thecocoarose

beautiful wedding and reception!!!

Thank you!

Hello I'm interested in getting married on the Orange Hill beach too! I was wondering if you would answer a few questions for me

 

 

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Yes, what questions do you have?

Awesome review! I'm doing a shoreside wedding in August on Grand Cayman. I was wondering how the coordination with the beach ceremony went. Is it the same photographer as the one on the boat? Could you choose to get off the boat earlier if you anted to? What options did they give you when they contacted you? Did they call or email with the plans?

Yes, the photographer was the same for the entire process. He came to the staterooms before the wedding to take pictures, rode with me in vehicle to the ceremony site, and returned with all of us to the reception to continue the photography. We could not get off the boat any earlier as we were the first wedding. As soon as the boat cleared customs, the wedding guests were escorted off the boat. I was escorted off about half an hour later. Carnival gave me the plans but they weren't as detailed ahead of time. The details came the first night on the cruise at dinner when our wedding coordinator met with us. Royal Ocean Events provided a coordinator to meet us once we got off the ship in Nassau. Hope this helps and let me know if you have any other questions!

Also, I had every intention of wearing a second dress for the reception, especially because I planned to get in the water during the wedding ceremony. I ended up choosing a dress that prevented me from budgeting two dresses so I just wore a different set of jewelry for the reception. I wore pearls for the ceremony but totally blinged out the jewelry for the reception. It worked out well!

"PHOTOGRAPHY: This is one I am still brainstorming about. I am a professional photographer. If i could shoot my own wedding.... I would, So this is a big deal to me and I will do everything in my power to get what I want. The beauty of this is that Iphones take pretty amazing photos, I will have photographer friends that have their cameras and I WILL have my camera on hand lol. So if I want to partake in the shots of the Groom with the bridesmaids....Im gonna do it. I also will be more than happy with 15 prints from the photographer and just ALL of the proofs on a CD or flash drive....this is a work in process and I know I will have to be prepared to speak to the photographer on the boat and sweet talk them a bit. Any advice from previous couples?"

In response to the above...

My husband and I were also hoping to come away with just a few prints but all if not most of the digital images from the Carnival photographer. Unfortunately, Carnival is aware that people would rather have the files instead of prints so they drive a hard bargain. We ended up having to buy way more physical prints that we wanted before the photographer would compromise and allow us to add some digital file only shots. I can't complain because they are in it to make money and they know they have less success now that so many wedding guests take pictures with high quality camera phones. We purchased maybe 60 shots from Carnival (though it might be more, I have to check again) but our guests sent us another 800 images from their phones. I don't regret any of Carnival's images (aside from the airbrushing) because it was nice to have the professionally posed pictures in addition to the candid shots. Hope this tidbit of info helps! Congrats and good luck!

They made me place my dress on the scanner but I was right there when it came through. I carried it the rest of the way until I was able to hang it in the closet in our stateroom.

Thanks Mindy!

Our other flavors were carrot cake with cream cheese icing and chocolate with vanilla buttercream. All were good but the strawberry was best. Be sure to specify which flavor you want on each layer because we accidentally had carrot cake as the biggest layer and strawberry as the smallest.

A destination wedding definitely allows time for the guests to hang out each night. Many of our family and friends met for the first time on the cruise and they all blended like they had known each other for years. It was awesome!

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I agree with Mindy. As crazy as it seems, it is important to relax and accept that there will be glitches but overall, the day WILL go much better than you can ever imagine.

We had our Welcome Dinner at Brano's in Cocoa Beach and they did a great job! They were reasonably priced and all of our guests enjoyed the food. They have a special menu for dinner parties that you can find on their website.

Good luck and all the anxiety of planning will pay off, I promise!

