Hi guys new to this forum, We are doing our 2nd cruise with P&O in a couple of weeks on board Arcadia, our first cruise was our wedding on Aurora, conducted by the wonderful Captain Ian Hutley. I have to say the experience was amazing, it was my fella's dream come true to be married by the captain on a ship. We met up with Captain Hutley by accident having a late night drink and a ciggy (class I know) he came up to us and asked how we were enjoying our cruise, told him first time, and see you on Monday....oh you're one of them are you.... hahaha and thereafter stayed chatting with us for a further 10 mins then disappeared. After the ceremony itself, Told the Captain that our first day off the ship was at Stockholm and I had tickets to go to the ABBA museum, our disembarkation time was 9:45 and tickets were 10:15, I was panicking, he said no worries... he'll help us jump the queue through the onboard immigration process, and surely he did, turned out the queue wasn't so bad and we didn't actually JUMP in front of anyone. The attention afterwards was amazing, all the porters etc knew who we were, and our personal porter, Edward, was amazing, he even polished the old man's shoes the night before the wedding and we hadn't got a clue until we found them all shiny, the waiters at our restaurant table were fantastic, and the cleaners, well, considering the saturday night before we had a "hen do" which involved 6 ladies trotting round with ridiculous head pieces and pink boa's dripping feathers everywhere.... smiled at us and said not to worry as we left a trail behind us, which actually worked out well as we managed to avoid the boys group of 5 and only met up at the end of the night. Captain bumped into us again a couple of days after the ceremony and mentioned he'd heard about the pink feathers, but laughed and said it will definitely be a trip the staff won't forget, you don't get many HEN DO's on ship... apparently!
It was a fantastic experience that I would highly recommend to anyone! Well worth the price, but the picture deal was astronomical and we didn't bothter just made sure everyone took piccies. Warning...having wedding supper at the captain's table, doesn't mean you eat with the captain... we didn't realise that when we booked it...otherwise we wouldn't have bothered.... the attention to service was completely OTT and we all felt quite uncomfortable...but then again we're not posh
Does anyone know where Captain Hutley is these days, he doesn't appear to be on the P&O list of senior staff etc on any ship
