? Reception Choices - Formal Luncheon vs Buffet with open bar

[Jakeaboo]

Boy am I glad to have found this forum!!! I have so many questions but will only ask one in particular for now since the answers to others might be encrypted in the discussions already.

 

First, Congrats to all of you. How exciting that we are planning or planned a wedding!

 

I'm getting married on RC Jewel of the Seas on October 28, 2012 when it is at port in Boston. I know it's almost a year away but I want to get prepared with how much money we will need and spend. The wedding portion is already paid for roughly $2500. The next step is to think about the reception as well will have appox 60 guest (likely non-sailing considering it's a 14 day cruise and people can't go that long).

 

So I have a choice of a 1) Formal Wedding Luncheon 2) Lunch Buffet with Bar service

 

I would love to find out what you decided to do and if there are returning brides reading, what did you end up doing and what was your experience?

 

Here are my inital thoughts

 

Formal Wedding Lunch

Pros

I like the idea that the reception is 2 hours

The servers bring the food to you

The main dining room is beautiful

Reasonably priced

 

Cons

The main beautiful dining room will not be private - other groups can be there

No entertainment allowed - might be boring?

Only wine available for alcoholic beverages. This part might bum some of my guests out!

Where would we have our first dance? No music?

 

 

Lunch Buffet

Located in private room

The lunch buffet offers more variety of food although I'm not a huge buffet fan

Full bar service available

Entertainment allowed

We can have our first dance, and other traditional things that you have at weddings.

More fun!

 

Cons

$$$

The lunch buffet is only an hour. How can a reception be that quick? To extend the reception to an additional hour, it's $16 extra per person (bar service) and I think that includes children over the age of 4. I would make sure they got their fair share of milk!

 

Entertainment is very pricey on the ship

 

I would love to know your opinions of the recpeption choices on Royal Caribbean!

 

Thanks so much!

[dcdiva]

I was married on board the Jewel of the Seas several years ago. She's a beautiful ship, with menu beautiful spots for a ceremony and reception. We went with the lunch buffet because music and dancing was very important to us, and ended up in the Safari Club. Since we were concerned about the time, we added the extra hour of open bar. There was so much food, I don't know how we could have gotten through it all in just an hour. And our guests made good use of the extra hour of open bar :D

 

We also had several young children (toddlers/infants) and some young adults that were under 21. Since none of those folks could take part in the open bar, we worked with the TWE to make sure we did not pay anything for open bar for the young kids. We also paid a slightly reduced per person charge for the under-21s. Since we had to provide names and birthdates for all the guests, they already had this info and it was fairly easy to arrange.

 

One tip if you opt for the extending the reception -- though we were in the Safari Club, which has a large bar area, RCI initially was providing only wait service. Two cocktail servers took orders and then went to a service bar somewhere outside the lounge where a bartender made drinks. With 60 guests, it became clear that folks would be waiting 15 or 20 minutes for a drink and with so little time that just wouldn't work for us. The best man saw the problem right away and "persuaded" the bartender to man the bar inside the lounge. Not sure exactly how he made that happen (no doubt a sizeable tip), but it made a huge difference.

 

We opted for the DJ, but provided him with our music list well in advance. Plus, we brought CDs with all of our required music. I am pretty sure he used our CDs, but I know the cruiselines now frown on that.

 

If you'd like see some pictures of my Jewel wedding let me know.

[Love.II.Cruise]

Ours was a little different. We did our wedding on a port day. It was a 15 night cruise and not everyone wanted to go on the cruise. We did our marriage off the ship and had the formal reception on board (this was Princess). Guests that were not sailing were permitted on the ship until 30 minutes before sailing.

 

It was really nice to have everyone seated with full service. We only had 14 people. I don't know if they gave us a dining room that was typically closed, but we had the whole place to ourselves with a live pianist. And it seemed like there were 4 servers for all of us. Way over the top and awesome!

 

Whatever you decide, I'm sure it will be wonderful.

[Jakeaboo]

Hello,

I hope I am responding correctly! I'm new to this board!

 

Dcdiva - I would love if you shared your photos! You sound very happy with the way everything turned out on the Jewel. Did you love the Safari Club? Maybe I can put in my request now for the room.

 

 

Suitelive - thank you for your response. I hope you enjoyed your reception on the Princess and your 15 day cruise! Congrats! I should ask my wedding consultant if there is a pianist in the main dining room. That's a really good question!

[JulieRose]

I guess what it comes down to is how important is it to you to do the first dance and all? I wish I could do that sort of reception but we won't have enough guests :(

[Love.II.Cruise]

First dance. It didn't happen with my DH family on board since they were off by the time we sailed. However, my DH and I went up on deck by the pool dressed up and there was all of my family. My Dad and I did a father/daughter dance to live music from the pool band at sail away (totally unplanned and I couldn't even tell you what song it was because it didn't matter). He was wearing his swim trunks and I was in my wedding gown!! :D A family member took a picture of us.

[dcdiva]

Having trouble uploading, but here are some photos from my wedding on RCL Jewel of the Seas...

[dcdiva]

Okay -- I'll try again with a few more that give you a better sense of the room set up.

[Scooter0427]

Great pics, dcdiva! Given that there are so few Royal Caribbean brides, it's nice to have another to ask questions to. Was the aisle runner included? I like the look of it, and if it's not included would want to bring my own. Thanks and Congrats!!

[dcdiva]

Aisle runner, and all the decorations you see, were included in our package. The only thing we did oursevles were the bouquets and boutonierres, which are silk. My sister actually made them all and carted them from New Jersey. (Except for the red carnations, which were a surprise from one of the groomsmen, an inside joke, and very long story.) Cake was also standard.

[Artemis908]

I jumped back and forth between the luncheon and the open bar/dance floor thing a lot. What pushed me to open bar/buffet style was that they couldn't do the menu I wanted because of time restraints, also I couldn't do table assignments. In the end I am glad I went with what I did. People were able to mingle and I got to do my father-daughter dance, my dad cried like a baby. :D One thing though is no one danced!

[Jakeaboo]

Aisle runner, and all the decorations you see, were included in our package. The only thing we did oursevles were the bouquets and boutonierres, which are silk. My sister actually made them all and carted them from New Jersey. (Except for the red carnations, which were a surprise from one of the groomsmen, an inside joke, and very long story.) Cake was also standard.

 

Hi DCDiva! Thank you so much for sharing your beautiful photos. All of this information is so very helpful!

[Jakeaboo]

I jumped back and forth between the luncheon and the open bar/dance floor thing a lot. What pushed me to open bar/buffet style was that they couldn't do the menu I wanted because of time restraints, also I couldn't do table assignments. In the end I am glad I went with what I did. People were able to mingle and I got to do my father-daughter dance, my dad cried like a baby. :D One thing though is no one danced!

 

 

Thank you Artemis! I'm leaning towards the buffet too. That's so sweet that your dad cried. LOL