Engaged & Now Starting to Plan an 2013 October"ish" Cruise Wedding

[morenadivine]

Hi everyone,

 

I am so happy I found this site. It is full of practical advice and most of all - great wedding experiences. After a month of stressing at the cost of a traditional wedding & having a good conversation with my mother - my fiance and I decided on a cruise wedding. We are planning an October wedding to allow us time to save, do premarital counseling, and allow our guest time to request time off, etc. We live in the New England area, and have friends and family in FL & TX. So we are considering leaving from FL as most of us can travel there at a low cost. Here are a few questions:

 

1. Oct. is sitting right around hurricane season - any thoughts on keeping time or moving to late in the year from brides that had weddings in late fall?

 

2. Any thoughts on cruise length (i.e. short, 4-6 days, 7+ days) ? We want our guest to have a mini vacation but we also need to consider that some people do not have too much time off as well - since we will have to travel to FL

 

3. What's the cost of bringing your own photographer? I get a feeling that cruises make a chunk of their money by hiking the photo prices (being that not one line shows you their photography rates).

 

4. Any other practical advice to have a "smooth" planning and amazing wedding with our loved ones?

 

5. Can some of you share your average cost for your cruise wedding since one of the main drivers for our decision is to be budget friendly! Thank you!

 

 

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my questions. Here it is to an amazing year & a great journey to being marry!

 

Peace, Morena

[KenyaCruise]

Congrats on your engagement. We are planning our vow renewal and we are extremely excited! We have cruised in October and didn't have any issues with the weather. In fact it was beautiful! Carnival is not going to allow you to bring your own photographer based on some of the things I have read. Here is a link I think you would enjoy reading:http://www.carnival.com/Funville/forums/p/205204/1077534.aspx

 

I find the prices for cruise weddings to be very affordable...... As well as the vow renewal. Everything that I have read suggests that everything is easy breezy!! That's one of the reasons why we decided to do it this way. It's budget friendly and they accommodate your needs without issue! I hope this helps!!

[morenadivine]

thank you for your input & sharing the link.

[fldogmassage]

Hurricane season....I live in FL and you never know what will happen. So if you have any worry you might want to move it. If you are on the cruise they will take the ship around the hurricane and you may miss ports. However a major hurricane could close airports stopping you from arriving or leaving.

 

cruise length. Pick what works best for you and if people can make it great. If you pick for other they might not cruise any ways. You can get married on board the day the ship leaves and then people do not have to cruise but can still go to the wedding.

 

I know RCCL does not allow out side photographers. I would think the other are the same as they want to keep the money in house.

 

For our wedding on RCCL, including cruise and 25 people for reception we are looking at 6-8 thousand. have not done all the numbers yet.

[Lacaena]

Hi! and Congratulations!

 

1. We have cruised during hurricane season and we haven’t had a problem, but we know people who have. I think it depends on what your plans for your wedding are. If you are going to get married on the ship on embarkation day then you only have to worry about the port getting hit by a hurricane but if you are going to get married on an island then you need to worry about not getting to your port. Obviously this is a personal decision, whether you want to risk it or not. My fiance and I were planning on an October marriage in New England, where we’re from. But when we switched it to a cruise wedding we pushed it off until January for multiple reasons but chief among them was hurricane season.

2. We chose a cruise on the NCL Sky because she does weekend cruises which leave on a Friday and return on a Monday. We have friends and family who don’t have a lot of time off and we wanted to offer them an option that would be minimally invasive to their work schedule. But, I have heard of a lot of brides doing longer cruises and having plenty of people cruise with them. I guess it depends on your guests and like Fldogmassage said you can get married on embarkation day so that people who can’t go on the cruise can still attend the ceremony.

3. NCL also does not allow you to bring your own photographer.

4. I wish I had advice for smooth planning, but I don’t lol

5. I don’t know if you mean budget friendly for you and your fiance, your guests, or both. But we are concerned about all of the above so I’ll just share my thoughts. I have friends and family who live on a fairly tight budget and we wanted them to be able to come so we chose a cruise that was short (aka cheap lol) I think that was the biggest thing we could do for them is pick an affordable cruise. Especially because we are not getting married on embarkation day. We also made sure to chose a ship that had many cabin categories, I know this sounds weird but we had originally thought about the Epic and they have no outside cabins so it was inside or jump to a balcony. Not a huge issue but something we thought of.

As far as our budget, a good friend of mine got married on Carnival for less than 5k for the whole thing, including their cruise. We are spending considerably more, but that is because we have decided to help some of our family members out with expenses and also to host some activities like getting cabanas and having a welcome aboard dinner at a fee restaurant. I think if we had to do it for 5 we definitely could, and maybe even less. So I guess my point is that it can cost as much or as little as you want.

