Bo59rt

So Right after this amazing time taking pictures and enjoying the landscaping (and the peacock!) Janelle walks up to us to give us a rundown for the introductions and dance songs. She then pulls me aside as Cody is getting some single shots and drops the bomb…

The cake is not going to make it! :confused::mad::eek:

As im trying to process this and find out what happened to my cake; That I had special ordered. I had Janelle find a bakery willing to do a custom cannoli wedding cake, Janelle is trying to tell me back up plans. All I wanted to know was what happened to it. All I got was, “the bottom tier is destroyed and they don’t think the top was salvageable, there is no back up tiers because it was a custom order”. So back to listening to plan B. Janelle said that we could either A) forgo cake all together, but then we wouldn't have anything sweet to serve, or B) She could run to the closest grocery store during first course and try to grab something. We went with option B because, well, we had to. So this is what the cake was supposed to look like, but with a green ribbon instead of blue.

And this is what we got, which still was nice anyway:

So what Janelle did was buy the prettiest cake she could find for the cake cutting pictures, which turned out to be a coconut cream cake (I hate coconut and having that shoved in my face wasn't the highlight of my day but oh well). And she bought a giant Italian Cream sheet cake to serve. We were both surprised that she could find something even remotely similar to what we wanted. It wasn't fancy but it did taste good!

Oh and to continue without cake part of the wedding. Our cake topper was custom ordered through miscaketops.com. This is a local (Philadelphia) place that I found online that would do custom firefighter cake toppers. I saw this one and knew it was the one. The beach base and all was perfect! My husband is a volunteer fire fighter where we live and we had the figuring done all out in his gear colors and engine numbers. It was an awesome topper and we got a lot of compliments.

Sorry its been a few days, my husband and I had to go through the death of a high school friend, and all I can say is 26 is just too young..... Back to the review.

We had our customary group shot that Janelle has for every wedding she does. Then the guests were escorted back to the busses to go up to the reception. The reception was held at Villa Botanica up on Crown Mountain. So while they are up there enjoying their steel drum music and passed hor d’ourves (we had Jerk Chicken and mini crab cakes, delicious!) the bridal party took some group photos. I was expecting all beach pictures and when Elisha started trekking back to the woods behind the beach I was a little confused and annoyed, since my mom (who has left already) has my flip flops. Elisha is talking about some tree that we needed to use for the pictures and I was skeptical, but I knew I loved her work from the first minute I saw her online blog and boy, did she deliver. This is one of my favorite group shots.

Photo by Elisha Orin

We also had the normal depth poses and fun group shots.

Photo by Elisha Orin

And then I told her the one picture I had to get (I came across the pose years ago and fell in love with it). I described what I wanted and at first she seem skeptical, but she did it anyway because I’m the bride haha. And it is one of my favorite pictures of the whole bunch!

Photo by Elisha Orin

The bridal party is sent back to look for our private van while we take some couples shots. Most were original but some were funky and that’s why I loved Elisha’s style. She didn’t always do cookie cutter.

Photo by Elisha Orin

So we finally head back out to pavement, which was bittersweet, I didn’t have to worry about stepping on nettles and other island-y things but that pavement was hot on bare feet! I run into one bridesmaid who thinks she left her purse somewhere (we found it) and everyone else wanting to head up to the party to start drinking and grab some grub. It was almost one and we were all running on empty. The driver was great and he slowed down to the best he could for some picture opportunities on the way up the mountain. The view of Charlotte Amelie was amazing.

And finally we get to villa botanica. Elisha just arrived and she had Janelle greet the wedding party and whisk them away while Elisha took us up the long entrance to take some more pictures. This place was amazing and so large! I know I didn’t get to see everything. (and I want to rent out this villa for a vacation because it was amazing!)

photo by Elisha Orin

I am getting married 12/19/14 on the island of Grand Turk via Carnival.

I need to know how to go about getting a Steel Drum player for the ceremony?!

Sorry, I cant really help out. My wedding planner gave us the option of steel drum, keyboard, or guitar with our package. We jumped on steel drum very quickly. I grew up with a restaurant across the canal in town that had players every weekend night. Meant a lot to me to have them for our wedding.

