What to expect with an NCL Coordinated Wedding (Bahamas)

I'm going to write this post with all of the information I wish was available to me before I even made the decision to get married on an NCL cruise. Having it will definitely make the decision, and process of completing it, MUCH easier if you know what to expect.

We arranged for a "Legal at sea" wedding in the Bahamas. This means we'll be at sea and not at a port, the Captain will officiate the wedding and the marriage will be legally recognized by the United States.

Here are some things to know up front:

1. NCL does not provide "wedding coordination services" or sell you wedding packages, they contract those services out to "Royal Ocean Events". They handle the "coordination" (I use that term loosely) and in turn they work with NCL to make the arrangements. You provide your billing information to Royal Ocean Events, and they bill you for part of your contracted services while NCL bills you for the remainder.

2. Royal Ocean Events will not even speak to you without having a cruise booked first and providing your reservation number. Personally I feel this is unfair since the whole decision on whether or not to even book a cruise for the wedding rides on the details of what's required to make it happen; something which they won't even discuss with you until you've decided to book the cruise.

3. Paperwork: If you decide to book a wedding, you'll need to provide various documents to Royal Ocean Events. Some of these documents need to be Notarized, Certified, and Apostille authenticated. What this means:

Notarized: Any notary can do this for you, most banks have them. All the notary does is certify that they witnessed you signing the document and they verified your identity. They log the transaction into their log.

Certified: The authority who handles this in each state may be different, in New York it was the County Clerk. The country clerk takes your notarized document, looks up the Notary's seal and signature, and verifies that it is valid and that the Notary is still authorized to notarize documents.

Apostille: Once you have your documents notarized AND certified, you need to present them to your Secretary of State's office to have an Apostille authentication performed. The Secretary of State's office verifies the signature and capacity of the previous people who executed each document. The Apostille letter is the certification that this authentication was performed, and makes the documents legally recognized by foreign countries. (Not all countries recognize an Apostille, but the Bahamas does)

4. The items you'll be asked for:

a. If you were previously married, a CERTIFIED and APOSTILLED copy of your divorce or death decree. (Certification here means that the court provided you a copy of your divorce / death decree stapled along with their certification that it is an exact unaltered replica of the original and contains your county or state seal / stamp).

b. If you have never been married, a NOTARIZED, CERTIFIED, AND APOSTILLED affidavit swearing to the fact that you have never been married. Royal Ocean Events will provide this document to you after you have signed a wedding coordinator agreement with them.

c. The "Wedding Application", "Marriage License Form", and "Intent To Marry" form. These are actually one and the same, but they tend to refer to them with different names at different times which is confusing. This form is provided to you by ROE after you've signed a wedding coordinator agreement with them.

Some states require you to apply for the Apostille letters in person, some allow you to mail the forms to them, some do both. If you mail them, make sure you use a method with tracking such as FedEx.

There's a lot of running around to do to get all of the forms completed, and since you'll be sending these forms out at least twice, you'll want to get duplicate copies notarized, certified, and apostilled just to reduce the amount of work and travel should something get lost in the mail or require re-application due to a clerical error. My suggestion? Get 4 copies of your death / divorce decrees (if required) and affidavit(s) of single status notarized, certified, and apostilled. This way if something gets lost, or you're informed the papers are getting sent back to you by the Apostille since you didn't fill out their application properly, you already have notarized and certified copies standing by that you can immediately send out instead of waiting for your first set to come back. You'll find out quickly that there are several stages to getting the wedding booked, and several milestones to meet (75 days before, 60 days before, 45 days before, 30 days before, etc..) so the clock will be ticking.

In my case, ROE did NOT tell me I needed a "Certified" copy of the affidavit, they just said "Notarized". So the state sent back the affidavit without the Apostille. Luckily, I had made the duplicate copy which I had notarized and was able to send it right back out along with the notarized & certified copy of the divorce decree.. that saved me a week of precious time!

So now, here is exactly how the entire process went down for us.

1. Booked the cruise.

2. Contacted ROE.

3. Was provided with 4 PDFs: Wedding Brochure, NCL Wedding Information, Wedding Coordinator Agreement, Wedding at Sea License Requirements.

The brochure explains all of the packages available and their costs, but BE AWARE. Those are not the only costs. The wedding coordinator agreement makes you aware that there is a 15% service fee that will be added on at the VERY END of all of this paperwork and negotiating. In addition, tipping is also expected onboard the ship to those who facilitate the wedding.

