Bo59rt

Here are mine....

My dress was a Stella York...

And bridesmaids...

And the final product...

With the guys....

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That's great! You are in awesome hands with Janelle and Elisha. I wish I could have done the videographer but we wanted the full wedding/reception so it wasn't in our budget. You will have so much fun with that group!

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I am also getting married in St Thomas using Island Bliss. Thank you for your review! I am now even more excited than ever. I have until next April to wait, but it was nice to read all the remarks about Janelle and her Husband. Your wedding was beautiful!! Congrats!

Congrats! They are awesome to work with. Have you picked out where you are getting married on the island??

and its a loooooong muster drill because everything is spoken in English and then Spanish.

but we booked the cruise again for the second time in a row.... so its worth it :)

Thank you SO much for your response.Where did you do your wedding?Can you recommend independent wedding planner that can help with organization of destination wedding?

Also, did you purchase an insurance in case smth did go wrong?

Our Wedding was on St. Thomas, and our wedding planner was Island Bliss Weddings who was located on St. Thomas. If you are looking into Mexico that really isn't going to help a whole lot. But I'm sure you can search these threads and/or google for wedding planners there. Positive reviews are great and don't feel bad about looking into multiple planners until you find one that is a good fit for you.

We did not purchase insurance because after going over everything with our planner the non-refundable items (which was cake and flowers) was only a little more than what the insurance would have cost. We made most of our arraignments before hand and shipped them down there for the wedding.

Let me know if you have any more questions!

We had our wedding on St. Thomas (which I believe is a stop on your cruise) in April. We booked the entire wedding through a private wedding planner. The thing with having an on-island wedding is it can range from much cheaper than the ship wedding to close to the full cost of an "at-home" wedding. I can say with having everything that we wanted, which was a full blown ceremony-cocktail hour-and 4 hr reception we were on the pricier side of things (but still cheaper than what we would have paid for an at-home wedding). But we wouldn't change anything at all. It was an amazing time with our friends and family. We also had 32 guests, which adds to the grand total.

If you are interested, I have a link in my signature for a thread about our wedding, includes pictures. Whatever you and your daughter choose to do, it will be amazing! I have heard great things about embarkment weddings and island weddings.

I did everything off ship for our wedding. To me the ship was just a form of transportation to our wedding site. We did have our "rehearsal dinner" on the ship.

I wanted everything I could get and a cruise line sponsored wedding just wasn't enough for me. We spent the entire time from 30 mins after the ship docked to 30 mins before last boarding on the island for the wedding. I had the full day wedding I wanted on the island I wanted.

I was okay with the chance that the ship might not make it to St. Thomas and I would have to come up with some crazy thrown together thing. My wedding planner told me how often she has had a ship not dock up and it was very rare. We also went over what would and would not be refunded if that was to happen.

I wouldn't change anything even if I knew that the chance of not making it to the island was 50/50. I was so happy with our wedding even though we did have a few trip ups. I have a short-ish review of our wedding in my signature if you wanted to give that a look.

good luck and no matter what you decided to do.... its still your day for the two of you, make it the best day you can!

You have no idea how much your post has helped me!!! We are getting married on the Carnival Liberty in April. We are getting off to have the ceremony in Nassau. I hope to learn from you!!! Did you like the Liberty?

I love the liberty! If I could do every itinerary I wanted to do on the liberty I would be a happy person! I've been on small ships and big ships and its like goldielocks, it's just right (for dh and I at least!)

Liberty had all the 2.0 upgrades, I wish serenity was a little larger since its always so crowded but that is my only negative. Enjoy it! I hope planning is going well and it becomes everything the both of you dream of. Let me know if I can answer any questions for you!

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We were married on Megan's bay beach, St. Thomas! there is a quick-er review linked below in my signature with pictures.

We thought about it and were in the same situation that you are in: St. Thomas island coordinator, full wedding/reception. I talked it over with my wedding planner and found out that if the ship was to skip port the only money I wouldn't get refunded was cake and flower costs. Since both of those were smaller amounts (we brought our own bouquets) I skipped out on the insurance.

See what you would loose out on and weigh if the cost of the insurance is still worth it to you. Best of luck!

well my wedding is already over, but I can list what I had...