I trashed the dress on my second cruise of my wedding/honeymoon back to back. I had my photographer from our wedding (we were married on island) to meet up with us a week later to do a trash the dress session. I am doing a review of my cruises in the wedding forum. The thread is "St. Thomas/island bliss wedding/liberty review" or something like that.... I an going in order and it is taking a while but if you check in on the thread by the end of the week I should have the trash the dress pics up.

Sorry for the few typos before..... by the time I saw them I couldn't edit them...and its capable not "cap bible"

onto the next part....

After my fiancé left the night before I brought over my dress to hang on my closet door. This became my inspiration to write the love note that was going to be delivered the morning of the wedding to my fiancé along with his wedding gift! A shiny Movado watch that I had been saving up for forever! (And bought on black Friday, months before the wedding with helped out a lot)

The bridesmaids dresses were left in my room also so I could steam them if needed, (I snuck not one but TWO steamers onto the ship….. I was very surprised). So my bridesmaid across the hall came over and we had fun figuring out ways to take the “pre-wedding dress picture” in such a small room. Having our balcony divider open, killed that hanging spot so this is what we came up with.

So we waited around for my other bridesmaid to make it over to start on my hair. She is my normal at home hair stylist which was perfect that she was also a lifelong friend. We started on the hair which took longer than we thought from the time at the trial, so it was a mad rush to get my make up on and me into my dress before 10:15am! I also had a bridesmaid do the gift exchange while I was getting my hair done, my fiancé got me a beautiful blue topaz and diamond necklace and earing set to wear for the wedding!

I was supposed to be outside at my car at 10:30 and I hate being late! So we rushed and my MOH was getting her hair done when my mother, a family friend, and I started walking off the ship. There was a lot of attention and I was in no mood to deal with it right then because I was so flustered with time. I smiled and said thank you but I know I wasn’t the kindest of brides that morning. Finally we are off the ship and a man walks up to me and I recognize him from many of Island Bliss wedding pictures, He is Janelle’s husband and the Officiate of our wedding, Stewart. He takes us in a SUV to the courthouse where I was to sign my paperwork and then to Magen’s Bay. Everything is going so well, we arrive at the beach I see the set up and I am flabbergasted by the beautiful place I am about to get married in. Janelle and her assistant did an amazing job of setting everything up!!

Photo by Elisha Orin

Janelle comes over and introduces herself and tells me about how everything else has been going this morning. It seems the other private SUV driver (picking up fiancé and his parents at 10:45) couldn’t find him, it took extra time but he is on his way to the courthouse now. The “safari” busses picking up all of the wedding guests hasn’t left the ship yet because we are 6 people short. She posed the question, “did she want me to have them leave and just leave the people behind at the ship? This is pushing the wedding back and cutting into the reception.” I asked who was it that was missing…..was my bridesmaids!!!! And my father who went looking for them! (Turns out only my sister's hair and mine were finished for the wedding, everyone else just sort of threw it together on the ride over! Love them for that!) I had them wait and finally got the call that they made it on the bus and were on their way over as well.

Well I am a nervous wreck by now and getting very impatient because I am a very punctual person, sitting in the SUV is killing me! Finally I see everyone getting off the bus! I get out of the SUV where no one can see me, my fiancé has been instructed to stare at the water so he can’t see me, and my mother tightens up the laces on my dress because I had them looser to be more comfortable sitting in the car (very glad I did this as it was very hard to sit at all for the rest of the day!) My father walks over and its time to get the show on the road!

It was stunning!!!! Absolutely gorgeous! There were a lot of people and quite many speedos but it was perfect! Everyone later told me that we looked nervous up there during the ceremony because we were non stop laughing. Well that’s why we are good together, we make each other laugh, and this whole situation was a fodder of quick jokes and one liners.

