kre8ivejen

We are planning to get married on the beach in Miami prior to leaving on a cruise from the port of Miami... we have 40 guests that will be in attendance.  I am trying to find a decent service which is decently priced to transport all from there to the cruise port... does anyone have any experience, knowledge or ideas or recommendations on this?!?!  Thank you so very much in advance for your help!!!  🙂

Thank you so very much for this review!  I know it is a few years old, but i am getting married on the sensation soon... if you still check this if you could send me your documents i would greatly appreciate it!!!!  adpijen@yahoo.com 

again, thanx for the detailed review!!  🙂

I read somewhere of a hotel in Miami that let you park for free while gone if you stay there the night before and then they have a shuttle that takes you to the port.... anyone have an idea what i am talking about? Or anyone have ideas on cheapest/easiest/best places to park? We are getting married at embarkation and all are coming in from far away and several will be driving. Thank you for your assistance in advance!! :)

I am from Michigan, planning an embarkation wedding in february 2020! Thank you for creating this thread, i'm excited to see your replies as i am a bit nervous myself... TBest of luck to you and thank you again....... :)

done!

sorry, but me too?! :) please and thank you! adpijen@yahoo.com

THANX!

I am getting married on the Sensation on 2-20-20 and am so very excited but SOOOOOO very nervous!! Anyone marry on the Sensation or attend wedding on the Sensation?? We are planning a pre-embarkation wedding, i think like 30 ppl will be sailing with us. It is a second marriage for both of us so we do not need a HUGE deal, but want something special so we are not sure what kind of package to get?!! if anyone could give me any thoughts or advise or anything i would GREATLY appreciate it!! Thank you!!! :) if you would rather email me - adpijen@yahoo.com

Thank you for any thoughts you can share!!!! :) Jennifer :)

I know that this is a super old review and you have been married a while now... but this was a GREAT review and i thank you for being so thorough!!! I am getting married on the sensation soon... might you still have those documents? if you do, if you could send them my way i would greatly appreciate it! adpijen@yahoo.com Thank you in advance!!! :)

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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Congrats Ms. Christina Marie! I just sent a friend request to you as i am not so savvy with this site and wanted to send you a message about your key west wedding... hoping to chat with you about it a bit!! :)

Hello!

I am soooo confused and lost! My fiance and I want to go on another cruise to get married, but it seems that it might be a bit less expensive to maybe go on a cruise that stops at key west and get married on the beach than to go in international waters or another country to get married... has anyone done much research on this?!

Also, we have a few that want to come with us. How have you guys booked to get the best rates for all? Do you go through a travel agent? Call the cruise line direct? Go through a travel site like online vacations?

I know i have a bit of time as we are looking at right after christmas 2016 or in february 2017, but I am starting to freak out....... THANK YOU for any help and information that any of you may be able to offer! :) THANX....

Hi laides! How is everyone's planning going? I called to book our cruise on Thursday. We already have 10 guests booked! I never imagined when we decided to have a cruise wedding that so many people would choose to travel with us; we are anticipating about 50 guests.

 

We've made one substantial change in our plans as well. We have decided not to have a reception. We weighed several options (on the ship, off the ship, in the next port, etc...) and we decided that it's just something we are going to skip. We are not skipping this all together - we have always planned on having a reception at home once we get back, so that is the only reception we will be having. We feel that this way everyone can enjoy their vacation more and not be tied down by constantly partaking in wedding events. I know this is our wedding....but I also feel that it is as much our guests' vacation and I want them to be able to enjoy themselves and their time away from home/responsibilities. At first I thought it was rude of us but I've talked to several friends/guests and they all have supported our choice.

 

SO, we will be having the wedding and cake "ceremony" in Key West, we will also be renting a trolley (or probably 2!) to shuttle our guests from the ship to the wedding, and then on a tour of the city, and back to Duval St., where we will commence and unofficial pub crawl back to the ship; casual and very island-esque, perfect.

 

I hope planning is going well for everyone! Tomorrow's task for me is to address our STD cards and get them out in the mail. I can feel some writers cramp coming on just thinking about it. :-)

i usually creep on this site and am just now starting to get a bit more involved with the whole wedding planning thing and am trying to figure out how to pm?!?! laycj18 - could you possibly send me a message, i have a couple of questions i would like to ask ya! :) THANX! :)

Just got back from our first cruise! :)

I will first say that this site was amazing and i thank everyone for their thoughts and 'most important' things! With that i will say - do not think that you need everything that people are saying are a must! Think a bit about YOU and your travel companions and if you really think that whatever it is might be something YOU would really want/need/use! :)

There were 2 of us on Adventure of the Seas in a balcony room -

We took an over the door shoe thing.... never put it up. We did see where it might have been useful, but things never got so out of control that we HAD to use it. And my boyfriend tends to be an organized freak so that is why i took it, but he never had any problems or complaints - there were lots of little cubbies and drawers and stuff!

We did not take an extension cord or power strip - never regretted not having it.

I take a million pics - we took a back up camera battery, charged them both every night! And an 8 gig memory card, a back up 8 gig and another 4 gig back-up... we used both of our main cards - took 14 gigs of pics (almost 3000!)! **Royal changes a floor tile in the elevators to state the day, so every morning i would take a pic of my toes and the day it was, makes organizing the pics easy!

We took window static clings for our door - LOVED it! Made it so easy to find our door when walking down the hallway! :)

We took two double-wall tumblers (with cover/straw) and some pink lemonade powder (and a small plastic pitcher we got at the dollar store - wide opening so i could pack clothes in it for transport and then if no room could just leave in the room without leaving a $5 pitcher behind!) to make drink in our room and drink about the ship. ((the rum runner flasks work and were wonderful!)) Mind you, We still bought some wonderful drinks on the ship (LOVED the pina colada's!) :)

BACK PACK... back pack... BACK PACK! We took this most days! The day we just went on shore for a few hours we took a cross the shoulder satchel and that worked fine, but when we were off the ship for more than a few hours the back pack held our towels/change of clothes/water/sunscreen/etc...

I took a few post cards from my state/area... when i wanted to leave a note for our attendant asking him to do something or just saying thanx for something i left it on a post card! He thanked me several times for them!

Lots of one dollar bills! We took $50 in ones and used every last one of them (plus some!) on random tips!

Highlighters - WORK GREAT! very helpful!

Sunscreen!

Lanyards! (for sea pass!)

Formal clothes - those dinners and the pics after are fun!

Journal for keeping track of it all!

:) This is all that i can think of right now... Sorry, i know it is a lot! Best of luck to all of you that are getting ready to cruise for the first time! I was so very nervous, but now realize there was no need for being nervous - it was amazing! :)

...and I've heard that phone cards are really greatly appreciated as tips by the staff. Bring a few $2 cards and give them out to random staff, not just servers!

If you get phone cards in the US do they work for them in the Caribbean?!

This thread is amazing! Thank you to all who have posted such helpful things! SOOO excited (nervous) on our first cruise in just a couple weeks!!!