 

I hope this helps. Good luck with your planning!!!

[indyabs]

I'm not sure what cruise line you're thinking, but I'm on Carnival so that's the info I know.

 

1. I live in FL and had always wanted a Fall wedding but decided to push it to February since most of our family lives out of state and would have to fly in. This was just a personal decision I made because I didn't want the stress of just the thought of having a hurricane ruin the cruise.

 

2. I chose a short weekend cruise for two reasons, 1. thinking about our guests' budget and 2. we still can justify a honeymoon! It was important to us to have as many people go as possible, and because of that, it was important for us to also have a honeymoon where we can be alone without all our family and friends where we feel like we need to entertain them since we planned the whole trip.

 

3. Carnival advertises that they do not allow outside photography, but I've read plenty of reviews that say they brought their own and just had to sign a waiver from Carnival. My fiance's sister and brother-in-law do wedding photography as their job. We're going to have the best of both worlds and have them bring their cameras (they're leaving their lighting and whatnot at home) and have the Carnival photographer too. We'll let the Carnival photographer do all the family shots and stuff around the ship right after, but then we'll go around with his sister and get even more. We showed his brother-in-law Carnival's price sheet, and he said the prices were actually really reasonable for what we would be charged.

 

4. Don't sweat the small stuff. I haven't had any issues with planning so far (KNOCK ON WOOD!). I don't really know if I have specific advice, but planning a cruise wedding and giving myself a year to do it gave me plenty of time to shop around and look for things I really wanted vs superfluous things that I didn't need. I have a number of other coworkers getting married (6 others in an office of like 50...something must be in the water) and my experience has been much more enjoyable than the others (and much cheapter).

 

5. I guess I shouldn't really comment on this one, as we've planned our wedding as a cruise because it's a vacation we love to take and soemthing that is unique to us as a couple, and not as a way to save money from a land wedding. Although our budget isn't a blank check by any means, we're well below half of what my coworkers are budgeting for their land wedding, and I feel like I'm getting pretty much everything I want.

[lightskinedgyal]

Hi everyone,

 

I am so happy I found this site. It is full of practical advice and most of all - great wedding experiences. After a month of stressing at the cost of a traditional wedding & having a good conversation with my mother - my fiance and I decided on a cruise wedding. We are planning an October wedding to allow us time to save, do premarital counseling, and allow our guest time to request time off, etc. We live in the New England area, and have friends and family in FL & TX. So we are considering leaving from FL as most of us can travel there at a low cost. Here are a few questions:

 

I feel the same as you i wanted to have it at home finance didnt want to spend the money needed to have it at home so we compromised on a cruise wedding!

 

1. Oct. is sitting right around hurricane season - any thoughts on keeping time or moving to late in the year from brides that had weddings in late fall?

 

I am getting married end of Oct and hoping for the best i feel that no matter when you do it the weather could be good or bad

 

 

2. Any thoughts on cruise length (i.e. short, 4-6 days, 7+ days) ? We want our guest to have a mini vacation but we also need to consider that some people do not have too much time off as well - since we will have to travel to FL

 

I say do what you want but we are doing a 4 night cruise with one night in a hotel before hand so ends up being a 6 day vacation for people (we as well are travelling from Canada to FL

 

3. What's the cost of bringing your own photographer? I get a feeling that cruises make a chunk of their money by hiking the photo prices (being that not one line shows you their photography rates).

 

 

I dont think there is a cost but you just sign a form saying you will not use Carnival photographer i have heard different points on this issue tho.

 

4. Any other practical advice to have a "smooth" planning and amazing wedding with our loved ones?

 

DO what you want to do that makes you happy and try to not please everyone the ones you trying to please might be the ones that dont even come!

5. Can some of you share your average cost for your cruise wedding since one of the main drivers for our decision is to be budget friendly! Thank you!

Our wedding will cost around 5000-6000 all together just estimated we have many guests coming though.

 

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my questions. Here it is to an amazing year & a great journey to being marry!

 

Good Luck see you in October!

 

Peace, Morena

 

Good luck and have fun!

[morenadivine]

lightskinedgyal -

 

Thank you for the reply. We booked the Carnival Victory sailing on October 14th out of Miami. We are super excited and are very happy with our decision to do a cruise wedding. This is the best decision we've maid thus far.

 

Have a wonderful wedding!!!!!!!

[MrsFreeman21408]

I am getting married in October during hurricane season. I'm willing to take the risk because the prices are more affordable for my family and friends. Also, I've been on two cruises in the month of October and we were fine. I pray my wedding cruise is the same. Good luck!