Fortunately, I was never one of those women who takes forever to get dressed. Within minutes, I threw on my gown, slipped on a pair of sandals, applied some makeup, stuck a flower clip in my hair and was ready to go. It took Will about 30 seconds to put on khakis, a white shirt and loafers, and by that time a golf cart had arrived to deliver us to the taxi stand. We sat facing backward in the cart, and as I watched the lush landscape recede and felt the Caribbean breeze tousling my hair, a wave of relief came over me. It was time to let the wedding begin. The surrey-style taxi dropped us off at the right Hawksnest beach, and we saw a man in black minister’s garb standing on the curb. We went up to him, and I said, “Are you Emmanuel?” He said he was, and we introduced ourselves. Soon Tina emerged with the photographer, Bridget. Handshakes were exchanged and Tina explained that we would hold the ceremony in a private cove a few dozen yards away and then head back to the main beach for photographs. It sounded great to me, and as she led us down a narrow path through trees and brush, I caught a glimpse of another wedding in progress on the main beach. I pitied that bride because she had to put up with half-naked beachgoers frolicking in the backdrop of her wedding photos. When we reached our little cove, a perfect wedge of sand with clear blue waters and utter privacy, I was so delighted I almost wept. 
The ceremony was simple and traditional, and as we
said our vows, I remember feeling the same rush I felt
when Will and I went skydiving. This was a different
kind of leap, a slow-dive into a long future, and not
nearly as dangerous. When we were done getting
married, the photographer took over, posing us this
way and that, in the cove for a champagne toast, then
on the main beach where the light was brighter. After
an hour, Tina and Bridget had to rush off to catch the
ferry back to St. Thomas, and we returned to our room
at Caneel Bay, exhausted before noon.
We spent the next few days in a blissful post-wedding haze, lazily enjoying what St. John has to offer the casual tourist – lunch overlooking Cruz Bay, dinner at Equator with a sunset view of St. Thomas, a driving tour of the island in an open-air surrey and, of course, the lovely beaches. In our opinion, the best beach on St. John is at Trunk Bay, which is part of the national park and well worth the $4 admission price. Even though we married on Hawksnest beach, Trunk Bay is where we spent one of our first afternoons as a married couple, lying in the sun and playing in the clearest natural waters I’ve ever seen. Our personal favorite beach, though, is Scott Beach, the private oasis we had almost all to ourselves at Caneel Bay. After the third night, we left Caneel Bay and checked in at the Westin, where we stayed for the last two nights of our trip. While the Westin is a newer and flashier resort, its beach is murky compared to the ones at Caneel Bay. And after experiencing such serenity at Caneel Bay, the Westin seemed noisy and crowded. “We just didn’t know how good we had it till it was gone,” I sighed, closing the curtains on our beachfront room at the Westin to give us privacy from the many passersby. Will smiled at me, and I knew we were thinking the same thing. Now that we were married, we would never make that mistake again. |
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