Lots of Questions

We are planning on getting married in 2020. We are thinking a cruise wedding is the way to go because our families live all over the country. It'll also be a small wedding, no more than 30 people and no bridal party or groomsmen. We would go with Carnival since we've sailed with them before and absolutely love them. But we have tons of questions.

1. Is it proper etiquette to foot the bill for the guestrooms? Or is it expected of them to pay their portion?

2. Everyone will be flying or traveling to the port from out of state. Are we responsible for their travel costs? Like is that good etiquette..I don't want to be rude.

3. What do you include in their welcome bags?

4. If you had a small wedding did you do the whole reception thing or did you just have a nice dinner at the restaurant on the ship?

5. How was the planning process with Carnival?

6. Our families would not have met prior to our wedding, would this be weird/awkward?

7. What is your best advice on planning this?

Congrats!! My answers to your questions are in red ❤️

We are planning on getting married in 2020. We are thinking a cruise wedding is the way to go because our families live all over the country. It'll also be a small wedding, no more than 30 people and no bridal party or groomsmen. We would go with Carnival since we've sailed with them before and absolutely love them. But we have tons of questions.

 

1. Is it proper etiquette to foot the bill for the guestrooms? Or is it expected of them to pay their portion? With destination weddings, your guests pay their own portion. I’m getting married on the Carnival Horizon in 35 days and all our guests paid their own way.

2. Everyone will be flying or traveling to the port from out of state. Are we responsible for their travel costs? Like is that good etiquette..I don't want to be rude. They are responsible for their travel arrangements

3. What do you include in their welcome bags? We have a wedding brochure with guests names, gum, highlighter, pen, a koozie, deck of cards, and a few other things (just can’t remember the rest of the items)

4. If you had a small wedding did you do the whole reception thing or did you just have a nice dinner at the restaurant on the ship? We are having a reception so I can’t assist with this question

5. How was the planning process with Carnival? So far the planning process has been easy! We’re working with Michelle in the wedding department and has been super helpful!

6. Our families would not have met prior to our wedding, would this be weird/awkward? Not awkward at all, my parents are meeting his family for the first time next week and we’ve been together for 4.5 years.

7. What is your best advice on planning this? Go with the flow, there’s not a whole lot you’ll get a say in. Don’t let the people who can’t come on the cruise get you down. Because we’re getting married in Grand Cauman, our guests had to be on the sailing with us. We had lots of family and friends call us selfish for doing what we wanted.

Thank you for your answers Bostongirl21.

We are super excited for it, still in the very early stages of planning. I'm pretty relieved we won't be expected to pay for our guests, it'll really only be just our immediate family and children. Congratulations on your wedding as well 🖤

We are planning on getting married in 2020. We are thinking a cruise wedding is the way to go because our families live all over the country. It'll also be a small wedding, no more than 30 people and no bridal party or groomsmen. We would go with Carnival since we've sailed with them before and absolutely love them. But we have tons of questions.

 

1. Is it proper etiquette to foot the bill for the guestrooms? Or is it expected of them to pay their portion?

I’m getting married on NCL Escape in 40 days and all 30 of my guests paid for their own staterooms.

2. Everyone will be flying or traveling to the port from out of state. Are we responsible for their travel costs? Like is that good etiquette..I don't want to be rude.

People traveling from out of state are handling their own travel arrangements.

3. What do you include in their welcome bags?

I actually had a “pre-cruise brunch party” last week where I have all of my guests beach bag filled with small items. I included a T-shirt representing our wedding group, toothbrush/toothpaste, wipes, hand sanitizer, sunglasses and a few miscellaneous items. On board, I’ll be sending out welcome letters and chocolate covered strawberries to each room as an additional thank you.

4. If you had a small wedding did you do the whole reception thing or did you just have a nice dinner at the restaurant on the ship?

I have 30 guests and we’re not doing a reception. We’re actually just doing a group dinner the night of the wedding and the last night of our cruise.

5. How was the planning process with Carnival?

I used NCL, Royal Ocean Events.

6. Our families would not have met prior to our wedding, would this be weird/awkward?

It’s going to be the same with our families and I’m not expecting it to be weird or awkward (but we’ll see in 40 days ;))

7. What is your best advice on planning this?

My best advice for planning be to go into it with an open mind. The coordinators handle a majority of the wedding planning leaving you with not much to plan.

Best of luck to you and your planning journey! I will answer any additional questions you may have if more come up :) (my replies are in red)

My answers are in red below. My husband and I married on the Vista in May 2017, and we're very happy with the experience!

We are planning on getting married in 2020. We are thinking a cruise wedding is the way to go because our families live all over the country. It'll also be a small wedding, no more than 30 people and no bridal party or groomsmen. We would go with Carnival since we've sailed with them before and absolutely love them. But we have tons of questions.

 

1. Is it proper etiquette to foot the bill for the guestrooms? Or is it expected of them to pay their portion? I believe it's common/expected for guests to pay their way.

2. Everyone will be flying or traveling to the port from out of state. Are we responsible for their travel costs? Like is that good etiquette..I don't want to be rude. Guests pay their own way.

3. What do you include in their welcome bags? We may be in the minority, but we didn't do welcome bags. Maybe I was a bad bride? We did have custom shot glasses as wedding favors though.

4. If you had a small wedding did you do the whole reception thing or did you just have a nice dinner at the restaurant on the ship? We had 33 guests, and we did the reception. I think a nice dinner at the restaurant would have been fine with a smaller group.