4. You complete the wedding coordinator agreement and scan/email or fax it back, then call with a credit card and pay a $150 deposit. They will not work with you until this has been completed. Once you pay the deposit, they will send you an email with all of the attachments required for you to fill out such as:

Wedding Ceremony Package (This is where you select what options you want)

Single Status Affidavit

Marriage License Requirements (Explains what's required to obtain your license)

Notice of Intended Marriage (Your "application" to marry)

Note: If you want a legal at sea wedding, that requires a Bahamas "Maritime" License which is different than if you were getting married a Bahamas port. The cost of that license will set you back $900. Keep this in mind.

5. You go through the painstaking process of deciding which packages you want. You chose the type of ceremony, photo package (if any), cocktail hour (if any), type of cake, etc... Once you fill out the welcome packet and return it, they send you an invoice for the WEDDING PACKAGE you selected; this does not contain all of the extras, just the ceremony package.

6. At this point, you need to scan/email or fax copies of your passports and drivers licenses along with the documents you had notarized, certified, and apostilled. DO NOT REMOVE ANY STAPLES TO DO THIS! It will void the certification and null/void the document. Fold the pages back carefully, scan/copy and email/fax to ROE. They will send the scans to the Bahamas government for their approval.

7. Once the Bahamas government has approved the documents, you will receive an email from ROE telling you to FEDEX THE ORIGINALS to the Bahamas government at the address ROE provides you when they're ready. You will NOT be getting these documents back, another reason to make sure you got extra copies. If for some reason the documents get lost or damaged on the way to the government, aren't you glad you have original copies waiting as backup already notarized, certified, and apostilled? ;)

Note: You do NOT send the copy of your passports or license to the Bahamas directly, just the original documents requested of you by ROE.

8. Next you'll be scanning/email or faxing your completed wedding package to ROE, they will in return send you back a completed invoice which contains all of your extras, the cost of your wedding license, and their 15% surcharge. You will call them with payment or instruct them to bill the card on file, they will take several days to charge you and then provide you with an invoice that you will have to sign and scan/email or fax back.

9. The next thing you will receive is the completed wedding itinerary, usually about a month before the wedding. This contains the what, where, and when. It's pretty much a written confirmation of what you asked and paid for, except once you sign this document you are LOCKED IN and there are no changes... so make sure you are 100% firm in everything you have picked. This document contains things also such as who the bridal party is, who is walking down with whom, what wedding songs you picked or if you're bringing your own music and what song/artist, etc.. They also want this returned with your custom vows if you are creating your own.

This is pretty much the entire process! What I would suggest is when you receive the list of what is required when (it is peppered across multiple documents), write yourself a spreadsheet or a table in Word and using Google to calculate the milestones: 75 days before wedding, 60 days before wedding, 45 days before wedding, 30 days before wedding etc and set some reminders up on your phone to alert you 1 week and 2 weeks in advance of each of those dates to ensure you're not forgetting something important. Being late on one deadline will push back another, it has a rippeling affect so don't let it get out of hand :)

Even though they call themselves "wedding coordinators", my experience is that they're just order takers. They have all the experience with "coordinating" these weddings, but they don't offer any advice or suggestions and want you to direct them with what YOU want. If you have questions about the process, or want something done that isn't on the forms, don't hesitate to ask them. They will contact NCL to see if they can accommodate your request and will get back to you. I asked for a few things that weren't normal, and I was happily surprised to see NCL accommodate my request!

I don't know if this is the norm, but when I called ROE and spoke to a rep about booking the wedding, the initial person I spoke to wasn't very interested in explaining things in any detail, and was always in a rush to get me off the phone; she made me feel like I was inconveniencing her any time I had a question or wanted information. After I signed an agreement I was assigned an actual "coordinator', that person was nice, willing to explain things at detail, and no matter how many times we went back and forth to change our minds on things, was always pleasant and never made me feel rushed or that I was inconveniencing them; I can't say one bad thing about her.

I hope this doesn't overwhelm anyone on the process, and if anyone has any questions don't hesitate to ask!