We were able to pick and choose what we wanted in our reception and we did all the traditional things such as garter toss, bouquet toss, first dance, groom and mom dance, and toasts. We opted not to use the reception time to take too many posed pics because we really just wanted to dance and have fun. We took many pictures after the beach ceremony. We were too tired to take pics after the reception so there were many poses we didn't get but I think it was better for us to have focused on spending the time enjoying our guests.

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The DJ kept the party going from the moment we entered!

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I provided the Mr. And Mrs. sign.

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This was taken by the Carnival Photographer. I asked him beforehand to not airbrush the pictures, but as you can see his did anyway. Makes it a little to wax statue looking for my tastes so I'm glad we have plenty of cell phone images.

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RECEPTION

We had 1.5 hours for the reception and it was just enough time. We didn’t need extended time to mingle because all of our 50 guests were cruising guests so we saw them at dinner each night. The reception was the perfect place to dance and unwind! The DJ was very good. My hubby and I aren’t into the current music but we chose “Top 40 Hits” because we thought it would get our guests up and moving. Well, the DJ read the crowd well and saw that genre wasn’t going over well and he mixed our favorite 90’s hip hop and R&B and even a few soul classics. We all stayed on the dance floor! We emailed Carnival the songs that we wanted for our first dance and groom/mom dance and the DJ played those as well. He followed our lineup and we stayed on schedule. The guests enjoyed the food but like most brides, I only managed to nibble. The layout in the club was nice and just happened to complement our wedding colors. For the 52 of us, the venue did not seem too large at all. The cake was delicious! We chose separate flavors for the three layers and the vanilla with strawberry cream was the best! We did not want our guests to be served the leftover cake at dinner so we brought it to our stateroom. I provided the ribbon and cake topper to our wedding coordinator and she made sure the cake was decorated.

PHOTOS

Our photographer did a great job! We opted not to order a video but he “surprised” us with one anyway and we negotiated it into our package. I brought along the photo package list from Carnival but we created our own package with the photographer. Many of our guests took great candid shots so we really didn’t want to pay Carnival for those. However, choosing just 40 shots from the 150 that he took was difficult. We ended up with about 75 shots from Carnival photographer, thank you cards, the video, and the digital files for the shots what we chose. I refused to buy their $1,100 dollar photo book. That is way overpriced, especially because it only includes 40 shots. I compiled all the pictures from our guests with the Carnival shots and made a WONDERFUL book on Snapfish. I personalized it the way I wanted and included almost 700 pictures. It’s bound like a deluxe yearbook, has over 80 pages, and it was only $80 on cyber Monday.

I have left out so many of the planning details but I can provide those if anyone is interested. I know planning a wedding can be stressful so it’s great to be able to plan a Carnival cruise wedding with the personal experience from other brides. I did bring along wedding favors for the beach ceremony as well as the guestbook table at the reception. I’ll try to upload pics of those items as well as some from the reception so you can get a feel for the layout.

Unity Cross

View at Orange Hill Beach--middle of the afternoon and not a person on the beach...peaceful!

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View of the chairs, aisle, wedding. 25 chairs on each side.

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Maybe my pictures are too big because this site isn't posting all the ones that I select but I'll keep trying...

I intended on writing a well-organized review but time is passing and life is busy so I’m just typing down thoughts as they come. I am more than happy to answer specific questions. I’ll post part of the review now and finish it up later. I’ll try to include pics in this portion as they correspond to the review