We were in our own little world. Do we remember any of the words we recited to each other… no. Do we remember who was sitting where in the first row of seats….no, Do I even remember what the beach looked like that we were at…. No. but I remember the twinkle in Cody’s (my hubby) hazel eyes as we laughed at how long the reciting of vows was and how loud my heartbeat was in my ears when we first made eye contact when I walked towards him at the isle. It could have been just us or 100 people on the beach, what we did was perfect for US, no one else.

Photo by Elisha Orin

We were married on April Fool’s Day 2014, a perfect day for us because we are jokesters and live to make each other smile and laugh. We got to share that with 32 other amazing people, and everyone else on the beach! Oh and we got “Go pro-ed” by some random man, our whole ceremony. I’m still trying to look for it online, it’s a free videographer if I can find it!

Photo by Elisha Orin

Onto reception next……

So we are going to fast forward through the next day at sea since nothing of really importance happened. Just the usual sunning, eating, and drinking. That evening however was interesting. My Fiancée packed up his things for the wedding and schlepped all the way to deck 9 forward where he stayed in his mom’s room that night. I had a heart to heart with one of my bridesmaids for a while on our balcony until little after midnight. She decides to head back to her room (the interior across the hall from my wrap) so she gathers her things and promises to be back a little before 6 the next morning. When she opens my door to mosey across the hall “Drunk 1” (never got his name) was sprawled out on the floor in front of my door, or his door, well both doors. It was obvious he was trashed beyond comprehension. My bridesmaid sort of skirts him and goes into her room. This guy is moaning outside of my door, saying his wife will be here soon with his key. All I’m hearing is “this is my room. Wife comes with key in little, my room!”

Well, I don’t deal well with overly intoxicated people because I have an irrational fear of getting sick and having other people get sick around me. My bridesmaid knows this and calls me (from across the hall) asking me if I can deal with this. I’m trying to figure out how to call security to get this guy out of the hallway. I mean this is supposed to be prime beauty sleep for me! Well a few minutes later some woman from the other side of the starboard side of the aft balconies comes back to her room and sees this man. She takes care of him by bringing out her trashcan and having him get sick in it. This night couldn’t be any more stressful! It’s the night before my wedding, I’m alone in my room, and I’m having a massive anxiety attack over this guy getting sick outside of my door! Finally this lady (bless her heart for taking care of him, since I was no way cap bible of figuring out that 911 was also the number for security) gets a hold of the room steward and gets him into his room.

Finally in starting to calm down, and then his wife finally returns! This is a little past one in the morning. I have to get up around 5:30 to start getting ready! (My normal working wake up time anyway but still!) This lady is landing into him. I usually never hear my neighbors and since the bathroom and the walls are between our rooms I was shocked that I could. So I turned up my TV and set the timer and finally fell asleep.

Next morning I woke up around 5, walked out of my balcony and glanced across the stern of the boat to see if my mom was awake yet. Her room was the farthest aft balcony from me (next to our other aft wrap) she was, and after some hand waving and gesturing she walked down the hall to my room. We both couldn’t believe the day was here! All the hard work (and fighting) and planning (and fighting) and money spent on crafts and such for the wedding was finally here. We went up to the lido to see if anything was out at 5am and then headed back down to my room to wait for my two bridesmaids, One who did my hair, and the other that dealt with Drunk 1. My MOH was still sleeping for quite some time, she is my sister and I knew she wouldn’t be up until 8ish anyway.

…..On to the pictures and everything wedding wise! Hopefully I still have some interested people….

So Fiancée was feeling a little better by now and actually had a drink to celebrate! :p

We made our way to the steakhouse where we had half of it rented out for our party.

Our largerst table of the group

I felt bad about how loud we might have gotten throughout the dinner since there were guests on the other side of the restaurant. We had a limited menu even though we paid full price per person. No one was aware about that but the four of us who have dined on a carnival steakhouse before so it really wasn’t a big deal. I just missed having the Ahi tuna appetizer and Fiancée missed his porterhouse steak that could feed a family. Everyone enjoyed their dinners and it was fun to have everyone together for this night. The chefs and servers were great!

We gave a few speeches and after dinner back to the casino bar to lose some more money!