Processional, Bridal Entrance, Recessional: All steel drum music, Traditional wedding march (wedding was on beach so this fit really well, and I cant even remember the music playing I was so nervous :p)

First Dance: She's My kind of Crazy by Brantley Gilbert

Father/Daughter Dance: Just Fishin' by Trace Adkins

Mother/Son dance: That's what mommas do (by I have no idea MIL's choice)

Cake Cutting: was supposed to be Pretty Girl by Kip Moore (but we had a cake fiasco, the cake was destroyed in transit to the wedding so we had to rearrange things)

Last song: Friend's In Low Places by Garth brooks

IF you take anything from this post its to roll with the punches....and stop and enjoy it all so you can remember it :D

yeah we did this once. we just called the carnival booking number and spoke to whomever we got on the line. Its better to have it handled ASAP then wait for it to post to an account. We were able to get it reversed.

I got married on the island of St. Thomas in April and we were back on the ship at 4:30. I was still in my dress for dinner at 7 that night. Do it, its fun, its for you. You only get to be the center of attention for a few short times in your life so why not live it up!

hop on over to the Wedding and Honeymoon board under "special interest cruises". I just had my wedding in April and found a lot of great information over there. There are many many carnival brides/grooms to help you out with what you need! Congrats!

Thank you so much for you great review and amazingly fabulous photos. I truly wish you and the hubster the best. You have been a huge source of information for many of us.

Thanks!!! I had to go through your old posts to figure out when your wedding is. Is it still going to be in March?? how is your planning going? hopefully a little smoother than mine did. Enjoy everything that leads up to your event, it goes by so quickly!

Congrats! Great pics...Elisha is fantastic isn't she?? I liked seeing the Villa pics...makes me want to go back there again soon!!

I loved working with her. I was so glad to do the two days with her, made the second day more fun already being relaxed around her (which didn't take too long on the first day either). I'm hoping to use her again later down the road since she does shoots in NY and PA.

Absolutely gorgeous pictures! Sounds like a wonderful time was had by all which is the point! :) Congratulations again and best wishes for a wonderful life!

Thank you!!!! I was a blast and with all the stress of planning and getting the group together it was all worth it in the end! Enjoy your process and have an amazing wedding!!!! the next 8 months will fly by!

Hey my pictures are up on my review:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2033447

they are on the last post. I saw you were asking on another thread about getting off the ship in your dress. THis is what I did: wore a bathing suit under my dress, had a bag packed with a cover up for me and some light clothes for DH. After we went in the water we went to the bathroom on the beach and changed out of the dress/get sand off of me. We put my dress in the back of my photographers SUV and I carried it back onto the ship (still pretty wet). I hung it up to dry out, there will be a big pile of sand!

Good Luck! its so much fun!

Congrats to everyone that has gotten married or have shared their future wedding dates with us!

I am finally back from my April Fool's wedding and back into the swing of things! Review is finally finished! Its short but has good pictures! if anyone is looking into Janelle from Island Bliss Weddings on St. Thomas, Elisa Orin for a Photographer, or Villa Botanica for a venue, hop over to my review and check it out!

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2033447

If anyone has an questions with these vendors or anything I can help out with, feel free to ask! I'll still be stalking the threads!

To sum up the rest of our cruise (because I am taking way to long getting this out to the CC world!) Our ship then went to Puerto Rico, and Grand Turk and then back to Miami with no further bumps in the road. When we got off the ship and back to the airport, our guests flew home and we flew to Puerto Rico!

The next day we embarked on the Valor to explore the southern Caribbean! My husband “surprised” me with a grand suite upgrade, that we had to talk about earlier to see if it would fit into our budget so it wasn’t really a surprise but he took it so it wasn’t what we originally booked. Our ship went to St. Thomas, Barbados, St. Kitts, St. Lucia, and St. Marteen. It was a great cruise but very exhausting with so many stops and coming off of the earlier cruise.

When we went back to St. Thomas we had set it up that Elisha would pick us up from the ship and take us around to her favorite spots to take pictures and then to the beach for some slight trashing of the dress. I actually got “Mr. I hate attention” to throw on his suit and do this all over again, and of course everyone thought we were eloping and getting married on our own at the island. We had some very friendly people trying to help us as we were looking for Elisha at the port!

Here are some pictures from that:

I would not change what we did for anything in the world. It was fun and unique. I hope you all get some ideas or help from all of this. Elisha is a great option for a photographer and Janelle with Island Bliss Weddings was amazing to work with (even though I had a few issues with her organization along the way with wedding planning). Let me know if there is anything I can help with! I’m still going to be stalking the boards and hope everyone has as great of a trip as we did!

So Elisha left and the party started. I had a DJ that was able to get everyone up and moving pretty well. I also think that the bar which was always packed helped out too. One of my friends for some reason decided to pack her bikini in her purse and decided to go for a quick dip in the pool on the property. That was interesting to see her run around the wedding in a bikini! Only on the islands I tell you!