5. How was the planning process with Carnival? 97% of it was a breeze, the other 3% were just minor inconveniences. Just be sure you get everything in writing, and print out everything and take it with you. Don't expect them to check in and remind you when forms or payments are due, either.

6. Our families would not have met prior to our wedding, would this be weird/awkward? You should be fine.

7. What is your best advice on planning this?

Congrats! We chose to do ours on Princess because the package was great and we knew out guests would be most comfortable on the line. Also, Princess was the first to do weddings on board so they kind of have this thing dialed in.

We chose a wedding at sea as we could relax an not be rushed. We saw an embarkation wedding on our last cruise and I had no interest in arriving to the port largely dressed (you do not have much time to change into a gown once you board for the event), your reception is strictly limited to the time alotted to clear non-sailing guests in your party, and the bride and groom had to deal with newly embarked passengers getting in the way of their photos. They didn't look happy and that wasn't the vibe I was looking for. We also didn't want to do a wedding in port as we prefer to enjoy the cruise ports and the coordination fees were crazy.

Some input:

1. Is it proper etiquette to foot the bill for the guestrooms? Or is it expected of them to pay their portion?

If you have the money to do this, great, but it is not necessary and not expected but you may want to privately financially any guests that you cannot bear to leave behind who cannot afford the cruise. Some guests will have other commitments, challenges, or financial struggles but this is the case with any wedding.

2. Everyone will be flying or traveling to the port from out of state. Are we responsible for their travel costs? Like is that good etiquette..I don't want to be rude.

Absolutely not. Again, if you can financially manage this and/or want to help--especially if you want most of your guest list to attend-- go for it.

3. What do you include in their welcome bags?

We included corsages and flowers custom sculpted from paper clay as a permanent memento, a favor, a "wedding wand" since confetti, bubbles, etc. are not permitted, some fun items we like to board with (what you may take will vary by itinerary), a welcome newsletter that gave details about the wedding, what areas of the ship we are partial to and why, and what we have scheduled and--for those who are not attending our welcome home party (oh yea, your family and friends who cannot go will lobby for an after party)--the favor from that, too.

4. If you had a small wedding did you do the whole reception thing or did you just have a nice dinner at the restaurant on the ship?

We are doing a dinner in the Crown Grill. We felt a "reception" was overkill.

5. How was the planning process with Carnival?

Carnival may use the same company and it was a bit frustrating at first. Always feel free to call the cruise line directly to confirm details. Most items not in the package (a larger cake, flowers beyond what is exactly stated, etc.) are custom and subject to additional fees. The one huge plus is the fact that the whole wedding was locked and loaded weeks in advance.

6. Our families would not have met prior to our wedding, would this be weird/awkward?

Yes and no. They love you and will find they at least have their love for you both in common. We anticipate our families will have great memories of getting to know each other on the seven day cruise. We also had everyone choose the same dining time and our travel agent ensured we will all sit in the same area to encourage mixing and mingling.

7. What is your best advice on planning this?

Compare cruise packages across lines since you have time to really research and use a travel agent. We liked what princess had to offer overall and that the line would appeal to most we were inviting. Our travel agent was able to package transport to the pier and knew which rooms would be best for us and our guests. She was also able to avert a near-disaster with dinner seating. Choose a cruise that is affordable and call your guests to let them know what you are planning to do and to watch for sales with you. We also opted to have a sculptor make our florals for us. They are wholly predictable, they look jaw-dropping real, are lasting, and can make it through the cruise and welcome home party. No matter how the bouquet in the package looks, we're covered, and nothing will wilt. The sculptor also made the cake flowers, which can cover up a blah cake. And, as others have said, print every form, every request, and every document.

• We are planning on getting married in 2020. We are thinking a cruise wedding is the way to go because our families live all over the country. It'll also be a small wedding, no more than 30 people and no bridal party or groomsmen. We would go with Carnival since we've sailed with them before and absolutely love them. But we have tons of questions.

   

  1. Is it proper etiquette to foot the bill for the guestrooms? Or is it expected of them to pay their portion? all of our guests paid for their own rooms..I honestly don't believe that anyone expected us to pay for theirs.

  2. Everyone will be flying or traveling to the port from out of state. Are we responsible for their travel costs? Like is that good etiquette..I don't want to be rude. Again, No.

  3. What do you include in their welcome bags? We didn't do wedding bags, I just found that most of it was wasted money (we are older though, so maybe this makes a difference) I had Yeti (generic form) cups made with our names/date on one side and You, Me & The Sea on the other side. 

  4. If you had a small wedding did you do the whole reception thing or did you just have a nice dinner at the restaurant on the ship? We did the reception; TONS and TONS of food..the cake and decorations were awesome (we did bring our own topper and flowers for the cake; and then also brought a few frames pictures) the reception went extremely fast

  5. How was the planning process with Carnival? Carnival did amazing and took care of everything, I was a little high strung so I probably was calling to often to follow up to make sure everything was in place🙄

  6. Our families would not have met prior to our wedding, would this be weird/awkward? Ours hadn't either, it was fine.

  7. What is your best advice on planning this? Enjoy it, it will come off without a hitch, it will be perfect. Plan to spend a lot of money on pictures, they took AMANZING pictures and hard to narrow down so we spent a lot.  ENJOY because before you know it, it will be over and will be a whirlwind.  A year and half later I wouldn't change a thing..so extremely happy we got married on Carnival.

I have attached a few photos of the things we took as far as pictures for reception and flowers for cake and cake topper, let me know if you have any questions.