Wedding with the affiliated company or off the ship?(RLC)

Hello, I have a question to experienced cruisers. We are getting married on a Royal Caribbean cruise Liberty of the Seas on April, 16 going to Cozumel for 4 nights from Ft. Lauderale. WE have about 50 sailing guests. I was looking at the packages that affiliated agency is offering and they seem too limited for me. For instance, I cannot have reception longer than 2 hours or book 2 hours of reception and additional time for lunch/dinner. The company that is specializing in organization of destination weddings that I got through referral is giving much more flexibility in a much more customized way. The risk we are facing is that the cruise cannot park at Cozumel for whatever reason. In that case the affiliated agency makes wedding at the cruise on the same day vs should smth go wrong independent agency will be able to organize wedding at the port of Ft.Lauderale once we return. I am not sure how risky is it to hire an independent company, please advise.

I did everything off ship for our wedding. To me the ship was just a form of transportation to our wedding site. We did have our "rehearsal dinner" on the ship.

I wanted everything I could get and a cruise line sponsored wedding just wasn't enough for me. We spent the entire time from 30 mins after the ship docked to 30 mins before last boarding on the island for the wedding. I had the full day wedding I wanted on the island I wanted.

I was okay with the chance that the ship might not make it to St. Thomas and I would have to come up with some crazy thrown together thing. My wedding planner told me how often she has had a ship not dock up and it was very rare. We also went over what would and would not be refunded if that was to happen.

I wouldn't change anything even if I knew that the chance of not making it to the island was 50/50. I was so happy with our wedding even though we did have a few trip ups. I have a short-ish review of our wedding in my signature if you wanted to give that a look.

good luck and no matter what you decided to do.... its still your day for the two of you, make it the best day you can!

My DW and I were married in Nassau, Bahamas in 2011. We cruised on RCI but booked the wedding through an independent planner as we were able to easily customize our wedding and reception without restraints.

Yes, there is a possibility that you can't dock but that is a risk inherent in a destination wedding. We did purchase wedding insurance to at least be able to recoup our losses financially. Thankfully everything went as planned.

I would just try and plan your wedding in a way to minimize potential interruptions. You've already chosen a docked port over a tender port so that's half the battle!

Good luck! :)

I did everything off ship for our wedding. To me the ship was just a form of transportation to our wedding site. We did have our "rehearsal dinner" on the ship.

 

I wanted everything I could get and a cruise line sponsored wedding just wasn't enough for me. We spent the entire time from 30 mins after the ship docked to 30 mins before last boarding on the island for the wedding. I had the full day wedding I wanted on the island I wanted.

 

I was okay with the chance that the ship might not make it to St. Thomas and I would have to come up with some crazy thrown together thing. My wedding planner told me how often she has had a ship not dock up and it was very rare. We also went over what would and would not be refunded if that was to happen.

 

I wouldn't change anything even if I knew that the chance of not making it to the island was 50/50. I was so happy with our wedding even though we did have a few trip ups. I have a short-ish review of our wedding in my signature if you wanted to give that a look.

 

good luck and no matter what you decided to do.... its still your day for the two of you, make it the best day you can!

Thank you SO much for your response.Where did you do your wedding?Can you recommend independent wedding planner that can help with organization of destination wedding?

Also, did you purchase an insurance in case smth did go wrong?

Ships don't skip ports too often and risk can vary depending on time of year. Risk of missing ports is highest during hurricane or monsoon season, which is mid-late summer. Your risk of missing a port in April is pretty low.

Also, some ports are more likely to get skipped than others because they are more susceptible to weather. The riskier ports are ones that don't dock at the port, but use tenders, such as Belize. Cozumel docks right at port, so that's a good start. You may be able to search online to see how often it is skipped due to weather. Plus, I believe the Mexican ports are less affected by storms than the central Caribbean ones, since many of the storms will move north or south before reaching there.

So, I think your risk of missed port is fairly small. If that is your biggest concern, I think you are probably okay. Just check with planning agency to make sure you know what the risks are if port is skipped and what backup options you may have. And wedding insurance is always a good idea with a destination wedding, because there are a lot of unknowns.

