How much did your wedding cost?

[alymb03]

Would anyone be willing to share how much their Carnival wedding cost total? I see the brochure prices but wondering what the final number can end up being. I am interested in the embarkation wedding with the Time to Celebrate or Time to Celebrate Big package but would love to hear any experiences! Please tell which package you chose and what extras you added on with your total cost. Thank you so much! :D

[slord12]

Well it depends!

 

The time to celebrate big package only includes 20 people - every additional person adds $30. We are assuming around 100 attending so that extra 80 people will be an additional $2,400.

 

You have to go on the cruise so your room cost is an added expense(we booked a grand suite since this is our wedding) plus your excursions, on-board spending, tips...everything can add up quick!

 

We are going down the night before and having a welcome dinner at the resort so room costs (grooms dad is paying for the dinner - woohoo!). We are also doing welcome gift bags for every guest.

 

We sent save the dates, and are sending formal invitations. We have budgeted for the most expensive picture package they offer....just in case!

 

Is all of that necessary? Not really! It just all depends on what you and your fiance want to do!

 

I am an accountant, and I have tracked every penny I've spent - from postage stamps to the wedding package! Right now we have spent around $7k. That number includes our cruise, our pre-cruise hotel stay, my cousin/hair/makeup stylists cruise room and hotel stay, the wedding package base price, save the dates (including envelopes/printing/postage), our wedding party cards asking them to be in the wedding, and my wedding dress.

 

We still have to:

- pay the balance on our wedding depending on the number of people (we are at least expecting this to be $2,400)

- pay for the flowers (we ordered real-touch bouquets/bouts/wristlets)

- tip the waiters/hostesses at the wedding (we pre-paid our cruise tips plus always bring extra for exceptional service)

- order the items for our welcome bags (not sure about this cost yet)

- pay for the pictures

- grooms suit (the place I bought my wedding gown is letting us rent suits for the entire week for the price of a typical 1 day rental - hallelujah!)

- gifts for bridal party (thinking of OBC)

- pay our license fees

- pay for our formal invites/postage

 

We actually booked our cruise using gift cards I got through verizon smart rewards (automatic 10% discount) and we have enough of those to cover our on board purchases!

 

Total price is so subjective, there are so many options to consider. Just sit down and talk about what is important to you and establish a budget! We are on track to come in just right with what we budgeted in the beginning. Have fun planning!

Edited December 31, 2014 by slord12

[alymb03]

Well it depends!

 

The time to celebrate big package only includes 20 people - every additional person adds $30. We are assuming around 100 attending so that extra 80 people will be an additional $2,400.

 

You have to go on the cruise so your room cost is an added expense(we booked a grand suite since this is our wedding) plus your excursions, on-board spending, tips...everything can add up quick!

 

We are going down the night before and having a welcome dinner at the resort so room costs (grooms dad is paying for the dinner - woohoo!). We are also doing welcome gift bags for every guest.

 

We sent save the dates, and are sending formal invitations. We have budgeted for the most expensive picture package they offer....just in case!

 

Is all of that necessary? Not really! It just all depends on what you and your fiance want to do!

 

I am an accountant, and I have tracked every penny I've spent - from postage stamps to the wedding package! Right now we have spent around $7k. That number includes our cruise, our pre-cruise hotel stay, my cousin/hair/makeup stylists cruise room and hotel stay, the wedding package base price, save the dates (including envelopes/printing/postage), our wedding party cards asking them to be in the wedding, and my wedding dress.

 

We still have to:

- pay the balance on our wedding depending on the number of people (we are at least expecting this to be $2,400)

- pay for the flowers (we ordered real-touch bouquets/bouts/wristlets)

- tip the waiters/hostesses at the wedding (we pre-paid our cruise tips plus always bring extra for exceptional service)

- order the items for our welcome bags (not sure about this cost yet)

- pay for the pictures

- grooms suit (the place I bought my wedding gown is letting us rent suits for the entire week for the price of a typical 1 day rental - hallelujah!)

