I don’t know why but I seem to always book a destination wedding for the week of Christmas and last year continued the trend but instead of going to a chilly Connecticut like the year before, my husband and I headed down to sunny St. Thomas!  I got in a few days before the wedding (planned in case of delays due to weather) and flew out on Christmas Eve while my clients cruised in.  Luckily there weren’t too many delays so we got to enjoy a couple days in paradise before the wedding.  Since I was there for work, I kept my cameras and gear locked up in the safe before the wedding so 90% of these images are with my iPhone 6S+!  Enjoy the virtual vacation!

 Our first day on St. Thomas we explored our resort, the Marriott Frenchman’s Reef and a little bit of St. Thomas.

We started out at our resort which is home to a ton of palm trees!

There were iguanas everywhere in the resort which I loved… although quite a few people weren’t as keen as I was to see them!

After lunch in Red Hook we headed around the island hitting a few different beaches.  This is Sapphire Beach and probably the prettiest of the ones we stopped at!

When we got back to our resort we hit up the bar and our bartender, Phill, recommended this beer to my husband and urged us to go over to St. John the next day where this beer is from.  Originally I didn’t want to go off island but he assured me the ferries were safe and we would have no issues getting back to St. Thomas.

Not only do I highly recommend St. John, I highly recommend this brewery!  The Mango version of this beer is SO good!!  I ended up ordering a case of it when we got home for my husband as a gift.

We ended our first full day on St. Thomas on the beach at our resort watching the sunset.

Our second full day in St. Thomas we got up early and hit up the ferry in Red Hook over to St. John.  Luckily we had rented a car with Amalie Car Rental and we were able to take our car over without any issues.  I HIGHLY recommend them for rental cars!

When I saw this pull off for a ‘scenic view’ I urged my husband to pull off and we were rewarded with this gorgeous view of Trunk Bay.

Trunk Bay was my main goal for St. John and it may go down as one of my favorite beaches in the world.  I knew that it was going to be a busy day with cruise ships so we got to the beach early and staked out our spot towards the end of the beach on the east end.  We managed to get a couple hours in before the passengers started arriving and it was nice to enjoy a nearly vacant beach (this picture is from when the first ship/round arrived).

Even after passengers arrived most didn’t make it all the way to our end so we still had a pretty secluded slice of heaven to enjoy!

I brought along my Canon G11 and the underwater housing I have for it to take into the water with me when I snorkeled.  It also meant I could take some pics from the water as well!

At Trunk Bay there is an underwater snorkeling trail.  Since we were on the far east end I didn’t see the signs pointing out the trails and I mistakenly originally thought they went around the islands in the center.  Eventually I stumbled onto one of the underwater signs and righted myself.  Once I figured it all out it was really neat!

After a few more waves of beach goers and we enjoyed our lunch we decided to pack up and go explore other beaches on St. John.  On our next stop, Cinnamon Bay, we found this super sweet stray cat who we both were drawn to.  We pet it for a while before heading towards the beach and he was just so sweet.  We missed our cats at home so much!

Cinnamon Bay was another beautiful beach but there wasn’t a lot of sand where you could spread out due to the high tide.  I really liked the setting though – there is a campground attached to this beach and it is a place that would have been straight up my Dad’s alley!

Further down the road we found another pull off which had this amazing view of Francis Bay and Maho Bay.  I wanted to see Francis Bay since it was my Dad’s middle name but this overlook ended up being my absolute favorite!

Isn’t it amazing??  I loved all the ships that had dropped anchor as well as just the views!  We never did quite figure out how to get to Francis Bay but we did manage to get to Maho Bay by luck when a car pulled out of one of the spots (they were in high demand)!

Maho Bay also had a “skinny” beach but it was so beautiful and a bit more relaxed there.  Since it was further from Cruz Bay where all the ferries come in, there wasn’t as many people.

After all of our exploring we ended up back in Cruz Bay and I did a little bit of shopping.  We stopped at Mongoose Junction where I picked up the SOFTEST sweatshirt at Made in St. John before we headed to the highly recommended The Tap Room where the St. John Brewers have their beers available on tap.  If you are ever there we both HIGHLY recommend it not only for the beer but for the food as well!

We took one of the last ferries back and luckily made it back to our resort just in time to take in this beautiful sunset!

The next day was the wedding day!  I finally took my camera out of hiding and captured a few pictures from the balcony before leaving.

After the wedding we saw our final sunset on St. Thomas and it was a beauty!

One of my favorite pictures of all of the trip!

On our final morning I took my camera back out and captured a few pictures of the Marriott Frenchman’s Reef before packing everything to head off to the airport.

The infinity pool was a popular place, especially at sunset which happened when we were here almost right smack between these two trees.

The resort was beautiful and the views were amazing!

I love palm trees!

I couldn’t resist visiting where the weddings take place here at the Marriott, maybe some day I’ll return to photograph one here!

The aisle to the gazebo is beautiful!