Times; They Are a Changing

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.

Suits You

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!!

Things Are Happening Again

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.

It’s Booked!

A very pleased Scott and Julie here. We are happy to announce that we have completed the first stage of booking our wedding. Our cruise is booked and the deposit paid and our wedding date has been reserved. We simply have to wait for P&O to call us back in a couple of days time to collect our wedding deposit.

So, now for the details... Our wedding day will be the 7th July 2010 at 2 pm local time (1 pm here in Britain), we will be setting sail from Southampton on board the Arcadia on the 4th July 2010 and heading off to the Baltic for two weeks.

We are currently very excited, and can’t stop smiling. When we have calmed down, and know more, we will post further details.

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.