We were engaged in January 2016 and immediately started making plans for the wedding. I have a very large family so planning a wedding was never something I imagined could be done without going bankrupt. Also, I don’t like to do anything with half effort so if I DID plan a traditional wedding, we just wouldn’t be able to afford my imagination, haha. My fiancé had never cruised before and I had just been on my first cruise the month before. We did some quick research and explored cruise weddings. We intended to cruise on Royal Caribbean but wanted a not-so expensive cruise trip for our guests. We found a RC 3 day cruise with decent rates but it was on one of their oldest and smallest ships. Carnival had a cruise with similar rates for a better ranked ship in their line. My fiancé was not warm to the idea of actually getting married on the ship so we agreed to get married on the beach in Nassau and just have the reception on the Carnival ship. We planned to have less than 20 guests so we set up a Facebook event page for our invited guests. That number grew and we ended up with 50 people as our wedding guests. About half of the guests booked early and paid their deposits. The cruise was November 10th of this same year and final balances were due in September. We chose a shorter cruise so our guests wouldn’t have to worry about taking too much extended time off of their jobs. It was also during the Labor Day weekend. I did make some Save the Date announcements and sent them as more of a formality. I think it was end of February before we made our payment to Carnival for the wedding. Carnival handled their reception and we worked with Royal Ocean Events for the wedding ceremony in Nassau. I know some reviews/blogs have mentioned that there are less costing alternatives to handle the wedding ceremony but we didn’t want any confusion or extra work. It was easiest for us to just use ROE as Carnival coordinated with them. We chose the Time to Celebrate…Big package with Carnival so we could have the 1.5 hour reception. We requested the DJ but didn’t pay for that enhancement until sometime in the summer. There is only one dance club on the Carnival Valor and one DJ per cruise so the DJ wasn’t actually confirmed for us until we made the payment. I read and reread and reread all the reviews and blogs that I could find on wedding cruises, specifically Carnival cruises. There was much more information for the weddings held on embarkment day but very few for those held on beaches during the actual cruise. I think I found two videos on youtube with wedding videos in Nassau on Orange Hill Beach and those were a great help! It can make you anxious to plan a wedding when you can’t visit the venue. Speaking of which, my husband would say that I am over the top when it comes to planning, haha! I do spreadsheets and lists and read all the reviews and blogs. I did the same for our wedding however there is so much of it that I couldn’t control and I was actually relieved. Because I do tend to go overboard with planning, I knew I would be a basket case trying to plan a traditional wedding with hundreds of guests. The cruise wedding was the perfect balance even though it was a bit more involved than I thought it would be. We didn’t have to make final music and cake decisions until September so I spent the spring and summer choosing my dress, bridal party outfits, decorations, etc. We have four children and they were to be the only members of our wedding party. (Our middle boy joined the army so he ended up not attending the wedding.)

Royal Ocean Events charges two arms and a leg for all of their beach ceremony enhancements. After looking at the two videos online, I realized that it was not worth paying $450 to rent the arch for a 20 minute ceremony. (Carnival only allows for one hour at the beach and that includes the 20 minute ceremony, mingling, and picture taking.) We chose to rent 50 covered chairs and we only put colored sashes on the chairs closest to the aisle. The beach in Nassau is absolutely gorgeous and that was enough decoration for us. (We also asked all of the guests to wear white and it looks so wonderful in all of our pictures!) We did rent the sand ceremony table though we chose a Unity Cross instead of sand jars. The beach was about half an hour away from the cruise port but it was worth the drive to get to a secluded area. I was getting worried about the beach wedding because I saw so many weddings online that had people banana boating and frolicking all around the wedding party. Orange Hill Beach area was definitely perfect for us without any other folks around. (Keep in mind there are no restroom facilities there so the one hour time limit was just enough to get people back to the boat.)

Schedule:

Wednesday Night-

Our ship left from Port Canaveral so most guests stayed in Cocoa Beach. We had our "rehearsal" dinner at Brano's Italian restaurant and I recommend them to anyone. They were personable and very patient with our large and somewhat loud party. They personalized the menu for our gathering and it was really sweet. We made the reservations less than two weeks out but I suggest you do it earlier because there was another wedding party there that night. It was about $17 a person, I think.

Thursday – Embarkation Day

Carnival had a letter from our wedding coordinator waiting for us in our stateroom. She introduced herself and left a contact number.

7:30PM – When we signed in for dinner, our wedding coordinator received notification and she met us in the dining room to go over the details.

