Taking a Small Break

It’s been quiet this week on the search for wedding stuff, however it’s been both busy and a bit stressful at work so felt I could not really cope with any more on my plate this week. I’m finding this wedding stuff a bit stressful at times too, I expect I am no different from most other brides to be. Thankfully I have Scott to help relax and reassure me that everything will turn out alright in the end (I’d be lost without him he is my rock), just wish P&O would hurry up with their release of dates etc.

On a brighter note it won’t be long until our holiday and our Rural Retreats cottage getaway. The only wedding stuff I intend to do is looking for a pair of shoes and that will only be if I am passing any decent shoe shops. I have decided it’s best to have the shoes before I try on any wedding dresses (I aim to try and make an appointment in May for that) this may seem early to some but the dresses I have my eyes on are in a collection that changes in July and they don’t stock back dated catalogue dresses, so don’t want to miss out.

Magazines and Fashion

As Julie has mentioned, I’ve been looking through the wedding magazines too. This is for the most part an attempt to get some ideas for some of the finer details of the wedding, and also to give me a better understanding of what we need to do in preparation for the wedding. I say attempt, I’ve found that the magazines are very much targeted at the bride and have very little content for the groom. I’m sure they are missing a trick; there must be plenty of grooms that would like help and advice about their big day.

Fortunately, the one thing I no longer need help with is my suit. As I’ve said before, I’ve settled on an Edward jacket. I’ve now chosen the colour and material (to be revealed) but most importantly I’ve found my tailor for supplying the suit, and that is Andrew McDowall in Chichester (I didn’t like the suits in the shop next to my office). I’m very pleased with finding this tailor, they have the exact style I want for the wedding day and they were very friendly and courteous, nothing was too much trouble for them, despite my only going in on a simple fact finding mission.

A little at a time, the pieces of our wedding are starting to fall in to place.

Wedding Ideas, The Search Continues

My flat is now beginning to look a bit like a newsagents, with countless numbers of wedding magazines lying around the place. We have been scouring the magazines (yes even Scott, never thought I’d see the day) for ideas on all the odds and ends that won’t be arranged by P&O, such as dresses, flowers, etc. Talking of the flowers, I’m considering taking the silk path, this seems to us to make the most sense, neither of us like the idea of having to care for a bouquet of fresh flowers in our cabin for over a day, not to mention getting them safely on board with all our other luggage to carry.

A Step Nearer

There have been some developments at P&O... On Sunday Julie spotted that P&O have set up a new Weddings at Sea website and have also published a new weddings brochure. Needless to say we have been pouring over the brochure to get any new information we can.

Next add the discovery that around the 16th March, P&O should be announcing the dates in April that they’ll start taking bookings for 2010; we are bouncing up and down with excitement! It finally feels like things are happening and our wedding is getting nearer.

The Waiting Game

The two questions we get asked most often are: “when’s the wedding?” and “any news on the wedding?”

One friend who shall remain anonymous, you know how you are, advises that we get a couple of badges printed with the date of the wedding and the location of the honeymoon on it, and then we should wear the badges all the time. I like the sentiment, but we don’t know when the wedding is yet. Therein lays our problem...

When we tell people that we don’t yet know when our wedding is going to be other than we hope 2010, we quite often get funny looks. The thing is we are playing a waiting game; in fact we are on the first of several waiting games that we must play.

P&O Cruises, the cruise line that owns the ship we wish to get married on, do not publish the summer 2010 cruise itineraries until some unspecified date during the last two weeks of March. So, first we must wait until the second half of March and then start scouring the cruise blogs for news on the itinerary release. However, we still will not be able to book. P&O will not start taking bookings on the summer 2010 cruises until late April, the exact date will be announced when the itineraries are released. So we will have approximately a month to choose which cruise we want for our wedding and pick a couple of backup choices as well. Then it will be action stations for us, we will call P&O’s Weddings at Sea department as soon as their lines open on the day that we can book, they will make a reservation for us and ask us to fill out a form and get back to them within 14 days (we will be sending it next day delivery on the date we make our reservation). Then we’ll have to wait again, this time we’ll be waiting to find out if we have managed to get the wedding we want. This is where I ask all of you to please keep everything crossed for us, as it will be devastating for both of us if we are told that all our choices have gone to other couples.

The reason for this uncertainty, for why it might not go our way... There just aren’t that many weddings that they can perform onboard our chosen ship going to our chosen location. We have possibly limited ourselves quite a lot by choosing the MV Oceana and a destination of Norway, she only goes there about 3 times in the summer, each time for just a week. With weddings only being performed on sea days, but not the last day of the cruise and only 2 weddings a day, that means we have only 6 possible chances at our dream wedding.

Unfortunately, for now, there is nothing we can do but wait, and hope.

Wedding Clothes

So, my first proper post on my blog (I’m not counting the welcome message), and I’m afraid it is going to be about clothes! You may wish to skip this post.

While we fill time, waiting until we can actually book our wedding (more on that in a later post), we have been individually trying to find out what we can and choose what we will be wearing for our wedding. Poor Julie has the worst job, so many different styles of wedding dresses and she can’t show them to me for my opinion. My job is a little easier, just…

So, I’m going to wear a suit. That seems straight forward, and before we had decided on a cruise wedding, I had pretty much decided on the traditional morning tails. All I needed to know was Julie’s choice of colour scheme for my waistcoat and cravat. The wedding cruise kind of put a new light on things, traditional morning tails just wouldn’t look right for wandering around a ship. I would look more than a little out of place. So, the research starts, what other kind of suits are there, what kind of coats or jackets will look right? I can tell you, I now know more about wedding suits and jackets than I thought possible. However, I eventually, with Julie’s help, have finally settled on an Edward jacket.

It doesn’t end there. What, you thought it would? I had hoped to buy my suit rather than hire it (price permitting of course) but nowhere sells them, hire only. Which is a shame, I had hoped to wear the same suit for our party after we get back. But with hire periods of 10 days, I’m pretty much going to be picking up the suit the day before we set off and returning it as soon as we get back… I don’t want to think about what we’ll have to do if we can only get a cruise that’s longer than a week!

What is good news, my office is two doors down from a wedding hire shop! As soon as the weather improves I’ll be popping in to make my enquiries with them. It’ll certainly make collection of the suit easy for me.

Welcome to Scott & Julie’s Wedding Blog

Welcome to our wedding blog.

We’ll be posting pretty much anything we can think of to do with our wedding, be it news about our big day, thoughts about the preparation for the event, or just plain simple quirky observations about what is involved.