Well we're back, and still swimming under a sea of laundry, souvenirs, etc. We did the 15 night Panama Canal Repo, plus a few days at
Disneyland before and 2 days at Universal after the cruise, so we had 10 suitcases maxed out for the 5 of us!
The vow renewal was really great. We were concerned that we wouldn't be able to make it to
Castaway Cay, because of Gustav and Hannah, but we actually went between the storms and had smooth sailing.
We were told to meet in the atrium at 10:00 AM, and that they would get Linda & Hailey from the stateroom at 10:10. When we got there to meet with Nicole, the wedding coordinator (who was great), it was pouring on the island. She said we would wait until 10:30 and then decide how to proceed. At 10:30 it was still raining, but Nicole had been in touch with the bridge and said that it was the tail of the storm, and it looked like a good size break between it and the next one. We waited 15 more minutes, then decided to go for it. (I did find out that if we weren't able to have the ceremony on Castaway Cay, we would have been refunded the extra $1000 that it cost to have it on the island.)
By the time we got to the gangway, it stopped raining and the sky was starting to clear. It was like a wind tunnel getting off the ship! We made our way on the little golf carts to the far end of the family beach, near the Heads Up Bar, where they had the podium and chairs set up. It was a beautiful location, with the Magic as the perfect backdrop.
The sky cleared up beautifully and the sun came out. It was really hot, but at least there was a breeze. (OK, it was more like pre-hurricane gale force winds!) Our younger son tried to find a little shade as we waited.
Before long, the nicely decorated golf cart showed up, bringing Linda and Hailey.
Hailey walked down the "aisle" first, and then Linda followed.
Did I mention it was windy? Here's an action shot of Linda's veil in the air. It made it through most of the ceremony, but towards the end, Nicole stepped in without missing a beat and plucked it off before someone lost an eye!
The ceremony itself was really nice. The minister seemed to have a little trouble reading as his pages were blowing. And I was afraid that he forgot our names at the end, but I guess he was going for dramatic pause. We weren't asked if we wanted to add anything, which was probably a good thing. I had some things in mind, but Linda said she wouldn't have been able to get through without crying if we did that.
After the ceremony, we went over to the pier by the bar for some pictures with our family and our guests.
Then the kids and our guests went back to the ship, and we were taken to a few spots around the island for pictures of the two of us. We had asked ahead of time about having the kids in the pictures too, but we were told they really don't do that because there's not enough room in the cart for the 3 of them. Since the kids were having squinting issues because of the sun, it was OK anyway. If this is important to anybody, you may want to make it known well in advance and see if they can work with you on this.
Here are a few of our pictures:
We found out later that our guests had to wait for 30 minutes in the tender lobby, because they were inspecting the elevators and all four of them were unavailable. I don't blame them for not wanting to walk up from deck 1 to deck 10 in their nice dress clothes. Nicole and her assistant Vanessa were probably more mad than our guests were. (They're an easy-going group.)
Since it was a Castaway Cay ceremony and not a sea day, we were able to have our cake and champagne in Palo and have the kids there with us. We had the Fairy Tale Cuvee, which we love! {Just as an FYI, while onboard, they also introduced a new sparkling wine. It's called Magical, I think it's from the same winery (but not 100% sure), and it's a red sparkling wine. We had it with dinner a few nights and loved it.}
Because we were so sweaty and windblown, Linda stopped to wet down and slick back her hair, which explains the change in hairdo. A note to everyone, have someone bring along a brush and whatever else you need to freshen up.
Someone else aksed about having servers attend. We really developed a great friendship with our servers over the 2-week trip, so we asked Dwight and Alenka if they would be able to serve for our celebration. We then set it up through our coordinator and head server. The nice thing was that we had a Palo server doing the actual serving, so Dwight and Alenka were able to mingle with us (and they even got permission to toast with us!)
For our cake, we choose white cake with buttercream filling. The fondant was actually OK to eat, which surprised me. And the actual cake and filling were really delicious. This was one of the things we were most looking forward to. Linda has a severe allergy to any oat products. Even though we told the baker several times about it at our wedding, we found out 2 days before hand that they used a flour that contained oat flour in it, so she couldn't eat our wedding cake or groom's cake. So 14 years later, we finally got to feed each other some wedding cake, which we only faked at our original wedding.
We had our "first" dance. We danced to "Beautiful in My Eyes" by Joshua Kadison. And then we danced (for a little bit anyway) with the kids. We had to bring along a CD, so we put some other songs on it that they played as well.
After we finished, our guests took the kids and they all went to the beach. Linda and I went with the photographer to take pictures all around the ship. When we booked, we reserved a second hour of photography for $85, and I think it was well worth it. We had Jovan, who really knew what he was doing. Here are a few of those shots (by the way, did I mention it was windy?
)
We ended up buying the CD with all 362 of our pictures. Here's a link to them if anyone is interested:
http://s150.photobucket.com/albums/s82/whattawack/vow renewal/?albumview=slideshow
If you have any specific questions, feel free to PM me.