- gifts for bridal party (thinking of OBC)

- pay our license fees

- pay for our formal invites/postage

 

We actually booked our cruise using gift cards I got through verizon smart rewards (automatic 10% discount) and we have enough of those to cover our on board purchases!

 

Total price is so subjective, there are so many options to consider. Just sit down and talk about what is important to you and establish a budget! We are on track to come in just right with what we budgeted in the beginning. Have fun planning!

 

Hmm, thank you for breaking it down like that! We are from NJ and the current venues we are looking at with everything seem to be falling between $12k and $15k. Before the honeymoon. I am trying to get a sense of the cost of an embarkation wedding to see if it would end up being cheaper but it's very hard to compare.

[slord12]

Hmm, thank you for breaking it down like that! We are from NJ and the current venues we are looking at with everything seem to be falling between $12k and $15k. Before the honeymoon. I am trying to get a sense of the cost of an embarkation wedding to see if it would end up being cheaper but it's very hard to compare.

 

Yeah I understand! I'm from a small town, but people here still spend SO much on weddings! Our wedding is on a 3 day cruise (so basically a long weekend). We were originally thinking of a 7 day but decided more people could/would come for a shorter cruise. We are fortunate that our honeymoon is being paid for as well. The welcome dinner and honeymoon were 2 huge costs that didn't fall on us! Are you wanting to invite a lot of people? That's probably the biggest decision to make to get the ball rolling!

[ImaginationCruiseBride]

My daughter got married in Sacramento, CA in April. She had a barn wedding with a BBQ for 350 people. Her dad has the equipment and such for the BBQ (tri tip), I made all of the hors deauves and her step mom and MIL made all the side dishes (none of this she paid for), and her FIL donated the alcohol and her wedding cost about $15,000.

 

I got married in August with the Celebrate Big package and a total of 20 guests. We paid for the package, my daughter is a floral design teacher so she did our flowers as a wedding present to us, we paid for cruises for our wedding party (my daughter and SIL and his daughter and SIL), airline tickets from Illinois to California for his daughter and SIL, 3 days in Long Beach for us before the wedding, my dress, invites, oh and lunch on the Lido deck before the wedding and we spent about $9000. We just did a short 4 day cruise out of Long Beach, simply because it was all the time our kids could pull off (my daughter spent the summer in Europe on her honeymoon, and had to return to teaching the second week in August, and his daughter is in a PhD program in Illinois and had to get back to school by the end of August so our timeline was limited unless we wanted to wait until next summer). As far as pictures goes we bought the $750 package and our kids split it with us as a wedding gift to us (we had no idea until we settled up at the end of the cruise and realized the pictures didn't cost as much as we thought they should). We also did a few excursion but we registered on the Carnival Honeymoon registry and ended up with enough OBC for our gratuities, our kids' gratuities, our excursions, champagne with dinner the night of the wedding for the 6 of us and wine for dinner the other nights, drinks on deck, a few vacation photos, and our share of the wedding pictures. We also made OOT bags for everybody attending the wedding that I made out of canvas bags and filled with way too much (I went dollar store crazy) bottles of water, chips ahoy cookies, pencils, sewing kit, first aide kit, lint roller, Tylenol, Tums, Kleenex, travel tooth brushes, tooth paste, sunglasses and flip flops (we gave the bags out the night before at a dinner we hosted in Long Beach, so that everybody could have their water as well as our welcome letter that had the schedule and maps of the day of....oh and thank you cards, we had purchased and stamped the thank you cards before we left so that cost was all part of the $9000. However, my daughter's college roommate was our minister (we paid for her cruise as my SIL had to work at the last minute and she went in his place), my hair and make up was done by her other college roommate who did it for me as a wedding gift (we have a lot of creative people in our circle!). Anyway, there you have it.

[mrstriceasnice]

We are doing the let us serve you package. I keep a spreadsheet for all expenses. With the two extra guests we are having and all of our hotels, air fare, tips, rental cars, cruise, excursions, even space center tickets for afterwards, etc. we have spent $5873 total. Here we were looking at a wedding with under sixty guests costing about $7000. Our total includes our honeymoon and wedding.

[amberc1991]

Ours has come to about $10000. We have 89 guests attending.

 

 

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