Where were the P&O Fancy Dress police?

As many of you know, I am getting married at the end of May and after deciding to have my wedding on land rather than at sea, it seemed only right to have my hen party on a cruise. When the itineraries were released I decided on the Britannia sailing on the 06th April for 2 nights as it was a family-friendly ship so my younger bridesmaid could attend and also wouldn’t miss any school time.

Back in November P&O had sent us all letters that they had changed their policies and that as of the 01st January 2018, fancy dress novelty or clothing personalised with images/slogans will not be permitted. So my sister whose role as Maid of Honour was to make sure we abided by the new rules and made sure no-one (apart from me to wear round Bruges – but not onboard) had any sashes, veils, tiaras, t-shirts with photos etc advertising we were on a hen party. I also saw my colleague onboard whose party had also abided by the new policy. So as everyone else seemed to be wearing their sashes I wore mine all weekend (except on formal night)

So to our surprise, there were lots of hen parties with sashes, tiaras, veils, capes etc. Someone celebrating their birthday even had t-shirts for their group with her picture on it and no-one from P&O was policing the new policy or even knew about it! The cruise director at the first sailaway (which wasn’t the sailaway for another 4 hours due to an IT failure and meant we couldn’t go anywhere as the computer had wiped all the passenger data so they had no idea who was onboard) was even asking for, and doing shoutouts to all the different parties onboard and making it very clear this was a party weekend which was great for those of us in groups celebrating things. but is what I thought P&O were trying to move away from.

We didn’t let this spoil our weekend and my sister along with my mum had organised a fun weekend with lots of bubbles, games and prizes galore. We all caught the shuttle bus into Blankenberg once we finally docked and took the train into Bruges where we ate waffles and bought chocolate.

It would be interesting to know if the other ships in the P&O fleet adhere to the new policies around the novelty/fancy dress or it was just Britannia who chose to turn a blind eye.

The countdown for the wedding is now on and just under 6 weeks to go

Have a great couple of weeks

Kerry

xx