Thank you SO much for your response.Where did you do your wedding?Can you recommend independent wedding planner that can help with organization of destination wedding?

Also, did you purchase an insurance in case smth did go wrong?

Our Wedding was on St. Thomas, and our wedding planner was Island Bliss Weddings who was located on St. Thomas. If you are looking into Mexico that really isn't going to help a whole lot. But I'm sure you can search these threads and/or google for wedding planners there. Positive reviews are great and don't feel bad about looking into multiple planners until you find one that is a good fit for you.

We did not purchase insurance because after going over everything with our planner the non-refundable items (which was cake and flowers) was only a little more than what the insurance would have cost. We made most of our arraignments before hand and shipped them down there for the wedding.

Let me know if you have any more questions!

Hello , :D

My Hubby and I got married at ST Thomas in 2009 at Maegan Bay via Explorer of the seas. I too booked with a company in ST Thomas in stead of the cruise line. I used weddings the island way. They were amazing and did a fantastic job. All i did was selected my package and that was that. The day before I got married we did a pre wedding celebration as senor frogs in Puerto Rico. The night of the wedding I had made reservation for the whole party at Portofinos back on the ship. From my experience five years ago the cruise line wedding company nickle and dime you to death.

Hi aurelius180, I'm also looking to do a destination wedding in Nassau while cruising on RCI, who was your independent planner there if I may ask? I'm looking into chic bahamas weddings currently but just wanted to get an idea of what else may be out there. Thanks in advance for any help!! :)

Hi aurelius180, I'm also looking to do a destination wedding in Nassau while cruising on RCI, who was your independent planner there if I may ask? I'm looking into chic bahamas weddings currently but just wanted to get an idea of what else may be out there. Thanks in advance for any help!! :)

Gatrsailr, I unfortunitly don't know much about a wedding in Bahamas, however I did read a great review by Dcarter http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1930867&highlight=bahamas

I hope this helps.

<3 Crystal

For those that are cruising but getting married on an island, do you have guests that are opting to fly instead of cruise? If so are you finding island accommodations for them, possibly group rates through a specific hotel on the island your getting married at?

Thanks

<3 Crystal

Hi aurelius180, I'm also looking to do a destination wedding in Nassau while cruising on RCI, who was your independent planner there if I may ask? I'm looking into chic bahamas weddings currently but just wanted to get an idea of what else may be out there. Thanks in advance for any help!! :)

I'm a bit late to respond but we used Amour Affairs in Nassau Bahamas (there is an Amour Affairs located in India as well - no relation).

Our wedding and reception were at Compass Point and we loved it there.

FWIW... I worked on a ship for the better part of a year. We had issues docking in the Bahamas about 5 times over the course of 3 months in the fall. We had issues docking in Mexico twice over the course of 3.5 months in the spring. And during a transitional cruise (I can't remember where we were), you have to take a shuttle ferry from the ship to land, we were unable to leave the ship at all (unique situation, though, they cancelled everything that day; we were expecting a wave of unknown size starting from... you guessed it, Japan! yes, this was many years ago hehe- said wave never materialized, but it was definitely a better safe than sorry situation).

Hello, I have a question to experienced cruisers. We are getting married on a Royal Caribbean cruise Liberty of the Seas on April, 16 going to Cozumel for 4 nights from Ft. Lauderale. WE have about 50 sailing guests. I was looking at the packages that affiliated agency is offering and they seem too limited for me. For instance, I cannot have reception longer than 2 hours or book 2 hours of reception and additional time for lunch/dinner. The company that is specializing in organization of destination weddings that I got through referral is giving much more flexibility in a much more customized way. The risk we are facing is that the cruise cannot park at Cozumel for whatever reason. In that case the affiliated agency makes wedding at the cruise on the same day vs should smth go wrong independent agency will be able to organize wedding at the port of Ft.Lauderale once we return. I am not sure how risky is it to hire an independent company, please advise.

Can you give a review of how it went, and maybe a timeline of what you did?