So everyone is on the ship, while people go exploring around the ship one of my bridesmaids and I put together the goodie bags in my room. Unfortunately I never grabbed pictures of the bags completed but what was included was:

-a 12 can round soft cooler (our bag)

- samples of: Avon bug wipes, anti hair frizz serum, anti-bac wipes, hand sanitizer, a lint roller, tissues, Advil, aloe, sunscreen, Mary Kay hand lotion & body lotion

- a welcome brochure I made up with itinerary of the ship, room number list, and random information

- a postcard for the guests to fill out at some point and send back to us as a guestbook we could keep

- and an invitation to the “rehearsal party” and cocktail hour for the next evening.

Once we put everything together we went out to deliver these bags. They were cumbersome to lug around and we had to deliver 18 (one to each room booked)! So we enlisted the groom and trekked from Aft deck 7 to the second most front room on deck 9 and in between. Everyone loved the bags and commented on how they were so happy that we included certain items. The most useful turned out to to be Advil and lint rollers. Well the coolers were used by just about everyone as well.

We put a note in the brochure that if you bought the drink package to load up on unopened beers and load your cooler up on the Half moon Cay and Grand Turk days. So after we had our first group dinner with all of our friends, this is what we started to do. For the week it seemed after dinner the casino bar was where we all ended up. My sister and her boyfriend befriended the bartender, Maria, early on and she was amazing to our group for the whole week. So while we are all losing our money, we are all getting unopened Boddington’s and angry orchards for our next day at Half Moon Cay. There was abundant drinking and by a little after midnight we had a couple of people hit there 15 drink limit (which included the 4 beers each that were taken to the room). So a group of us went and grabbed pizza before turning in for the night.

The next morning I woke up to go onto my balcony and see this gorgeous little island in front of me. We seemed to be drifting farther and farther away though. One tender boat is near the ship so this is a good sign right? Yeah I was wrong 20-30 minutes later, the Capitan made the announcement “we are assessing the weather situation right now for the tendering process, We are seeing rough water for the smaller tender boats, we will keep you informed”.

Me and my mom's boyfriend enjoying looking at HMC from the balcony

Well this was upsetting and woke up the future hubby. We ended up not making it on the island. Turned out to good thing because fiancée was under the weather all day. So was our other friend who had the peperoni pizza. I don’t know if it was coincidence or over imbibing but the only two who didn’t feel well had the pepperoni pizza.

So we had an extra day at sea, this was upsetting but we knew we had to cut island time short if we did have the Half moon cay day because our cocktail hour started at 5:15 that night. My fiancée’s mother planned (and footed the bill) for this very nice night. We had a private cocktail hour in the piano bar with the 32 guests.

It was a nice little chance for everyone to mingle. The servers started bringing out premade drinks on their trays so we had to inform everyone that they could order whatever they wanted.

The fact that they tried to push premade drinks on us was a little annoying given the price paid per person for this.

After I handed out the gifts for my bridesmaids and family and said hello to everyone it seemed to be over. Speaking of gifts, we ended up not being able to bring on the gifts that we got for the groomsmen and FOB. My fiancée ordered bottle openers made out of .50 caliber bullets. All of the groomsmen are big craft beer drinkers and gun owners so we figured why not, it was a cool idea. Well carnival couldn’t get past the fact that they were empty shells turned into bottle openers and wouldn’t allow us to bring them. It’s a good thing we called before we left.

So let’s do a quick sum up of vacation before the trip. We had people coming from mostly eastern seaboard and Ohio. Half of the people flew in the night before and stayed in Ft. Lauderdale with us at the Holiday in on Sheridan St. This hotel exceeded my expectations and accommodated all of us very well. I had a couple fly into Miami the night before and the other half fly into Miami the day of the cruise.

We used All-star transportation from the hotel at Ft. Lauderdale to the cruise port. With 16 people this came to be 13 bucks a person (less than half if we took Carnival transportation from the Ft. Lauderdale Airport). They were a good company to work with. We thought we were getting our own mini bus, but when we got on we found out they also picked up a group of 6 from another hotel. I felt bad for them having to deal with 16 people ready for a party. I can say some of us in the group need to learn volume control.

