ChristinaMarie3632

Key West doesn't have fabulous beaches. Which beach are you using? Smathers?

Yes, Smathers. I do know that Key West doesn't have as nice beaches as other locations but it is something I was willing to deal with since everything else I was looking for worked out.

Unfortunately, timing is the one downfall of my wedding :( .. I am getting married in port (we are in port from 7:30-1:30) - most likely having to be back on the ship at 1. I am using an outside vendor and am not using the ship at all. With that said, as of now the plan is for the wedding to begin at 9am (the vendor said that it would be realistic for all the guests to be able to get off the ship at 8:30 to be at the group transportation area by then).. we are having a brunch in port (the vendor will only let us start brunch at 11:30 since they have to close down the whole restaurant for us) - unfortunately that leaves only an hour-ish brunch.. I guess I can look on the bright side that I will have more time on the beach for pictures.

Hello - congrats on your future engagement (or current engagement depending on if you have already cruised!) I am currently planning a cruise wedding but saw this post and it drew my attention since I was proposed to during our recent cruise in June. With that said, my now fiancé proposed on the ship the night of elegant night while we were getting pictures taken. You said it was your first cruise, so to further explain - on Carnival cruise line (not sure if every cruise line does this) they have professional photographers around the ship before dinner with backdrops. This was our second cruise so we were aware of this and he had planned to propose while we were getting pictures taken so that the photographer could capture the moment. ( I was clueless since on our first cruise we took pictures and I didn't think anything of) I tried attaching the pictures but it said they were too large so feel free to reach out if you would like to see and I can email them. (just an FYI the photos are $22 a piece so if you do go this route expect to pay for the photos). Good luck with whatever option you chose and I am sure she will love it!

Hey everyone!

 

 

 

My fiance and I are recently engaged and have decided on a cruise wedding, hopefully in May of 2019! I'm looking for everyone's opinions on Carnival's wedding packages. I stood as MOH in my aunt's wedding April of 2016 in Grand Turk while sailing on the Carnival Breeze and it was absolutely breathtaking! and she has zero complaints! However, my main reason for posting here is my indecisiveness to have a destination wedding DURING the cruise, or to have our wedding in the home port before sailing! We are from Eastern Canada, therefore all of our guests will have a long way to travel for our wedding. I do not want everybody to feel obligated to spend so much on a week-long cruise and travel all that way, however I feel like if they are going to travel all the way to Miami just for the wedding, isn't it just as well to do the cruise too?

 

 

 

Our first choice is to be married in St. Thomas, off the ship, but what is everyone's opinions on this? Would we be better off getting married on embarkation day so that we and our guests can enjoy all of the stops? We would love the opportunity to explore St. Thomas, but I also long for a beach wedding with the ocean in the background, as opposed to inside!

 

 

 

Thanks in advance for the opinions and help! :)

First off congrats! I recently got engaged and my fiancé and I just finalized our plans on getting married in port (keywest) during a 4 day cruise from Miami in January 2019. I did a lot of research (before we were engaged since we decided a cruise wedding awhile ago) so I will explain my decision process in hopes that it will help in some way.

I chose port wedding because I didn't like the idea of debarkation wedding due to many things (we chose a cruise wedding to alleviate costs, I have a HUGE family so if we did destination the people that really wanted to attend would attend and would save us from having 200 people at the wedding hence save costs).. I also talked to the people who meant the most to me before hand to make sure they would be able to go on the cruise.

I like the idea of a beach wedding instead of an on the ship wedding which didn't have the feel or decor that I was looking for.

Carnival's pricing increased substantially from

When I first researched cruise wedding (it used to be very inexpensive now their pricing is almost as bad as having a land wedding). Having an in port wedding allowed me to use a 3rd party company that gave me wayyyyyy more for wayyyy less. (And the piece in mind given in case of for whatever reason the cruise doesn't go to keywest, I would get my money back)

I didn't like the idea of the wedding being rushed. Yes I am still being rushed with an in port wedding based on the timeline of arriving and departing but I felt as if i rather have that rush (after we were all already on board and settled in) instead of it being the day getting on the ship and dealing with customs etc.

After we decided having an in port wedding now we had to decide what port.. we wanted to do a 4 or 5 day cruise so it wasn't too expensive for our guests.. the Bahamas is a port that many 4/5 cruises travel to.. the Bahamas however has legal requirements that require you to be in Bahamian water for 24 hrs (we decided we didn't want to do that). I researched and found cruises going to key west. This would also allow guests to fly directly key west if they didn't to cruise and it also solved the legality issues surround other non US countries (since we are in the US). We picked January because A) its one of the most inexpensive months of the year to cruise and B) my siblings are both In college and I didn't want them missing school.. may and June are more expensive to cruise so we didn't want to pick those months either since my whole plan was to save as much money as possible for the guests.

I should mention that my fiancé and i are still planning on doing a honeymoon that is separate from the cruise. I don't think you mentioned if you were using the cruise as your honeymoon or not but if not you could consider going to St. Thomas for your honeymoon and doing an inexpensive cruise for your wedding. I understand you wanting to explore St. Thomas and therefore are considering an aboard the ship wedding to allow that. This is another reason

We chose key west since it wasn't a bucket list once in a lifetime destination that we would

Be upset on missing.

Please keep in mind we didn't get married yet so I can't comment on the actual experiences but the above are all explanation of my decision making. (Sorry it's so long I can get carried away [emoji3])

Congrats again!

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Can I do that even if I have a group booking set up for our wedding guest?

My recommendation is the same.. I'm getting married in port in key west (we are also cruising on the Victory).. yes you can still do

That if you did a group booking through carnival.

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Thank you! and yes I received the same information directly from Carnival (that not everyone in the group needs to buy the CHEERS package, however everyone in the same stateroom 21+ needs to buy it)

Hello everyone!

My fiance and I are in the process of accumulating information for our wedding cruise in January 2019 (nothing has been booked yet even though we know what cruise we want to do just want to make sure we have all the information we need first). With that said, I just so happened to stumble across a caveat in the CHEERS beverage program that I feel would really mess up the idea of doing a group booking through Carnival. It says the following:

• Group bookings (consisting of a minimum of 30 adults) can purchase CHEERS! prior to the cruise by contacting Group Event Planning (all adult guests in the group must purchase the program; all minors in the group must purchase Bottomless Bubbles program).
  

Does this mean that everyone in the group would have to buy the CHEERS package? I find that extremely unfair if that is the case since some people don't drink etc. Or am I reading it wrong?

Has anyone have experience with this? I would greatly appreciate your input!