4EverHis2013

Well we budgeted $1500 as well and I thought that would be plenty....we recieved 60 8x10's and 40 5x7's, 2 CD's with the pictures purchased, a DVD slide show and 2 canvases for $1500. The way it worked was he told us to go through and pick which ones we wanted so we did....well with the ones we picked it would have cost us $3000....we just didn't have that much money to spend....so we had to go back through and get rid of some so that we could get the $1500 package. So just know that you will recieve a lot of pictures, but there are going to be some that you will have to leave behind.

Ahh ok, I see. Thanks so much for breaking that down. It's a real shame how expensive pictures are whether its for a "traditional" wedding or a cruise one. Anywho, I look forward to seeing your pictures! :)

Forgot to ask...will you be sharing any of your pictures with us? :)

Hey everyone! I just wanted to give a little review of our wedding. I know that reading everyone elses reviews sure helped me tremendously in the planning process....so here it goes...

 

First off we had a very small wedding...all of our guests were non sailing and it was just immediate family and 2 of my best girl friends...I think 14 total. We got the deluxe wedding package.

 

Pre-Wedding...

We stayed at the Galvestonian....it was SOO nice....my fiance and his family stayed at his mom's timeshare on the west side of the island. We had a "rehearsal" dinner at the Fishermans Warf restaurant....it was really great. As far as my make up and hair go....Kristina Frank is the way to go...I HIGHLY recommend her....she did my makeup (airbrush) and another girl did my hair. She did an amazing job!!

 

Embarkation/Wedding....

I kind of felt like the embarkation process was chaotic....probably because I was just nervous and this was my first cruise so I didn't know what to expect. Once we finally got through security and everything we met with our wedding planner from The Wedding Experience as well as our minister....I kind of felt like they were not very informative and a little unorganized. But over all everything went great. There were apparently 3 other weddings that day on the ship...so needless to say our weddign people were spread thin. Customs went really slow...we didn't get to get on the ship until 11am which only gave us an hour to get our stuff to our room and get changed. That kind of stressed me out...but again everything turned out fine. The photographers came in before they came and got me to head towards the ceremony. My pictures turned out amazing, but more on that later. Our ceremony was in the Escape Bar...I was very pleased with the location. The ceremony went great! The reception was in the Piano Bar and it turned out great! The hor' deurves were great, the cake was great, and it was just all in all a great time.

 

Pictures...

I couldn't be more pleased with my pictures....they turned out amazing. Rommel was our photographer along with Nur. The only problem was that I couldn't get them all because of how much we budgetted for pictures.

 

Video...

Our video was amazing! I highly recommend getting the video...Misha was our videographer and he went above and beyond!

 

Flowers...

I didn't use the flowers that Carnival provided...I got a silk flower package on Etsy and they were beautiful.

 

I may be leaving stuff out so if there is any questions that anyone has please ask and I will tell you what I know! :)

First off, congratulations!! So happy to hear about another please cruise bride :) Thank you so much for sharing your review. Each one is always so helpful to me. I've been a little nervous about the pictures so I'm also always extra happy to hear when brides are happy with them. If you don't mind me asking, which package did you go with and how many pictures did you receive? Right now we are only budgeting about $1500 for pictures. We were also debating whether or not to get the video.

This is the only picture I have of it right now. This is when I tried it on at home, dont mind my dog running by haha

Where did you find your dinner dress? I could use some ideas of where to look!

We are acutally getting married on 05/07/2013, just leaving out on the 5th. Where are you guys cruising to and what ship?

Oooh ok! Congrats still! Haha. We're cruising to Key West, Turks & Caicos and the Bahamas on the Breeze. :) Where are you guys getting married?

Oh ok, I see. Sounds perfect. Thanks so much! Love your short dress too! I need to figure out where to start looking for one lol

Amanda, you're the best! :) Thank you for being so kind in sharing with us.

I have another question (don't hate me!): For the reception, we also booked the DJ. I'm just wondering though, does the DJ guide the flow of the reception for you as far as letting you know to go straight to cut the cake, asking if anyone wants to make a toast, first dance, etc.? Or the coordinator? Or do we need to do that ourselves?