So its about 11:30 and we are on our way to the Port. I’m sitting with my fiancée with my dress draped over our laps. Let me just say I am sick of carrying this thing around. We flew on our flight with 10 people. I think I handed off my dress to just about everyone that night. Let me just forewarn anyone traveling with their dress on Southwest. One, they will not let you preboard with it. I asked even though I was still one of the first 30 people on the plane. I just didn’t want to be hitting people with it since the dress bag was pretty large. Two, its going to go in the overhead bin. No ifs ands or buts about it.

Luckily, we got a group of six seats together and took our own overhead bin so it didn’t really get smooshed.

Back to getting to the port, we arrived just around noon. I felt bad for the porters because our whole group (most of which hadn't cruised before) just dropped their luggage off next to the bride and groom’s crazy amount of bags and try to walk in. Most of these people did not print off luggage tags, so we had to wrangle everyone until everything was tagged. People started checking in on their own so we just let them go. We opted out of Faster-to-the-fun (even though it would have been handy for getting rid of the dress that was getting on my nerves) to make sure everyone got through the check in process okay. Well we ended up just the two of us anyway.

Finally we arrived on the ship, walk on the boat and my group has set up camp at the first two tables in the lobby. Made it easy to grab people as they were walking on. We set our stuff down and hopped in the Cheers! Line. :D

(I have no idea where those funky shadows came from on our faces, but we are the happy couple!)

We were so happy to be close to our first drinks of the cruise. I have to start mine off with a kiss on the lips and he always has a Boddington’s. Around 1 everyone started dispersing and we were only 6 people short of the cruise group so we headed to our aft wrap room to stow away the dress until I could move it to my grandfather’s room to air out until the wedding.

Our group had 9 rooms in the aft of deck 7. Both aft wraps, two aft-facing balconies, one “bowling alley” balcony (opened the door between our aft wrap and my sisters bowling alley and it was one giant balcony), two normal balconies, and two interiors. We also had three grand suites and an interior on Mid-deck 7, two ocean views on mid-2, and one balcony all the way deck nine forward (some people didn’t want to join in the deck 7 aft party!). I can say we officially had our own cabin crawl and saw almost every type of room.

We should have known this was going to be one drunken mess of a week when we got to our room. There was another group (three aft facing rooms) next to ours who also just made it to their room. All three of the men were wearing drunk 1, drunk 2, and drunk 3 shirts. Drunk one gave me anxiety throughout the cruise. (More about that later). Our luggage was there with an extra piece, we were room 7440 and we got a piece of luggage for room 7400. I know how stressful waiting for your luggage is so after we dropped our stuff off, my fiancée went off to find more in our group and I went to deliver the extra piece of luggage to its rightful room.

On my way back to the lobby bar I ran into the last 5 people from our group. These were the “oldies” in our group. My grandfather (in a room by himself, he got $800+ OBC since they did the single supplement on our cruise two months before we sailed) and the parents of my mother’s boyfriend. I walked my grandfather to his room when he found out he couldn't find his room card. He was so upset and I couldn't help but laugh and tell him this is very fixable. We must have spent 15 minutes in front of his door while he searched though all of his cargo short pockets. As I finally get him to head back up to guest services we run into the other older couple he was traveling with and she had his card somehow. I thought this was going to be a preview of how my week was going to go. Have to entertain and help take care of everyone while I don’t get to enjoy my vacation. ….Luckily I was wrong. :rolleyes:

Are married on the ship or island? My songs were:

Walking down the isle: Traditional wedding march but it was done by a steel drum player (we really wanted the island feel) We also had a steel drum player the entire cocktail hour

First Dance: She's my kind of crazy by Brantley Gilbert

Father dance: Just Fishing by Trace Atkins

Mother dance: Mama's song (don't know who sang that)

Cake Cutting : Hey Pretty Girl by Kip Moore

Two last songs: Bottoms up by Brantley Gilbert and Friends in Low Places by Garth Brooks

I can tell you they were the only country songs played at our reception but we had a 4 hour reception and if your on the ship and only have an hour you really want to mix it up. Friends in Low places was a big hit because everyone was just on the dance floor yelling it at the top of their lungs.

