A Grand Princess Wedding - Part 2

[Nauti-Lady]

The day before sailing: We checked into our hotel, The Harbor House, in Galveston. No frills but a very pleasant hotel with an outstanding location next to the port. We had 11 rooms booked. The manager was very attentive. He had a message waiting for me on check-in from one of our guests. Told me who had and had not checked in and also had a wedding gift stored from one of the guests. The mother of the groom had called ahead and arranged for a wine & cheese plate to be placed in our groups rooms. These were very nice – better than I would have expected and also included was a “Welcome Aboard” note. The hotel did an excellent job! We had an impromptu group dinner at Willie G's next door to the hotel. Good food - very large portions.

 

Day 1: We woke up to look out the hotel windows and see the Grand Princess waiting for us! Now we had to figure out how to get onboard with all our “stuff”!! We did not travel lightly. Along with our usual luggage, we had all the gift bags for the guests, which filled two more suitcases. We had DH's tux and both the wedding dress and my dress in bags. We also had 4 cases of wine to bring onboard. These were bottles for which we had custom labels made. 2 cases went into the gift bags, 1 was served at Sabatinis and the others- some were had at dinners and some were given to guests and staff. We also brought supplies to make candle centerpieces for the dinner tables at Sabatini's.

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At 10:00. we loaded the car with everything except the carry-on, tux & dresses and drove over to the port. It was still very busy with unloading passengers, but we were able to get a porter to take our stuff. It looked like we were packed for a 3 month voyage! Since I didn’t have luggage tags for everything, I had to fill some out. So, my husband dropped me off with the stuff and the porter graciously waited while I filled out tags. During this time my husband drove the car to where he could park it and waited for my call to pick me up. Port traffic was awful but we accomplished all this in less than an hour so it wasn’t too bad. Then we went back to the hotel and parked our car. The hotel had charged an extra $20 to leave our car in their lot for the week. This is a great deal as it’s within walking distance to the port. Went up to our room to relax a few minutes and then walked over to the port, carrying the heavy tux and dress bags – This was not fun! Once there we sat down to wait for my mother who was arriving. We tried our best to not worry about everyone else’s embarkation but we had several elderly traveling with us (two in their 90’s) so we did feel the need to assist them as much as we could. However, the wheelchair assistance is waiting at the port entrance for those that need it. Once you get there, they take over and got our elders through with priority check-in and they were taken all the way to their cabin. Great service!

 

Once onboard we took our things to our cabin. It was ready and waiting. We had Cabin C502 on the Caribe deck. On our previous 2 voyages on the Grand we had very nice cabins on the Aloha deck. While the balconies on the cabins are larger than the decks above, this cabin was really odd. You open the door and walk into the closet. You have to make a sharp left and then a right and then run into the bed. You have to lift the luggage over the bed to get into the room. We think maybe the odd layout was because this room was configured to sleep 4 if needed and it had something to do with the overhead bunks ??? While it was not a comfortable room, we were on a cruise ship, so no complaining!

 

We called family members and went to the Horizon Court buffet for some lunch. Wide selection – good food. Found the newlyweds exploring. They had been upgraded from their mini-suite to a Penthouse Suite!! Since they had never sailed before, they don’t know how spoiled they were and I think they will have to wait until their next cruise to find out! They had a message in their room that we were to meet with the wedding coordinator at 3:30 pm.

 

So, I went with my daughter and her fiancée to meet with the wedding coordinator. There were 2 people assigned. Gary & Louise. They took us down to the chapel where we sat and discussed all the plans. They had the print out from TWE. They did not have the info on the reception as we had booked that through the Group Department, but it took just minute for them to get it. They went over every line item detail and what we expected. At this point we really could have changed just about anything. Louise even told Jen that she would be on call for her the next day for even the smallest question or concern. They really put her at ease. They told me where to deliver the table decorations and the special wine we had and assured us it would be in place. This meeting really made us all feel very comfortable.

 

Muster was about 4:00 and after muster we had told our group to meet at the Oasis Bar for sail away. This was great as we now all got to meet each other. The weather was glorious and all the hassles of embarkation – traffic, heavy luggage, line waiting, etc. were soon forgotten.

 

After sail away my daughter and I went to her room and got the gift bags ready. They were pre-packed except for the wine. Father and brother of the bride delivered these to the cabins. Everyone really loved getting these. We tried to make these a mixture of useful, fun and memorable items and this is what we came up with:

 

CustomBeach Bag imprinted with name of the ship and date.

“Love Boat” Luggage tags with the guest names on the bag

A welcome letter

An invitation to the wedding ceremony

Group T-shirt

Disposable camera

Small photo album w/ seashells

A boxed bottle of wine w/ custom made labels

Wine opener/ stopper set

Deck of custom printed playing cards

Hand sanitizer

A pad of post-it notes and a pen

Tubes of sunscreen and lip balm on carbineers that attached to the bag handles

 

Dinner was arranged as late seating as that's what the bride & groom chose. We had told everyone in advance of this and several people didn't like the late hour and made other options. This was fine with us, but I think if you want a group together every night then selecting early seating would appeal to more people.

 

 

More to come …………..

[mandabear]

Thanks again for the review... would you mind sharing where you got the custom printed playing cards? They sound really cute!

[Nauti-Lady]

The cards came from customwedding.com. They were very nice, but this company is very slow so order early. I think they took 6 - 8 weeks. They fit perfectly in the 4x6 silver organza bags I got through Ebay.

[negn]

Really appreciate all the info as my daughter is getting married in Mar 08 on Carribean Princess. We also want dinner at Sabatinis after. How was that ? I, too, was thinking of calling group sales to customize the after ceromony instead of using TWE.

[Nauti-Lady]

Manda, my pic isn't very clear here. If you want, email me at the address below and I'll send pics of anything you want to see.

[Nauti-Lady]

Negn, see my part 3 post today for details on Sabatini's. I highly recommend using the groups department. They were so easy and TWE was such a pain.