Married Cruise Brides - Hits & Misses

[monkey1]

As my wedding grows closer, more and more ideas keep popping into my head, but I don't want to overdo it.

 

Married cruise brides, can you share your "hits" and "misses" that meant the most to you and your guests? Maybe things like was the reception worth it? Did guests appreciate the out of town bags, etc.

 

Your advice is much appreciated!

 

Cheers,

 

Traci

[MandyGirl]

I think our biggest "hit" was having our reception on a chartered catamaran large enough to comfortably hold our entire group. We had told everyone we would be having wedding cake on the beach after the ceremony, and kept it a surprise about the reception until the catamaran came sailing up in the bay. :)

To me, the biggest "miss" was choosing not to have the steelpan drums at our wedding. It was about $300-400 more and we had made the decision to go with the catamaran (budget constraints). I think I would have enjoyed it better with the steelpan drums there when walking down the aisle of rose petals. However, nobody in our group thought anything was a "miss". For most, it was their first cruise and first time in the Caribbean, so they were all in awe of the beauty of St John.

[dcdiva]

We had 60 sailing guests -- which the biggest hit. No real misses, but some things that did not end up being as important...

 

Here's a quick summary of the hits:

 

Bringing our own silk flowers for the entire bridal party

Paying for the extra photography time (so we could enjoy our reception)

Providing our own CDs for the ceremony and for the DJ

Gift bags for each cabin

Skipped the favors and no one and missed them

Not upgrading the cake -- the "package" cake was scumptous

Can't say enough nice things about the minister RR provided

Dining as a group each night of the cruise was a highlight (but it was not very easy to arrange)

The biggest hit -- since all our guests sailed with us, we had a six day long reception

 

Some things that didn't go well:

 

Not booking as an "official group" (still not sure why RCL couldn't do this)

We ended up with about a half dozen free bottles of champagne. (Nice, but one or two would have been more than enough.)

Because the wedding was onboard, most guests didn't get to visit port while we were in Key West.

Getting the gown to Ft. Lauderdale! (It ended up getting there with no trouble, but let's just say it was incredibly stressful.)

Staying on top of RR about every detail. It all came together it the end, but you MUST confirm everything.

 

Good luck!

[sas80]

The truth about it is that your wedding is going to be a hit any way you slice it!

 

The things you stress over, or items that are not perfect, wont even be noticed by anyone in your wedding party.

 

You will end up with an "n" long day wedding cruise, celebrating with family and friends.

[tamiflood]

Hey...I was thinking of skipping favors too (July 6, Carnival Victory)...what did you put in the gift bags and did you go to a wholesaler to get the products that were in these bags.

 

Also, how did you arrange for all of you to eat as a group in the dining room. That's a great idea!

 

We will have about 55 sailing guest and 10 non sailing...

[greenjello]

i agree with the previous replies- the biggest hit was the extended vacation for everyone... we all had so much fun on our wedding cruise in 2003 that we are doing another group cruise in 2007.

just a few ideas: we got married on Carnival, not sure what cruise line you are sailing with, but we ordered some photo credits for both sets of parents so they could pick out their favorite pictures. we also made a list of the cabin room numbers that included everyone sailing with us and distributed a copy to everyone so they could find each other. Also make sure that your travel agent (or the cruise line) seats everyone together at dinnertime... you'll want to do different things during the day but it was nice to have dinner with everyone at night (we needed 3 tabels bet they were all next to each other). Bring a copy of any songs you just HAVE to have for the reception for the DJ (just in case) and if you burn it yourself make sure to try it in a few different CD players to make sure it works.

good luck

[princessbride4405]

Most of my hits and misses match the previous posts, but here are the biggest of both for my group (about 25 ppl, from age 2-grandma)

 

Hits: Disposable cameras in gift boxes

Group meetings for things like--dinner the night of the wedding (my sister called the first day of the cruise and set this up with the dining room), sail away party, mini golf, watching movies under the stars, tropical deck party, hanging out by the pool

Everything was so wonderful, hard to pick all the hits!!

 

Misses: We got a cake upgrade, it was WAY too much cake

Even though we got an extra hour of photography it somehow overlapped the reception and we still ended up missing about half of it (only sort of a miss since we spent a lot of group time together during the week)

Only felt like one night was really our honeymoon, spent a lot a (fabulous) time with family and friends but not enough with just us...but this was also a personal choice that I wouldn't change.

[monkey1]

These are great tips--thank you. I've been debating the cake, and it sounds like I should just stay with the standard one. And, we're definitely going with some group activities and disposable cameras.

[txrn]

We were married on the Grand Princess, November 27, witha group of 60 sailing guests....the biggest hit was a "pre set" cocktail hour, we chose a bar and time to meet every night. This was great because those that wanted to come did and then we could make evening/dinner plans from there. We also did a cabin list for every room so our guest could contact one another.

I did not up grade my bouquet, I was planning on it then decided it really didn't matter and the package roses were beautiful. The cake was very pretty but did not taste very good, but with all the other food it was not an issue. We did dinner as a group in the dining room to save on the cost and had 2hrs of open bar prior with dancing at the Wheelhouse lounge. Everthing was great for our Wedding and Jennifer or photographer did an awsome job!

I would say book as a group and take advantage of the "points" or group perks, we had 1hr of open bar and appitezers for free, along with a bottle of wine for every cabin.

All in all I think Princess does a great job with Weddings!