Albean86, which vendor on Etsy did you use if you don't mind sharing? :)

thank you! I loved my shoes too :) the shoes were actually purchased at Davids Bridal when I got my dress once I told the sales associate my wedding colors she grabbed these and they were love at first sight I'm pretty sure they come in almost any color and they were pretty comfortable heres the site http://www.davidsbridal.com/Product_Satin-Peep-Toe-Platform-High-Heel-with-Bow-Maribelle_Accessories-Shoes-Heels-from-2-to-4-Inches

Thanks! I will have to go to DB and try these on!

yeeeaaa congrats on your wedding too :D

Oops! I meant to reply to Ericas85 on the matching wedding dates! I'm getting married 5-5-2013. Sorry for the confusion! Silly me lol

Warning: this may be long :)

 

my husband (yeaaa it feels so good to say that haha) and I have been together for 9 years now, since we were 17. We were engaged for almost 2 years and are now finally husband and wife :) When we first got engaged we knew we didnt want a traditional wedding and started looking online for different destination weddings. Cruise critic and this board actually helped with our decision to do a cruise wedding and I couldnt have been more happier with my choice. So now let me recap you with our planning and finally the big day.

 

We booked the wedding in Dec of 2011 starting our countdown at 417 days and I didn't think the day would ever come and now I can't believe its gone. The first thing we did was send out our save the dates made from vistaprint and also made a website with all of the info for our wedding and the cruise. We wanted to give people as much time as possible to plan for our wedding and cruise. All of our family is from Mass so we knew everyone would be cruising with us we ended up having about 40 guests cruise with us (which was a lot more than we expected).

 

After those were sent out and people started to pay the initial deposit with our travel agent I started to gather things for our "welcome aboard bags" which were a huge hit by the way. Heres the link with more info for those bags: http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1742030

 

You will also see in our pics that I had my own silk flowers made from a vendor on etsy which were much nicer than the carnival provided bouquet which is very small.

 

Alright so on with the review of the actual wedding.

 

We had so much stuff to bring down to Port Canaveral that we had to drive which was only 6 hours for us so it was not bad at all. We stayed at the Radisson at Cape Canaveral with all of our guests that flew in from Boston, MA the friday before the wedding. Thats a story to tell too, we almost didnt have any guests at our wedding. The northeast had a major snowstorm that friday and sat and were canceling a lot of flights. The flight with our guests on it was one of the last to leave the airport before they shut the airport down. I almost cried the night before while we were checking the flight statuses like every 20 min. I am so glad they were all able to make it! When we got to the hotel we gave the front desk a newsletter to give to every guest as they checked in to the hotel.

 

We had reserved a meeting room for that afternoon and had everyone meet us there. This is where we passed out our welcome aboard bags and wedding day timelines. I also had tshirts made for our wedding party and parents which everyone loved. My in laws then paid for everyone to have dinner right next to the hotel at Kelsey's which is like an italian/pizza restaurant the food was fantastic. Everyone had a great time and the party actually continued on to the hotel where they had a bar and live music outside by the pool.

 

The next morning my two "maids of honor" and the moms came to my hotel room (we kicked the groom out) where we had Tiffany from professional elegance do our hair and makeup. She is fantastic!!!! I highly recommend her I cannot believe how great she made us look and she was so sweet. We had room service bring us breakfast and mimosas and had a some great bonding time.

 

We then took the hotel shuttle over to the port. It took them about 3 runs to transport us and all of our guests and luggage to the port. This is where I wish I had planned better for because there was so much confusion and I needed help carrying all of the wedding stuff on board. My husband was with me at this point and we gave our luggage for the cruise to the porters right away that left us with a bag of "getting ready stuff" his suit my dress, 2 boxes for the wedding and a plastic tub with all of the flowers. We clearly could not carry all of that by ourselves so we had everyone grab something and go. This is where it got all crazy. We met Mary, one of our wedding coordinators, right away once inside the terminal she was amazing and I couldn't have asked for a better coordinator she helped us get all checked in and then said we would be taken to a private room with our guests and she would go over everything with us. Well no that did not happen because the ship was cleared for customs right away and everyone was rushed to go through the security pictures and board the ship right away. This is where I lost track of all my wedding stuff because everyone just took off for the ship and I didn't know who had what and where they were. I started to panic a little when Mary said she needed the stuff so they could set everything up. Eventually everyone converged in the lobby of the ship and I was able to located everything and stop my mini panic attack. So my advice is to assign something to everyone and know whose taking what before you even get to the port. I also have to give a shout out to my husband who carried my 2 wedding dresses (I had a short one for dinner) his suit, and our 2 sisters gowns all held over his head the entire time so they would not get wrinkled. I think I had to give him shoulder massages all week haha.

 

to be continued....

Hey albean86! I have a question, what brand and style are your shoes? They're so pretty! I'm actually looking for purple ones though.

I absolutely LOVED your review and photo's!! Thank you so much for sharing!!

Hey! We have the same wedding date! Just different ships! :-)

Thanks so much for sharing your review!! Happy everything went well for you! I will have to view your pictures later as I'm at work but Facebook is blocked at work :( lol