Hey Everyone!

I have been so busy catching up with work the past few weeks that even going on CC was completely cut out of my life. I want to do a review on my wedding because I know that a lot of people are using the same wedding planner that I did, and Villa Botanica is getting to be a popular choice. I will start this review tonight or tomorrow morning but I wanted to just lay the basics right now...

We were on the Carnival Liberty doing the exotic eastern cruise (Half Moon Cay, St. Thomas, Puerto Rico, and Grand Turk)

We Were married on April 1 on St. Thomas when we were in port from 8am to 6pm

Ceremony location: Magen's Bay

Reception Location: Villa Botanica

Wedding Planner: Janelle from Island Bliss weddings

Photographer: Elisha Orin

Can't wait to get all the nitty gritty details on here. We had a very fun, stressful, entertaining, and memorable day (with some surprises) and I wouldn't change it for anything! Well I wish I had a picture of my real cake (spoiler :D).

After spending the day relaxing on the beach, we headed to the ship. Departure was delayed for an hour or so. I don’t know what happened but we saw a couple of people getting taken off the ship (with their luggage) and getting into a police car. Note to self: Do not commit crimes while on vacation.

 

 

 

 

Dinner was at 5:30pm and after dinner we hung out at the cigar and whiskey tasting bar. The bar was hosting Karaoke, which was comedy in itself.

Your "left on probation" picture is from St. Marteen. That would be my newly acquired husband and me at the bar (honeymoon cruise), He got that shirt from a cruise that stopped in Rotan, Honduras.

and you should have seen the looks I got when I asked for it, not one server knew it was at the bars, I had bartenders look at me like I was crazy until I pointed at the bottle behind them. I had to write down what I wanted one night on the servers receipt pad in the casino because she had no idea what I was asking for.

When they added angry orchard to the menu I was waiting for fireball to come on the ships. Mixing them makes a good drink too. When I ordered the woodford I was waiting for the receipt to see how much it was going to cost, $7.50 is cheap in my book. Then again in my area when you ask for it on the rocks they never measure out an exact pour like they do on the ship.

Came off of the Valor for our honeymoon last week and had woodford reserve bourbon and fireball as new drink options on the ship. I know that it is not on all the ships because we did the liberty the week before. I'm guessing they are doing a test run since the bourbon was not listed on any of the menus. I was very happy to see my drink of choice on the ship. Its about time they got a higher end bourbon! :D

....DANCING!!!! sorry had to do it! Myself and future hubby are flying out this afternoon for our first B2B (Liberty and Valor) for our Wedding and Honeymoon!!!! :D:D

Well brides (and grooms) I started this thread sometime early 2013. And now its.....HERE!!!!! I am finishing up a couple of hours at work and I'm flying out tonight! Tuesday at 11:30am I will be marrying my lovely hubby to be on Magen's Bay in St. Thomas! Wish me luck, I have a lot of "contraband" I'm trying to get on the ship eg. steamers, multiple curling irons and flat irons. Still doesn't feel real yet!!!!! :eek::eek::eek:

in addition to my post above.... what we are doing special for our guests:

1) our awesome wedding :D:D

2) we booked out half of the steakhouse for a "rehearsal" dinner and an hour long cocktail hour beforehand couple of days before the wedding

3) made up gift bags (coolers) stuffed with little goodies. extra sunscreen, aloe, Advil, lotions, hair frizz stuff, antibacterial wipes and hand sanitizer, bug spray wipes, lint roller, tissues, chap stick (other stuff I cant think of)

4) (most importantly) an excuse to take a vacation! Its crazy how people haven't taken vacations for years and their only reason was because they had nothing to do! idk how many people jumped on the bandwagon when we just mentioned it before deciding to do this!

