Saltbox2013

This review has been soooo helpful! My fiance and I are a lesbian couple as well and planning our wedding for August aboard the Breakaway to Bermuda. It is good to know that NCL was able to satisfy two brides! We are doing ours a little bit last minute, so your review and your OOT boxes have given us some great ideas! It is also good to know that the meeting rooms aren't exactly spectacular. Do you know if there is ever an option to do the ceremony up on one of the decks and then the cocktail reception in the meeting room? We were thinking that maybe we could just "flash mob" the deck with our wedding, but this is obviously not realistic! And I would much rather get married outside where you can see the ocean!

Great! Glad I could help! Yeah no, up on deck is not going to work. They won't allow it for weather purposes and the fact that the decks are public spaces and therefore they won't be able to block it off for your ceremony. I wish I could do on deck too and was kind of bummed that I could not see the ocean at all in the meeting room. But I tell ya, you will be plenty distracted by your wife to be's pretty face and the overwhelming vibe of the ceremony, that if there were an ocean, you would not have really noticed it!

Ask for the ceremony to be in Bliss Lounge or something with a nicer atmosphere. Depending on when you want to have the ceremony and number of guests, you may have the option to do in the pretty Manhattan Room or Theater. All depends on when and how many people. On sea days, your options will be limited as all the passengers are on the ship looking for entertainment. On island days or embarkation day, you may get more spaces.

Good luck with the planning and remember to have fun and not stress about it. I'm totally jealous that I don't have a cruise lined up right now. Ugh.

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Beautiful post, I am actually trying to help my sister plan her vow renewal ceremony right now and is being told that they only offer a ceremony for the two of them. Is there any way you can provide the contact info for me so that I can try and get a hold of someone in the group events department?

 

Thank you!

Yeah they don't do group vow renewals anymore... NCL changed up their wedding stuff and switched companies. You may want to ask about the "Symbolic Wedding" package. This package is for a group and it isn't a legal thing, so with that said, you could perhaps ask if they could switch out the vows with the vows they would use for vow renewals... The rest would stay the same...

I would start with contacting the wedding planning people and the ask them if you can customize a little bit there. I think the ship does the vow renewal stuff in house and uses the wedding company for the other wedding packages, but they can coordinate with the ship and work something out for you. In the end of the day, it will be a ship's staff member doing the ceremony so it is really only a matter of printing out vow renewal vows and read those at your symbolic wedding...

http://www.ncl.com/freestyle-cruise/wedding-and-romance

Who created the wedding programs? It looks very nice.

I designed my own. I'm a graphic designer. Spent more money on printing all my graphics than I paid for both dresses!

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I'm not quite sure how I missed this review. Absolutely beautiful. Looks like you had the vow renewal of your dreams. You both made such beautiful brides!!!

Thank you so much!! It was truly a wonderful experience. Sigh... I want to renew my vows on a ship every year lol!

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Iceling, hmmm well it all depends on what you are going to do. On Norwegian you hire the photographer for their time so if you want them to follow you about, they will. You pay per hour. I didn't have mine follow me around too much, She did offer and popped in at the cocktails reception for a little bit to take a few extra. Carley is her name and she is the bomb! She shot weddings since she was a teen and it is clear that she has a passion for it. Since we are such chill brides and didn't give her much of a shot list or directions, she just got creative and did her thing! The rate was something like $100 per hour. The USB drive of images was like $475 or something. I bought a bunch of prints and frames so my total for everything was a grand. I think it was a very fair price. It all depends on how many photos they took to come up with a price for the USB. I had about 200 pictures. Printing pictures onboard is kind of high but that is where the money is made. Lol. I didn't use any video services but they do offer that. I don't see why you would not be able to ask a photographer to go in the beach with you. I mean it is more money for them to make so just ask. I am not sure if they would allow for your own photographer. Maybe if your photographer is also sailing with you, they may not be bothered. I think it becomes tricky when the photographer is just coming onboard to do business and then leave. How is NCL going to get their cut? Soooo if he is a guest, he paid to go onboard as a passenger and passengers can bring cameras. All my dang guests had cameras and took photos. Lol. My uncle shot the video and they had no problem with him doing so. All my guests wee passengers and my event was a vow renewal at sea so it was handled more casually. I like the Breakaway and Bermuda is very pretty for photos. I have no experience with Carnival or Princess. I like modern ships so I personally love me some NCL! They don't have a chapel though. I would call NCL's wedding planners and ask. Royal Ocean Events do their wedding stuff so call them. I think they also do Carnival and Princess' weddings, so you can ask about all your ships! . Good Luck!!

USB drive.

One of the products I bought at the photo store.

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Who took the beach photos? They are beautiful.

One of my guests took the photos. He does photography on the side for fun so he was a good guest to have around for free beach photography! We could take our time, no pressure. It was great. All you need is a bright sunny day, a good camera and an enthusiastic friend! It was so much fun!

