The Wait Is Almost Over

We’ve been a bit quiet with the posts lately, and the main reason for that is that there hasn’t been any news for a couple of weeks. We’ve done everything we can until booking day. Well, booking day is tomorrow so our waiting is nearly done. We have mixed emotions of excitement and apprehension. Words cannot describe how crushed we would feel if it turns out that we cannot book our dream wedding. So please, wish us luck.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Let me start by recapping where we were one week ago. Our wish was to get married onboard the Oceana, the very ship we got engaged on, a ship of special meaning to us. Our hope for a destination was northern Europe (neither of us cope well in the heat so the Mediterranean during the summer wasn’t an option) and ideally Norway, but with backup choices of the Baltic, the southern side of the Channel and North Sea (Germany, Holland and Belgium) or even a rather appealing cruise that stopped at Falmouth, Dublin and France. We had gleaned all these itineraries from the last three years worth of cruise brochures and were hopeful that between that little lot we would have about 10 shots at our dream wedding cruise.

We were wrong... Yesterday we went from the elation of finally seeing the 2010 itineraries to the low feeling of the carpet being pulled out from under us when we discovered that the Oceana will be spending that summer entirely in the Mediterranean! Crestfallen would put it mildly. However, there was one glimmer of hope, we had already picked out a backup choice of cruise ship, the Arcadia (I’ve already been on the Arcadia once before and personally think she is a fine ship). Looking at her itineraries, there wasn’t much choice and we are pretty much limited to one option but being a 14 night cruise (we’ll have to pull our belts in for a bit) there is more of a chance of getting our wedding. We’ve been doing a lot of hurried phoning around and do have a plan of action that we are very happy with. Not wanting to jinx things I am not going to say the date of the cruise just yet, or even the destination. You’ll have to wait until the 22nd April to find out, then we should know if we can have our cruise wedding or not and we will most certainly be posting to hopefully give you all the good news.

Two Steps Nearer

Finally, P&O have release the date that they will start taking bookings for next year. We now know that on the 22nd April we will be able to try and book our wedding cruise. So, we will be taking the day off of work; to sit by the phone and attempt to reach P&O's Weddings at Sea department at 8:55. Please keep everything crossed and hope for the best for us, we need all the good luck we can get.

Now we are waiting for the itineraries to be published, so that we can draw up our short list of cruises that we would like to get married on.

Stay tuned for more news soon.

On The Other Foot

Ok, I couldn’t resist staying with the shoe pun titles. Julie wasn’t the only one to make a wedding purchase while we were on holiday. The day before Julie found her wedding shoes in Winchester, I found my wedding shoes in Hedge End. Ok, I’m a bloke so what can I say about my new shoes, well they are black and they are shinny, enough said. However, one thing I will add is my surprise at Marks & Spencer’s measurements, I’m a size 9 sometimes a 9 ½, so I was a little put out when I found my best fit was size 8! Has anyone else noticed that I’m shrinking?

On a different note, with regards getting our wedding booked, we are still waiting for P&O to pull their finger out. It seems they are more interested in their new super liner the Azura to be doing a little thing like releasing booking dates and itineraries for their other ships. So we continue to wait.

If The Shoe Fits

Well, in reference to my earlier post, I said I was leaving all wedding stuff alone whilst on holiday, unless any footwear caught my attention while passing a shoe shop. Well, my attention was caught.

I was wandering with Scott up Winchester high street and we happened to be passing a Clarkes, so we popped in on the off chance and there they were, sitting on the shelf calling out to me. They were the perfect pair of satin cream sandals, they were just right in every way. Then a further miracle occurred, they had them in my size and they fitted like a glove. On top of all that, they were well within budget range too. So that is now one more thing to cross off of the to do list.

Bad Timing

A non wedding post today.

Julie has already mentioned that we are off on our hols on Monday, and very much looking forward to it we are too. Err, did I sound a bit like Yoda there? So, we are all set, as packed as much as we can be this far in advance, all destinations plotted on the sat nav... and then bang, my sat nav (which is also my phone) decides to die on Friday afternoon! I tried ordering a replacement, the website said it would come today but alas they sent it via the wrong service and we can expect it to arrive on Monday. Quite simply, if it doesn’t arrive at 8 in the morning, I won’t have time to set it up before we go away. So it’s back to the old fashioned method of map reading for us this week, it is times like this I am glad that I am cautious and had already printed out directions for each of our destinations. So, wish us luck as we try to find our way around the rural parts of Hampshire. See you on the flip side.

Wedding Fair

It has continued to be a quiet week for the wedding, with little more than a week until we hopefully find out what date P&O start taking bookings for 2010, it very much feels like the calm before the storm (I’m sure you all know that eerie quiet and calmness that you feel inside when you are waiting for something important).

In the meantime, we have one event to keep us occupied and that is a wedding fair at the Avisford Park Hotel (those of you reading this should know it) this coming Sunday. Obviously there are plenty of things that we don’t need to worry about looking at (given our chosen wedding venue), but with 40 stalls there should be a few odds and ends of interest, most importantly the things we need to make our reception party a memorable event.