Here's the situation we are in:
We recently booked a cruise on Oasis sailing February 5, 2023. Our first plan was to travel without passports, using birth certificates and driver's licenses because it is a closed loop cruise out of Miami. The itinerary is Coco Cay, San Juan, and St Maarten, plus 3 sea days. After reading a lot of threads, we are nervous about not having passports. If we paid for the expedited service, they are supposed to arrive in 3-5 weeks. We are currently 7.5 weeks from sailing, with holidays in between which I would assume may slow things down a bit.
The only real issue/concern for us is that it took forever to get my wife's birth certificate from Arizona. We currently live in Indiana and can't just walk in a pick it up like I can with mine. If we mail off the only birth certificate we have (yes we should have gotten multiples...hindsight is 20/20), and the passports don't arrive on time, we will have neither the passports, nor the birth certificate.
Any constructive advice is appreciated. Just board with birth certificates and licenses (we have marriage license for name change issues) or go for the passports and hope they arrive in the timeframe they are supposed to?