Everything seemed to go by to quickly and before you knew it, I heard the 2nd to last song. I specifically asked for two last songs so I knew to get most of the people on the dance floor for the final song. The second to last song was “Bottom’s Up” by Brantley Gilbert and the last song was “friends in Low Places” by Garth Brooks. We had everyone on the dance floor singing at the top of their lungs. I think we might have scared the DJ because this was the most action the dance floor got all day and it was just us all singing to each other!

So herded back to the busses we go. Everyone was feeling pretty good and we talked the drivers into “drag racing” at some of the lights. It helps when the busses are all open air and you can yell back and forth to each other. We went around this one bend and I heard my sister behind me say “what was that”. We were about 10 minutes from the ship and I didn’t really think anything of it. Finally arriving back to the ship, we got into the two long lines that always form during the last half an hour of boarding. From behind me I hear one of my bridesmaids yell and get really upset. She just realized that her wallet that she thought was in her mother’s purse was actually what my sister heard falling out of the bus. She was upset because she didn’t know how she was going to get back on the ship. Her wallet had her ID and ship card (as well as money and cards) but her passport was back in her cabin safe. Everyone was trying to console her so I decided to walk up to the security officer at the gate and explain the situation. My bridesmaid was whisked away to I don’t even know where to prove that she was actually a guest of the ship. It was all fixed but she had a rough afternoon.

We all decided to meet at the casino bar to head out for some pictures around the ship. Only half the guests actually went straight to the casino bar so we ended up going off on our own to get the pictures taken. Here are a few of those shots:

We were given a lot of compliments and attention which my husband wasn’t a huge fan of but oh well he is standing next to a girl in a white dress, what do you expect! I actually got him to go to dinner in our wedding garb because I was eating all the attention up! I was mean bride getting off the ship but I made up for it after.

Right post for this thread! haha wow don't work on a review and other posts at the same time!

Carnival Liberty, In St. Thomas, after out wedding, April Fool's Day 2014

wrong thread! Sorry

wrong thread sorry!

Back to the wedding…… We decided Janelle was going to go grab the cake so she set us up for the dances and off she went. We had the normal couple dance, father daughter, and mother son. It was nice and I was so happy that at the end of my dance my dad asks, “what can I get you from the bar?”. So as Cody is dancing with his mother I am enjoying my first drink of the day! (finally!)

Our package included an amazing open bar. Included was: Cuervo, Smirnoff, Cruzan and Bacardi rum, Tanqueray, Dewars and Johnnie Walker, Hennessy V.S., Evan Williams bourbon, heiniken and coors light beer, and Robert Mondavi wine. This was their LOW TIER beverage package. In our area this would be high shelf pay a premium open bar. I was amazed that the included bar wasn’t all banker’s club alcohol (since they make every type of alcohol). I can tell you honestly, that we ran out of beer and bourbon. I only had two bourbons before they ran out! Bourbon is my poison of choice and I can’t believe that my family killed the supply, the bride should have had her own stashed bottle :p.

After the dances, we were able to grab a bite to eat. We had samples of the passed hor ‘dourves and the first course at our table. I was thankful to Janelle to include the samples of what was served before we got there.

Photo by Elisha Orin

Our favors were already on the table filled waiting for the first toast. I ordered 72 shot glasses from Discountmugs.com and ended up with around 90 after I complained about some glasses that should not have made it past their QC. There were some bad printing on a few.

Photo by Elisha Orin

My mother and I also made the table runners on the tables and we supplied the napkins, lime green just wasn’t a choice of linens and it was what I wanted. Those runners were a labor of love and im so glad we did them as it was something different. I also made the name cards for everyone, each table had a different animal and they all hung on the side of the water glasses.

After we ate our amazing first course, a marinated snapper salad, and had our first toast; Janelle was back with the cakes and Elisha wanted to get the cake cutting shot before she had to leave. I couldn't believe that her three hours was already up!

So we said our goodbyes to Elisha and set up our meeting time a week later when we were back in St. Thomas for our honeymoon cruise. Elisha was awesome to work with, she was fun, very nice, and took amazing pictures! She never got in the way and still was able to get the best shots.

So we now get to sit down and enjoy what was the highlight of our entire trip, the amazing food served at our wedding. Most people have okay food, since we were only 32 people I think the care was taken to a very very high standard. The NY strip steak I had was the best I have ever had, and the Mahi Mahi was gorgeous! I am so upset that we only got to eat a small portion of it and we didn’t get to sit and enjoy. We wanted to go around to all of the tables and thank everyone while there were all sitting. This was my one regret, I wish I could have made a point to enjoy this amazing food!

I need to get back to work :D.... I will finish up with the reception and the last bit of the cruise next....