Alright, gals! I've left you hanging long enough! I guess it's time to sit down and write some TR posts instead of PJ posts! I tell ya, getting back into a normal life can be difficult when you spend YEARS (we were engaged 2.25 years before we tied the knot!) planning a wedding! I don't know what to do with all of my wedding stuff- I'm STILL not even fully unpacked!
I'm not entirely sure where I left you off, but the day before embarkation (Wednesday) was a busy day! My brother and sister-in-law had flown in Tuesday night and joined me for my "bachelor/bachelorette" party at Jelly Rolls (Yay!). Wednesday morning I had to go to the Dolphin to extend my rental car (side note: I STILL haven't gotten my car back from the shop yet!) then I went to Epcot with my Bro & S-i-L to let them into the parks. Then I had to deal with switching my family over from Boardwalk to Old Key West- making sure luggage got transferred, checking in at OKW, speaking with the manager about having the ESCOT bus pick up our party the following day... Had some lunch, and stole my MOH to PACK PACK PACK! OMG, Packing was the WORST. Do yourself a favor and make a packing list, and pack whatever you can AHEAD of time. I'm a bit of a procrastinator, obviously. (The ONLY thing I forgot to pack was my "Mrs. Pariona" Hanger that I made. Everything else went so well that I'm not terribly upset about that- I didn't even think of it until we were driving back from the port!) Packing literally took my entire afternoon and evening! I eventually took my MOH back to OKW to meet up with her mom who'd just flown in, and I hung out in the Grand Villa that my mom graciously booked (using all of this year's and next year's DVC points!) waiting as all of my friends and family arrived! Since Michael was working at Saratoga, he met us there- My mom insisted on repacking the favor bags which I'd previously packed into a HUGE suitcase because she didn't think I could carry that onboard with me (It's not an airplane!
) I ended up going to Publix to pick up $30 of pastries and breakfast items, then dropping the food back off at OKW for the bus group. After we went back home, we had to pack for Michael! We got to bed LATE that night! Not much sleep for us!
Embarkation day (Thursday) we got up probably at 7 or 8 to pack up the car with everything. We had one huge suitcase, two smaller suitcases and a duffel bag, PLUS our wedding attire. After we were packed, we had to drop the rental car back off at Alamo @ Dolphin. Afterwards, we headed over to OKW to see off our guests! Actually, I was going room-to-room hurrying people along! The ESCOT bus picked everyone up from the front parking lot by the lobby building. They arrived around 8 or 8:15 and my mom stayed with the bus with her list of bus attendees! We told all of our guests to be at/on the bus at 8:30 or 8:45 and ESCOT knew they needed to be rolling by 9! I think they left closer to 8:45 (Michael and I drove) and we all made it to the port with enough time to get in line before they let people into the terminal at 10:30. Michael and I parked at Disney's parking out of convenience- any other cruise, we'd use Park 'n Cruise, an off property parking location that busses you to and from the terminal. They're about $5/day instead of the $60 we paid to park in Disney's parking garage. We dropped our checked BAG off at the curb (we had to carry everything else onboard. It was ROUGH! one suitcase each, plus a duffel bag AND our wedding attire! My arms were shaking from carrying my dress so long, and it was only 6.5 pounds!) We parked on the 3rd floor or the garage and took the bridge over to the terminal. My bus group got there after us and waited down on the curb, and they all got in sooner because they had more security stations set up downstairs! Michael and I both set off the metal detectors, but then again, we were both already dressed up for our legal ceremony! Me in my chiffon dress (which was apparently too big and a little see-through! Whoops!) and Michael in his silver suit.
We checked in at the
Castaway Club line, and we should've been given a 1st boarding group card, but somebody somewhere along the line didn't add that to our reservation. Dummies! We're the wedding couple! We get to go on first! Michael went over to the concierge desk, and they looked into it and got us the "1" boarding pass instead! (We weren't first, we were second. Oh well! It was nice to not wait in ANOTHER line!) Then we waited what seemed like an eternity in the cruise terminal (in actuality it was 30 minutes!) so we just went from group to group, family to family, friends to friends. Lots of cell phone pictures taken! Fivepin's friend was sitting next to some of my family and she's the one who snapped that first photo and sent it to her! (Thanks again for posting that!) We put on our bride/groom ears in the terminal and wore them into the boat until the legal ceremony. I wish I'd been wearing my blue heels and carrying my blue feather bouquet for all of those "pre-legal ceremony" photos that were taken, but until we got our stateroom we were lugging around all of that luggage, I was happy to be wearing flats!
Okay, once we got on the boat, we went immediately to guest services and dropped off his tux and my dress. Once my mom boarded, she dropped off her dress to be steamed- now since guest services weren't listening to us, they charged her steaming to OUR bill, not hers! It took a lot of work on that last night getting that situation worked out! After that, we pretty much spent a while in the atrium waiting and waiting for a lot of our families to board. Michael doesn't see his family often, so we waited for them to board before we headed to Cabanas. I headed straight for the shrimp and crab legs! I felt silly wearing a pretty white dress with a long french manicure and digging in with my hands into messy seafood! I don't care, it was my guilty pleasure that day! Our rooms were ready right at 1:15 and our luggage was there when we arrived! It was a huge relief to drop our bags and collect ourselves! It wasn't until my photographers had called me around 2/2:15 that I realized, OH HOLY COW, we gotta meet the wedding coordinator at 3! I called my hair stylist and she came down and quickly curled my hair! I put on the sexy blue heels and grabbed my pretty blue bouquet and we rushed out the door! It wasn't until we were downstairs that we remembered that we forgot our champagne flutes and cake topper in the stateroom! I should've just left them at the guest services desk when I got onboard!
