Apologies for the delay, but due to popular demand here is the final chapter in our wedding blog.
After a busy embarkation day and two days spent exploring the chilly and damp delights of Bruges and the hair-raising but drier delights of The Netherlands, we finally got to our wedding day.
There was an early panic when the ship's salon called to say that Julie's hair and make-up artist (who had performed a trial run two days earlier) was ill and unable to do her hair and make-up for the day. Fortunately the rest of the salon's staff stepped up to the mark and did an even better job than the trial run. Our ceremony was performed on time and without incident by Captain Kevin Oprey, it was a quiet and intimate ceremony and perfect in every way. We then spent an hour having our photo taken around the ship before retiring for a short rest. Dinner was the Captain's Welcome On Board Party so we didn't look too out of place dressed up for the evening, but we did have to endure the embarrassment of the restaurant's waiters singing Congratulations to us.
For the rest of our honeymoon, we spent the time exploring beautiful Norway and spectacular Iceland. If you ever get the chance to visit the north of Iceland, do so, it is something special.
Our return journey was not without incident, from the night we left Reykjavik and for the next two days we endured Force 10 and 9 winds. The calmness of the final leg along the English Channel was very welcome.
Finally we arrived back in Britain and they all lived happily ever after.
Fin
Only a few days ago I was saying that our paperwork could come any time in the next month. It came sooner than I thought it would, Saturday morning I was greeted with the thud of a large brown envelope hitting my hall carpet. Seeing that the envelope was address to both Julie and myself I quickly called Julie before she headed to work and opened it with her on the phone. We were both very excited that our forms had finally arrived (one day shy of four months to our cruise).
At first glance the forms looked quite simple and straight forward to fill in, but as with all paperwork, when we read it more closely it raised more questions than we had originally thought of. So my first job on Monday morning will be to call the Weddings at Sea department to find out just what we need to put in all these little boxes.
We have fourteen days to get the forms back to Weddings at Sea, then our next step will be paying for the remainder of the wedding balance. Note, this is a small bill in comparison to when we need to pay the cruise balance in April.
With nothing much to happen now regarding the wedding for the next few weeks, plus with our new windows hopefully being installed (no computer jokes please, I've already heard them) during the first week of March, we will probably be quiet on here for a little while again.
It's been a busy couple of months for us. We've been designing our inserts for our invitation cards (keep an eye on the post towards the end of March) and are ready to print them soon. We've also been designing our new kitchen, to be installed while we are away on our cruise. To top all that off we are having new windows fitted in a couple of weeks time.
Thankfully, most of our remaining wedding details will be taken care of for us, all we have to do is fill out a few forms that we expect to receive sometime in the next month. While on the subject of the wedding, we now know which terminals we will be embarking from and disembarking to, for those that are interested these will be the Mayflower Terminal and the Ocean Terminal respectively. It will be a busy day in Southampton as besides the Arcadia (not a small ship herself) there will also be the Ventura, the Grand Princess and the Independence of The Seas... all of them are leviathans in their own rights.
On a final note, a general show of hands has set our Hag Party date for Sunday the 2nd of May. More details to follow shortly.
It’s been a while since our last post, the main reason for this, there hasn’t been any wedding news. However it is now time for an update.
Firstly, last Sunday we stopped at Boarhunt Flowermill on our way back from a lovely holiday on Devon. Boarhunt Flowermill is a shop that specialises in silk flowers of all types and was where Julie purchased her main part of her bouquet earlier this year. On this particular visit we were able to find a button hole to finish of my own ensemble.
Secondly, and more importantly, last Tuesday Julie collected her wedding dress. We had a call at then end of our week away to say that the dress was in, what a perfect ending to what had already been a wonderful holiday.
A short while ago I received a bombshell of a phone call from P&O’s Weddings at Sea Department, this took the form of a phone call telling me that the cruise our wedding was booked on had been cancelled! I received the unwelcome news in the morning while at work and the rest of that day is a bit of a haze. The first thing I needed to do was break the bad news to Julie, who was also at work. We talked about it and spent the rest of the afternoon and the evening (Julie was working late) discussing it either over the phone or by text. Eventually by the next morning we had come up with a new plan and phoned P&O back to make a new booking.
We will still be getting married on the MV Arcadia but on the cruise that was to sail before ours. This means a completely new set of destinations and even a different duration. We sail from the 19th June to the 4th July (15 nights) and travel to Belgium and The Netherlands before our wedding on the 22nd June, then continuing on to Norway and Iceland for our honeymoon. We are even happier with this cruise than the one we originally booked (the only reason we hadn’t booked this one in the first place was that felt we couldn’t afford it but the kind people at Weddings at Sea offered to honour our original booking price). We are both very excited about seeing Iceland and the chance to see the midnight sun.
Further development on my wedding suit. We discovered how much it would cost to hire an Edward suit for two weeks, it wasn’t cheap and of course it was even more expensive to have one made. So, in a drastic rethink, I have decided to wear a lounge suit instead, and picked a very nice one up in M&S last weekend. So I now have my outfit for the wedding. Hurrah!!
We are both still celebrating the booking of our wedding cruise, but wanted to take the time to post details of our progress since Wednesday.
Our wedding is now no longer in its 14 day courtesy holding period and now as far as the wedding on the ship goes, we have nothing more to do until around March next year. However, that doesn’t mean there still aren’t things for us to do in the interim.
Firstly, and maybe a little early, we have started looking at the excursion for the cruise. Given the number of ports that we’ll be visiting and how many excursions there are at some of those ports, the list forms a book in its own right.
The next thing we have on the cards is for this Monday, we will be visiting the first of our possible venues for the reception party.
Meanwhile, don’t forget, Julie starts her wedding dress hunt in just over 2 week’s time.
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