Getting Married

I've never been one to dream of the flowing white dress, the church full of people... I don't like being the center of attention. The fact that there's books and magazines dedicated to the "art" of planning a wedding intimidates me. And I've seen how stressful the planning can be. Nope. I didn't want any of it. Luckily I found a guy who's not into all that either.

Plans are being made, however...
We decided to get married on a cruise. It'll eliminate the problem of where to hold it since my family's in the Chicago area, and his is in Canada. Also, they have these packages -you just pick one and they do everything else. No decisions on flowers, food, seating -none of that. All we have to come up with is what to wear. I'm thinking Ed will wear a plain suit, and I'll find a simple white dress at Marshall Field's or something.

By Tuesday, January 18th we had it narrowed down to Royal Caribbean's Eastern Caribbean cruise aboard the Navigator of the Seas, so I emailed the travel agent that we used for our last cruise (Fran of Beemster Travel). She's a little pushy, but she got us a free upgrade to a room with a window last time, and I really want to offload some of the organization for this cruise. I'm hoping to get a block of rooms so everyone's close by, and we have some coordinating to do with my Grandma and Ed's Mom as they have special needs.

Fran called me back shortly after I had sent the email. She confirmed the info I gave her and told me she'd call Royal Caribbean and get back to me with the info I requested. She called me back on Wednesday and gave me a price of $819 per person with taxes and port charges, and told me that for every 8 cabins booked we'd get one free. She said she'd send me information on the wedding packages and pricing, and that she was still looking into the medical equipment we'd need to rent in Miami, etc.

On Thursday Fran sent me a proof of a "flyer" that she'd be mailing me (on wedding paper) to give to anyone we were going to invite on the cruise with us. It was just a regular signup sheet with "Steeve/Marshall Wedding Cruise" written on it, but hey -it'd work. When she called about the flyer I told her that we were a little unhappy with the price. $819 sounded really high, and I was afraid that some people may not be able to go at that price. She called back later that day and said she could knock $50 off per person bringing the price down to about $770 which is more in line I think.

Saturday Ed called his Mom to tell her about the cruise. We had told her before that this is what we were going to do, but he wanted to tell her we had it all picked out and we gave her pricing to pass onto the rest of the family. We also needed addresses for the family so we can send out the invites when we get them from Fran. Ed's Mom said she'd mail us the addresses. :-P It's going to take awhile for them to get here...

Sunday, January 23rd my brother called and asked for links about the cruise, the ship, the ports, etc. I figured other people would want to know too, and it'd be nice to email Ed's family with the details about the cruise (including pricing) so they could start figuring out if they'd be able to make it or not (without relying on Ed's Mom to pass the information along). So, I sat down and composed a generic email for everyone and sent it to anyone who's email address Ed or I had. It turns out we don't have email addresses for hardly any of my family...

Now it's all a waiting game. February 18th is the deadline to get people's first $75 deposit for the cruise in, so that's when I'll know how many people will be coming. After that's figured out I gotta try to forget about it until next January. That'll be tough. I wanna go RIGHT NOW! It's 30 degrees here, 80 in San Juan and St Thomas, 66 in Nassau, and 84 in St Maarten.

Oh and the ring... I'm waiting for that too. I have the diamond. We should be getting Ed's cheap ring today so we can verify his ring size, then we'll send the diamond out for setting and get our bands. I can't wait to get the ring. The diamond is beautiful!