-Keith

Here are some other FYIs:

1. Photography: If you have a port-side wedding, they have local contractors at each port who can take pictures and perform video. If you have an at-sea wedding, you are using someone from the NCL photography department and they do NOT have a videographer. You are also not permitted to hire an outside photographer or videographer. Since additional hours of photos are expensive and I want video of the wedding, I purchased a nice DLSR camera which does video and a tripod. I'll set it up before the wedding and have it video the entire thing. I'll also be using it at various ports to take professional quality pictures and "selfies" as most newer DSLRs have built in WiFi which allows you to frame the photo using your cellphone and even trigger the shutter with it.

2. You will not have a representative from ROE onboard the cruiseship, your "coordinator" on board will be the NCL group services coordinator.

3. They want to charge a LOT of money.. for a cocktail reception and food / dessert plates should you want them. Since there is so much free food all over the ship, and we all have the UBP package, we opted not to have a cocktail hour or reception and we're just going to go to one of the restaurants or bars after taking pictures.

4. I asked several times for advice on the best place to take pictures since we had to instruct them how we wanted the hours blocked of our photography time. They had no information for us, but they did reach out to the ship who responded back with a few ideas which did help.

5. You cannot apply for the maritime marriage license on your own, ROE does it for you as the maritime license is a newer process available to at sea weddings which requires the cruiseship's involvement. If you're doing a portside wedding, you *can* apply for the license yourself but it actually requires that you apply for it in person and have a letter from the ship proving you've been in port for 48 hours; something that they're not going to do for you. So ultimately, you're stuck using ROE to get the license and make no mistake about it; they heavily inflate the clost.

6. At your ceremony you will receive a ceremonial (read: not a legal document) marriage certificate. You will not be able to use this to change your name on your drivers license. It will take 8-12 weeks to receive the official, legal, marriage certificate. If you want additional copies of it, ROE will be happy to sell you them for $180 each. Or, once you receive the official one you can order it yourself directly from the Bahamas at $20-30 EACH.

7. There are no makeup services on NCL ships. While you can make appointments at the spa to do hair, the same does not go for makeup.

I think this is everything! I'll reply if/when more things pop up.

-Keith

Wow thanks for all the info! I am currently in the process of planning my wedding onboard the Norwegian Getaway and I was finding it overwhelming! And I still can't believe they don't offer makeup services, seems crazy to me!

We were trying to cut down on the reception costs as well, our guests will all have the drink packages as well but they can't be used for private events, go figure.

Unfortunately it seems the dollar signs just keep adding up with Norwegian, probably would have been much more cost effective to go with Carnival, but we wanted the nicer ship :)

Wow thanks for all the info! I am currently in the process of planning my wedding onboard the Norwegian Getaway and I was finding it overwhelming! And I still can't believe they don't offer makeup services, seems crazy to me!

 

We were trying to cut down on the reception costs as well, our guests will all have the drink packages as well but they can't be used for private events, go figure.

 

Unfortunately it seems the dollar signs just keep adding up with Norwegian, probably would have been much more cost effective to go with Carnival, but we wanted the nicer ship :)

Sam,

No problem, I hope it helps! Are you having a large wedding party? Ours is small, only 7 people so we opted to forgo the reception.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Wow! We'd considered a cruise ship wedding, but got fed up with the lack of available info and ultimately eloped to Gibraltar, which could not have been easier.

I don't know why they make it so difficult.

We are having a somewhat small-medium sized wedding, aprrox 30 guests. Trying to find little ways to cut down costs here and there still! haha

This is so informative thank you so much... I'm getting married on the epic October 2017. All the best with your wedding

Hey Everyone...we just got married on The Getaway in January and thought I would share a few things! Overall, the wedding was amazing! There were some hiccups along the way, but I was the complete opposite of a bridezilla so they didn't really faze me. After all...we're getting married on a cruise, how bad could life be?!

Some of the things to note:

- RCL is completely unhelpful. You pick the package you want and that's it. They cannot change anything for you or really help you with anything. Don't get me wrong, they are very nice to work with, but it's frustrating that they have no pull. What you get is what you get.

- The photographers on the Getaway were amazing!!! This was the part that I was the most nervous about. Our wedding was the first full day of the cruise so I literally met the photographer less than 24 hours before the wedding. I had no idea how the pictures would come out and I was so nervous they would be awful. Boy did they prove me wrong!! We have Reggie Relova on the Getaway and he was awesome!! His manager, Natasha (sp?) was also great! Reggie was like an ninja getting some of the shots he did. I swear, I didn't even see him throughout the ceremony and reception but looking through the pictures he must have been right there. I'll share some of the pictures so you have an idea. Basically, I just want to calm down any other brides there about the quality of pictures...they are great!