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As a nonsmoking gambler, I would like to point out that the casino is NOT a lounge for smokers. (and yes, I know the casino is closed in port). I am just saying, don't present the casino as a smoking lounge, because it is not. Smoking is permitted by the gamers since it is a gambling location. Those of us who like to play are most annoyed when smokers come in and sit at the machines to smoke or congregate around machines smoking so they can access ashtrays. Go ahead and throw flames at me, but I have no problem with cigar and cigarette smokers mixing together in the smoking lounge. In fact, I wish smoking rooms where the norm rather than smokers being able to pollute the air that nonsmokers must breathe. I would LOVE to have even more smoke free zones on the ships.

Yawwwn, the casino was hardly a sticky spot to smoke. It felt like smoking in a hallway. I smoked half a cig and left. Ships aught to have a whole smokers deck complete with pools, a bar and a hot tub!!

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Ugh smoking was lame on this ship. Can only do it right at the bars and at Shakers. May smoke on your balcony but not inside the room. They were very strict about deviating from smoking areas. I mean, I would sit on a deck chair, 2 steps away from the bar and the staff would be in my face about it. Maybe it is because of that ship that recently burnt but dang, they were tight about it. Smokes were cheap to buy though lol.

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EPIC REVIEW!!!! Pretty pictures! Love the colors :) Congratulations!

Thanks for sharing and congrats to you both

Thank for sharing this and congratulations.

 

Keith

Thank you and you are welcome :)

Congratulations. I was on the ship and saw you taking pictures in the atrium, you both looked beautiful.

Thank you ;). I hope you enjoyed your cruise as much as we did. :)

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What a great review!, |Thank You

I loved your welcome kits! They were fabulous!

 

Congratulations!

Thank you so much! We did have a long time to think about those kits while the breakaway was being built and no other wedding planning could be done lol.

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To me, it just opens up the possibility of something falling through the cracks when they merge. I do not want to have to be checking my account to make sure that my totals are correct.

 

And, because you need your Latitudes number when you book, each time they change it, I have to find it in my list of passwords and so forth and change it yet again. It just gets old after a while. You would think they could figure this out.

And, as someone mentioned, they had to do their on line check in again after the new number was issued.

It is all automated so stuff won't fall through easily. This technical issue is probably driving the developers of these systems nuts. For the sake of their sanity they will probably fix it sooner than later.

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The only exception could be if you booked your group after group space was closed. I tried just recently to book a group for a September sailing and was told by NCLGROUPS that all the group space was closed.:mad:

Haha that is NCL's creative way of avoiding passengers to meet each other on CC roll calls and start little cruise groups to get all the goodies.

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Oh... Why is this a bad thing? It happened to me but all the history and points stayed the same. The technology is not that sophisticated I guess. We have the same problems at my office with employee id cards. Often times the system ends up with duplicates so merges have to be done. As long as data doesn't get lost, it shouldn't be bad right?

I may want to join... Lol.

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:D ooooooo nice! What is hotter than a pretty bride? 2 pretty brides lol :) Congrats, I enjoyed your review and love your pictures :D

Thanks! I can't believe we've been married just over a year now. We went on another cruise 2 weeks before our anniversary this year and my parents had ordered the anniversary decorations for our cabin :)

 

Sweet! That's such a fun/cute cake. :)

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Loooooooove the pictures. You looked so pretty!!! :) :) :)

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Sorry to just drop in here, but maybe you should check with your TA. I've heard rumors that sometimes all these amenities disappear into the TA's pockets. If you are registered as a group, someone should contact you about 30 days prior to your cruise discussing the options with you. If not, you must contact your group consultant at NCL.

 

 

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This is true. The travel agent didn't do any real work. YOU are the reason that those guests are sailing, not the TA. The TA typed a little bit of stuff into a computer and spoke with you over the phone. There should be no reward for that.

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I really liked the ship. The design is modern and there are so many cool places to hang out and take pictures. We loved the boardwalk. Really really loved Spice H2O. Every night was a party on that deck. You and your guests will have a great time!

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I'm interested in hearing more about anyone's experience with the specialty restaurant and a large group seating. Also, did anyone in this thread use the ship photographer for a wedding photo package? Did anyone bring a outside photographer on board?

We used the ships photographer and I handed my own SLR camera to a guest. Carly did the photography and she did a great job. In my signature I have a link to my review with her photos.

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I'd very much like to discuss this in greater detail. How was ths arranged? How large was your group? We're you seated together and at same time? Was your menu the normal specialty restaurant menu? Which restaurant?

We arranged with Breakaway Group Events. We had 25 guests. All seated in one area but it was little tables of 4 and 5 per table. Menu was not the usual menu. They sent me the menu ahead of time. La Cucina was the restaurant of choice. We could go ahead of time to set up tables. The staff sang for us when they presented the wedding cake. It was nice. I don't see this too possible with a large group though.

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Oooooo very nice!!! I love the photography and colors!!!! Yay pretty!

Oh I can't believe NCL didn't mention the group perks to you. That is whack. We knew about it because we had a group cruise before on the Gem and asked them if there was some sort of benefit to organizing groups because that is a lot effort and you are brining so many customers to them. So yeah just ask and they shall provide.