Formal Night - Before Kids

We love to cruise! Shortly after our honeymoon, Dave and I began saving to take a trip for our fifth anniversary. Like most newlyweds, we had to pinch our pennies so we started saving right away. 

Our honeymoon was memorable in the sense we go chased out of St. Thomas by a hurricane. The island was beautiful and we wanted to go back, but the most economical way was to cruise there. Our fifth anniversary was October 16, 2004. In February of that year it looked very possible that Dave would be selected to start training at the NYSP Academy that summer, which meant that we wouldn't be able to travel in the fall. So rather than not take the trip, Dave booked our first cruise for March 2004, and we celebrated early. It was a wonderful trip and only made us want to travel and cruise more.

This layout shows a picture from our Southern Caribbean Cruise. That was one of our favorites - five beautiful ports of call and seven days to soak up the sun and enjoy some turquoise water and white sand beaches - and enjoy being with one another. We had some awesome adventures which included a trip to an ostrich farm.

This was the second formal night and once again, Dave looked like a lobster. We tried to be so careful with the sunscreen, and on every cruise we were a little less burnt, but still Dave ended up with a red face. Sun burnt or not, Dave enjoyed Formal Night - even if I made him pose for pictures. His favorite pictures were the candid ones. I was just happy to have pictures of the two of us on vacation that weren't "selfies".

Scrapbooking Tip:

I don't usually do a layout with just one picture, but Formal Night pictures are an exception. Because we were dressed up I wanted to keep the layout simple. I picked a mono-chromatic color scheme for a couple of reasons. First it complimented the color of my dress and Dave's tie. Also, I wanted to keep the focus on the picture not on the scrapbook page itself.