Now here's the fun part. We all know that you're allowed to bring TWO witnesses to your legal ceremony, right? I was A-okay with this, and we'd decided that it was going to be my BFF/MOH and Michael's Brother (since his BM a friend, not family). There was no way my mom was going to miss out, so she came along too! Well, word got out that we were having our legal ceremony, so of course, we had about 10-12 additional people show up to see it go down! NONONONO!
They took us from guest relations to Royal Palace. EVERYBODY FOLLOWED! Ugh!!! I think now would be a good time to mention that all of my friends who came along had consumed several drinks of the day and were... "Sauced." They were being rowdy and got themselves "kicked out" (Even though we were ONLY ever supposed to have 2 witnesses!) Once in RP, they took us to the private dining room. It was the coordinator, Laura with a
DCL officiant, my MOH, Michael's Brother, and my mom. Very small, very quiet. This is where I actually freaked out a bit- not that I DIDN'T want to marry Michael, but because "OMG, this is really happening RIGHT NOW!" Michael took my hands during the vows because apparently my hands were shaking! Anyways, had the quick legal ceremony, then she took our wedding license, had our witnesses sign it, she signed it, and she notarized it. They then took it to mail it to the state for us, and we had 3 or 4 copies of the marriage license delivered to our room that night in a pretty folder with some little certificate DCL printed out. Honestly, I haven't looked at it since it showed up in the room- As I said, Still haven't completely unpacked! After the legal ceremony, we left the private dining room and had a seat at a regular table in RP. We chose Table #82, that gorgeous 10-top round table in the center of the dining room and we grabbed out photographers to have an overview with Laura. She went over all of the choices that I'd sent to DCL, and went over a general outline of the timing of the event. I'd sent my MOH to my stateroom to pick up the cake topper and champagne flutes so we could give them to Laura! She asked if we'd had any more decorations or if we had any questions or requests. She said that a lot of brides could've gotten MORE assistance if they'd just ASKED. You know Disney will try to accommodate you if they can!
So, after the legal ceremony and meeting with Laura @ 3, we had our muster drill at 4. We were "O" back in Evolution. The only people in my wedding party in our muster station was my brothers & sisters-in-law! It was good to be able to see them and sit with them for the boring drill! Luckily, Evolution is set up with a sound system, so they performed the drill with a mic over the PA system instead of using the bull-horn! This muster drill was different from the other muster drills I've attended. This time they would explain something in English (pre-recorded, of course) then they'd repeat the same thing in Spanish. I kept spacing out when they were speaking English and "coming to" when they were speaking in Spanish! Michael told me that he fell asleep!!! Luckily our last cruise was in January, so we'd experienced a muster drill attentively somewhat recently!
It was a mad house after the muster drill since most of the ship was on deck 4! We waited for the crowds to subside in Skyline for about 10 minutes! I think we stopped in our stateroom again to unpack before heading up to the sail away party around 5. The humidity and wind RUINED my curls and my hairdresser scolded me later that night!
We'd made 6:00 reservations at Palo and had Scottish William as our server. He was wonderful and the food was wonderful... except... the exact same thing happened to me just after sailing away that happened on my last cruise- I got very very seasick while we passed over the gulf stream! I ended up leaving early to lay down, got some sea-sick pills from guest services, and I chewed some anti-nausea ginger gum (I love the stuff, I'm going to keep it around ANY time I'm feeling nauseous! Tastes great, too!) and eventually I felt well enough to greet our guests down in Enchanted Garden. Michael was admittedly better at socializing between tables that night than I was! I kept going back and forth between feeling better and feeling queasy until I got back into our stateroom after dinner (#2!) to lay down. I think one of our favorite things about DCL is the unlimited on-demand Disney movies! We put one on and watched it until we fell asleep... Probably not very long at all! I surprisingly slept VERY well that night considering my WEDDING day was just one sleep away!
Well, there you have it. Day one! I'm off work on Tues/Weds, I hope to get more typed up for you by then!! For now, here's a quick pic to gaze upon! I didn't get many (good) photos on the first and last day of the cruise, unfortunately. I am, however, DYING to get the professional photos back from Lora and Danielle! I also would LOVE for my friends and family to post more pictures or e-mail me what they have, but I haven't gotten many more photos since I posted last.
On a brighter note, we booked our honeymoon/1-year anniversary cruise! It's the September 21st Eastern Caribbean sailing on the Fantasy next year! Our friends (getting hitched in November) loved the wedding cruise so much that they booked it shortly after returning home! (I wish we'd all booked it while ON the cruise to get that $100 stateroom credit! Darn!) So we'll both be celebrating our belated honeymoons together and we'll have awesome people to sit with at dinner! I literally spent two days staring at the DCL website comparing stateroom categories, looking up each "room report" and deciding where I wanted to stay. I started in one room and changed the same day... then I changed the next day, too! Now we're deck 6 forward on the starboard side, just on the other side of our friends (they're port). I think I'm happy with this choice, but who knows! There's still time to change if I can get a good rate on a corner room