- We had 24 people all together for our wedding. Of those, 2 were children and 3 of them were non-drinkers...the rest had the UBP. They were going to charge us per person for everyone for the open bar. Thank god I spoke up and said they had the UBP which saved us $400. Make sure to check in about this as RCL has no idea who on your guestlist has the UBP because they are not Norwegian.

If you have any questions about weddings aboard an NCL ship, please feel free to reach out to me! I just lived it :) I know there's not a lot of info on them out there from people so I'm happy to help!

Wow! This all makes me very glad that I chose to book my wedding with a local coordinator in St. Thomas. (Wedding date is July 18, 2017, sailing on NCL Escape.) So far, the planning process has gone pretty well, and I think I'll end up saving quite a bit of money.

I've not had a great experience with NCL group booking process. Does anyone have experience booking a rehearsal dinner on board in the private room at Taste (MDR) or coordinating group shore excursions? Were you able to distribute welcome bags in the guests cabins on embarkation day?

Thanks!

Hey Everyone...we just got married on The Getaway in January and thought I would share a few things! Overall, the wedding was amazing! There were some hiccups along the way, but I was the complete opposite of a bridezilla so they didn't really faze me. After all...we're getting married on a cruise, how bad could life be?!

 

Some of the things to note:

 

- RCL is completely unhelpful. You pick the package you want and that's it. They cannot change anything for you or really help you with anything. Don't get me wrong, they are very nice to work with, but it's frustrating that they have no pull. What you get is what you get.

 

- The photographers on the Getaway were amazing!!! This was the part that I was the most nervous about. Our wedding was the first full day of the cruise so I literally met the photographer less than 24 hours before the wedding. I had no idea how the pictures would come out and I was so nervous they would be awful. Boy did they prove me wrong!! We have Reggie Relova on the Getaway and he was awesome!! His manager, Natasha (sp?) was also great! Reggie was like an ninja getting some of the shots he did. I swear, I didn't even see him throughout the ceremony and reception but looking through the pictures he must have been right there. I'll share some of the pictures so you have an idea. Basically, I just want to calm down any other brides there about the quality of pictures...they are great!

 

- We had 24 people all together for our wedding. Of those, 2 were children and 3 of them were non-drinkers...the rest had the UBP. They were going to charge us per person for everyone for the open bar. Thank god I spoke up and said they had the UBP which saved us $400. Make sure to check in about this as RCL has no idea who on your guestlist has the UBP because they are not Norwegian.

 

If you have any questions about weddings aboard an NCL ship, please feel free to reach out to me! I just lived it :) I know there's not a lot of info on them out there from people so I'm happy to help!

What venue did you use for your wedding? Any tips for a wedding on the Getaway?? :-)

Wow! This all makes me very glad that I chose to book my wedding with a local coordinator in St. Thomas. (Wedding date is July 18, 2017, sailing on NCL Escape.) So far, the planning process has gone pretty well, and I think I'll end up saving quite a bit of money.

I've not had a great experience with NCL group booking process. Does anyone have experience booking a rehearsal dinner on board in the private room at Taste (MDR) or coordinating group shore excursions? Were you able to distribute welcome bags in the guests cabins on embarkation day?

Thanks!

Who did you go through for your wedding in st Thomas? Any advice please?! I already paid ROE the non refundable deposit to schedule my wedding and now I’m nervous!! Getting married in st Thomas in January 2020

Who did you go through for your wedding in st Thomas? Any advice please?! I already paid ROE the non refundable deposit to schedule my wedding and now I’m nervous!! Getting married in st Thomas in January 2020

I used Island Bliss Weddings & Mermaid Rebecca Ruth photography. It was a great experience!

I used Island Bliss Weddings & Mermaid Rebecca Ruth photography. It was a great experience!

Do you mind if I pick your brain? So did you not go through the cruise lines at all?

We got married in July 2017, so I’m not sure exactly how much I’ll remember about the planning, but I’ll try!

We set up a group booking directly through NCL for our guests to reserve their cabins, and the cruise line was aware it was for our wedding. They arranged a private escort off of the ship when we arrived in St.Thomas through the crew area, so I could make my early hair & makeup appointment in port. Everything else I planned through the local wedding planner. I liked that this gave me more options for type of ceremony, location, decor, etc.