Friday – Wedding Day

11 – Photographer came to stateroom to take pics of bride (we weren’t quite ready so he went to the groom’s area and took pics there)

12:30 – Groom and guests met in lobby to be escorted by the coordinator off the boat. (We paid an extra fee for the bride to arrive 15 minutes after in a separate vehicle.)

12:45 – Photographer escorted me and two attendants off the ship where there was a vehicle waiting for us. (I’m fairly shy so it was almost overwhelming walking through the cruise ship and the port in a wedding dress!)

1:30 – 2:30 - Wedding Ceremony on the beach

4 – 5:30 - Wedding Reception in the One Small Step nightclub

We met with the photographer at 3 in the library on Saturday to go over the packages. We picked up the photos Saturday night about 11.

This is the current price list for Carnival. You do not have to pay for pictures until the cruise and once you have had a chance to view the pictures. What I have read from numerous brides is these prices are NEGOTIABLE. Review your pictures and then come back a couple days into the cruise and tell them how much you have budgeted and ask them just what they can offer you for the price you budgeted.

 

 

PINNACLE COLLECTION ............................. $ 2999.00

1 - 12x12 (30 pages) Wedding Story Book

60 - Pro Portraits & 40 - Snapshots

2 - 20x30 Canvas wall arts

2 - DVD slide shows with music

High resolution digital files of purchased images with copyright release

 

ELITE COLLECTION .................................... $ 1999.00

1 - 10x10 (20 pages) Wedding Story Book

30 - Pro Portraits & 25 - Snapshots

1 - 20x30 Canvas wall art

1 - DVD slide show with music

High resolution digital files of purchased images with copyright release

 

DELUXE COLLECTION ................................ $ 1399.00

1 - 8x8 (20 pages) Wedding Story Book

10 - Pro Portraits & 5 - Snapshots

1 - 20x30 Canvas wall art

High resolution digital files of purchased images with copyright release

 

PREMIER COLLECTION .............................. $ 899.00

25 - Pro Portraits & 20 - Snapshots

1 - 16x20 Canvas wall art

 

High resolution digital files of purchased images with copyright release

CLASSIC COLLECTION ............................... $ 499.00

16 - Pro Portraits & 14 - Snapshots

 

All Carnival Wedding images are

professionally edited and retouched.

 

OUR GIFT TO YOU

With the purchase of any of our

COLLECTIONS you shall receive

ten complimentary THANK YOU cards to

send to friends and family.

 

A LA CARTE ITEMS

Snap shot* (5x7) ........................... $ 9.99

Pro Portrait** (8x10) .................... $ 29.99

16x20 Canvas wall art ................ $ 79.99

20x30 Canvas wall art ................ $ 99.99

8x8 (20 pages) Story book*** .... $ 1199.00

10x10 (20 pages) Story book ..... $ 1399.00

10x10 (30 pages) Story book ..... $ 1599.00

12x12 (30 pages) Story book ..... $ 1799.00

 

* Snapshots - Candid photos

** Pro Portraits - Professionally posed

images & group shots

*** Story Book - Uniquely created album

that tells the story of your wedding

 

 

Our wedding videos are unique & modern capturing the highlights of your wedding day, beautifully edited

in short video clips to music. Ideal to share with your friends and family.

Includes highlight coverage of the ceremony & reception as well as a short love story video of

the bride and groom shot around the ship after your wedding reception.

The video can be purchased separately or as an additional upgrade on to

any of our Wedding photography collections.

Total length of the edited video is 3-5 minutes long, depending on overall ceremony and reception time.

Our wedding video does not contain any original audio from the ceremony or interviews

and is presented on a USB.

On days where we may have multiple wedding ceremonies we can only to commit to covering one wedding video,

 

Price for Video is 899 or 599 if purchased with a photography package.