I am getting married on St. Thomas through Janelle with Island Bliss Wedding on TUESDAY!!!! (wow time flies!) :D:D

We went all out and are doing the ultimate cruise ship wedding experience with an beach wedding upgrade (on Magen's Bay) and the reception at Villa Botanica. I have had my ups and downs with Janelle but feel that she was on top of her game by the time everything had to come together. At times I definitely felt like I was one of the many (she got some information jumbled up mid way through the planning) but felt like she handled everything really well when it was that final few week crunch.

We opted to go with Elisha Orin for our photographer, if you do one of Janelle's packages that include photography remember that this is a "semi" professional. If it is included and you want to do a different photographer you will get a credit to your package.

Our transportation costs we very expensive, I had transportation included in my package from ship to villa botanica and back. Since we added Megan's Bay it added 20-25 bucks extra for each person.

I hope you find everything you are looking for!!!

Single Digit dance for the wedding cruise!!! woot! now gotta find time to start packing! oh and final wedding payment sent in yesterday!!!! Big weight off our shoulders!

Thank you so much Bo59rt for responding. Its not just the two of us its at least 30. But we definitely want to have the ceremony on or near a beach. I have heard varying reviews of Janelle so I wanted to make sure they can be trusted. Carnival's package doesn't offer much. So if we can have a longer reception for our guests on shore then we can do a more formal reception back on the ship. But yes transportation is another factor. I would just be taking them to one place beach or the villa they have as an option.

Plus photography!! What are you doing about that?

So many things to consider.

Thanks for your input! :)

 

Steph

Well including my fiance and I we are a group of 32 people. We chose her "ultimate cruise ship experience" wedding on her website. We paid for the 30 person group and an extra charge for the two extra people.

Here is what we are doing two weeks from tomorrow (its coming up quick!):

Leave ship to go to magens bay for ceremony

From there we go to villa botanica for a 1 hour cocktail hour and 3 hour reception.

Then back to ship.

If you do this package, transportation to villa botanica is included but if you go to a beach for the ceremony (instead of having it at the villa) that it's extra money for transportation. With Megan's bay I am paying $30 pp extra for the additional transportation and chairs set up at the beach.

I have changed the package so much I'm probably annoying her haha. Oh well it will all be worth it.

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I'm going to add my count down....

Leaving in 2 weeks! Wedding in 18 days! Ahhhhhhhh! So busy the past few days with the wedding planner!

Starting to feel really real :D

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Hello all! Fiancé and I just decided to wed on Carnival Valor August 16,2014. After deliberating a traditional wedding we preferred a beach site celebration. My question to anyone is: is anyone considering booking a vendor like Island Bliss for an on shore wedding celebration? I didn't like what Carnival has to offer, just a simple ceremony for two and then back to the ship for a 2 hr reception. Any advice on how best and smooth to make the ship to beach transition and on shore reception a fun and stress free ocassion, is really appreciated. Congrats to all newlyweds! . :)

I am using Island bliss but I am doing the exact opposite! I have en entire day with them from 10:30 til 5:00! I have had ups and downs with IBW but I think it is because I am doing such an extensive package and changing so many things to make it more custom.

Janelle has simpler wedding packages. I would contact her and go over exactly what you are looking for and she can give you a range of options. She allows customization to anything.

one question though.... if your just a simple wedding for two are you going to have a 2 hour reception for only two people as well??? or are you leaving all of your guests on the ship? haha

As for transportation, that can get pricey. If its just the two of you it might be included on the package cost, I'm hauling 32 people from ship to beach to mountain and back to ship and its added quite a few bucks to my total :rolleyes:

Thank you! looking forward to going there in a few weeks!

We are up getting ready to leave for Galveston . The wedding is tomorrow and we got a call from a family member saying to us " oh so and so is going with us to the Wedding and needs a place to ride". This so and so is a kid that they did not tell us about, his mother dropped him off at there house packed for the trip and went out of town.. So then the family member got mad when I told them that the kid could not go because its to late to put them on the list. They said well we can't go if he can't because he has no where to go with his mother out of town.. So I said " well I guess your not going ether then" smdh!! People just don't listen.. Oh we'll our Wedding is tomorrow and we are ready to have fun .

 

 

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Congrats!!! Hope you have an amazing day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!