Thank you to everyone for all the wonderful advice. We will be taking all of it with us to Ireland. I'm sure our honeymoon will be wonderful thanks to all of you.
Sarah

Sarah, normally I venture to speak only for myself, but I am confident that I speak for all who have participated in this discussion in saying that you will have our good wishes along with our programme suggestions.

Have a great wedding, a memorable Irish honeymoon, and many years of happiness together.

The Sheen Fall Lodge (www.sheenfallslodge.ie) is a top class hotel and is highly recommended.Two others I really liked are Dromoland Castle (www.dromoland.ie) and Ashford Castle (www.ashford.ie).I would not regard Adare Manor as being in the same league. Avoid going to Dromoland on your last day in Ireland as it would put too much pressure on you and it is a place to rest and relax.

It's not looking good. Our passports have still not arrived yet. I have been on the phone practically every day since last Monday. (14 days before the flight) We were so looking forward to this honeymoon. I was wondering if anyone had any other ideas as alternate plans for travel here in the states if our passports do not arrive?

Sarah...
Do a search on this forum for passports.

There have been quite a few threads over the past few months from harried Fodorites, praying their passports arrive. Calling your Congressman's office ASAP seems to be the #1 piece of advice.

Read through the threads and don't give up. We're rooting for you.

Like you need THIS to worry about, with a wedding, too!? Oy. Best wishes.

yes, calling congressman is good...worked for my sister.

good luck on wedding and passports

sbarry2003,

Good luck and keep us posted.

Joan

My fingers are crossed for you Sarah. [It makes typing difficult.]

I am sorry to say we did not get to go to Ireland. I spent a lot of time on the phone 2 weeks before our travel date to try to get our passports. I even called our congressman's office after instructed to do so. No such luck. So Saturday early morning before the wedding we had to send out mass e-mails to get everything cancelled. Then Sunday after the wedding we booked a last minute travel deal with travelocity to Vail, Colorado. We got to the airport this AM and after waiting in line forever found out our flight on United was cancelled and we were not able to get a flight out until the next day. Granted we live over 2.5 hours from the airport. At that time we just decided to call it quites. We went home and got our dogs and are just going to lounge around the house and hope to go next year. Oh, by the way our passports have still not arrived yet. Next Monday it will be 15 weeks and they were expidited almost 3 weeks ago. Note to self do not plan to travel out of the country until you have your passport in hand. The other funny thing is that as soon as I get my passport I will have to send it back to get the name changed.

I feel very disappointed, and it wasn't even to be my honeymoon! Sorry it didn't work for you, but if you have to choose one thing to go wrong, it is probably better that it is the honeymoon rather than the marriage.

Do you really NEED to get the name changed on your passport? If I had experienced such travails to get a passport, I would not let it out of my possession. Here in Ireland and, I think, in the UK there is no legal obligation on a wife to adopt her husband's name and alter all her documents accordingly; it is merely a convention. The woman I know as Mrs. Murphy might have all her documents with the name Miss Glynn.

Oh how disappointing for you both - you must have felt that the Travel Gods were against you. I hope you had a lovely wedding and when you eventually take your honeymoon it'll be as wonderful as the one that you had planned.

Thank you all for being so supportive. We were able to get a lot of the money back from the places we had booked in Ireland. They were all very understanding. Cullinans, Heatons, and Dromoland castle all refunded us. We booked our stay with Sheen Falls through Gullivers and they kept our deposit but are allowing us to use it towards our next stay. There was a penalty with the airlines and Hertz car rental gave us a complete refund. So all in all we didn't make out to bad on getting the majority of our money back. Thanks again for everyones help. We have decided to go next y

sbarry2003 wrote: "We have decided to go next y"

Sarah, it's already looking like another aborted trip!

I'm glad the financial hit was not too heavy.