We were married 11/11/2016 on the Valor. The picture prices are absolutely negotiable. I brought along the printed out price list from Carnival and the photographer presented another sheet with very expensive packages. We intentionally did not request the video but the photographer made one. My husband was won over by it, and that blew our picture budget out the water. We did negotiate and were able to get twice the amount of pictures, with the additional being in digital format only. That was fine because we really only wanted the digital files. I didn't want the storybook because I can make those on Snapfish for $20 and I don't like the quality of the carnival canvases. We swapped those items out and paid $1100 for the video, 55 pro portrait sized, 40 snapshot sized, and 50 thank you cards with an image chosen by the photographer, and of course, the digital images. This negotiation started at 3pm the day after the wedding lasted about two hours and the photographer was just as tired as we were. Bottom line, just be prepared to work a deal and don't look at the video if you're not prepared to love it. ;-)

So TOTAL change of plans.. The Vista was booked :( but we decided it was too long of a cruise for some our guest anyways. So we went with the VALOR, May 11th, 2017 leaving out of Port Canaveral. We did a tour on Saturday and fell in love with the cruise wedding!!

If you plan to have the DJ, I suggest reserving that package as soon as you can. There were four weddings during our 3 night Valor cruise but we reserved the DJ early so that we could have the nightclub. It was the best experience!

Hi BimTheDuck,

 

Those are all great ideas! The ceremony is going to take place on the beach in the Bahamas which is a day or two after we board (have to check the itinerary again!) so that won't be an option for me. None of the people attending are big make up fans so I think my best option is to just take these 12 months that I have left and start learning how to apply my own make up! It's about time lol. I really don't want to be caked up anyway since we will be under the sun.

 

 

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We got married on 11/11/2016 on the beach in Nassau and had our reception back on the Valor. If you're having it at Orange Hill Beach, the location is quiet and beautiful. Congrats!

I am new to cruise critic. I joined specifically for help with Cruise Wedding related questions. I will be getting married on the Carnival Vista in August 2017. I'm sooo excited to be able to do it on the new ship. We have booked the Havana Cabana Suite and can't wait to get on board, lol.

 

We're doing a port wedding since any guests that go with us will be sailing guests. Our plan is to get married on Grand Cayman, take some pictures on the beach/island, then head back to the ship for the reception. We have booked the time to celebrate big package with the DJ. (does anyone know what room that would be in?)

 

So far there's not a lot of info out about the Vista, but I'm sure as it gets closer to my wedding date we will have more info. I've read a bunch of threads so far tonight and there seems to be a lot of great, helpful and friendly people on here willing t share about their wedding experiences. Makes me even more excited for my cruise wedding :0)

I don't know the layout of the Vista but since the Valor only had one nightclub, that's what we were automatically given with the DJ package.

Everything was wonderful! I can post a review later but I just wanted to say that this board really helped me get prepared. We had the best time and our guests said the ceremony was the most beautiful and the reception was the most fun! Orange Hill Beach in Nassau is truly quiet and the perfect setting for a private wedding ceremony. The Carnival DJ did a superb job at the reception and we danced the entire time! We cruised on November 10-13 on the Valor leaving from Port Canaveral. The cruise was short but the perfect length to accommodate so many out of town guests.

 

 

 

I don't get my wedding locations/times confirmation call for another 2 weeks. I requested that our ceremony be in the Spotlight Lounge and I know for sure our Reception is in the Vibe Dance Club because we booked the DJ. Every time I call I'm told there are no other weddings that day so I think we will get Spotlight. I asked them to push back the ceremony time until 3 because we don't even dock until 11am and then we have to go to the courthouse in St. Thomas for our wedding license, come back to the ship, and then get ready.

 

 

*Ahh, so it looks like Carnival DOES stick to not giving the updated reception location and wedding time until two weeks out. Our wedding is November 11th so I guess we have a couple of days before they contact us.

I have been working with Doris with ROE and she's been fair to work with. She is definitely more likely to return communication when there is a payment due.