Carnival Freedom Review 10/3/2011 long & detailed

[flgatormom29]

Better late than never eh?! Just been so busy since we got home! And now dealing with my Dad... Just insanity!

 

Anyways... Here's my review

 

We left saturday around 9 for breakfast. Then hit the road around 10 for our 3.5 hour drive to Ft. Lauderdale. But not before checking the trunk about 4 times to make sure I didn't forget anything! :rolleyes:

We got to the hotel around 145ish. We stayed at Springhill Marriott. Not the best, but just fine for a 1 night stay. We got it for $100 for the night, that included free parking for up to 14 days, free breakfast and free transfer to the port. Well worth it consider it was only $10 more than we would have spent to park at the port! At the hotel is also where i handed out the first part of out OOT bags. They were our shirts that I wanted everyone to wear on Sunday.

 

Here is our group with the shirts on

 

Josh and my shirts from the back

 

We woke up Sunday around 7ish to shower and pack up before getting to the shuttle at 10am. The shuttle was running pretty late because the Freedom was 2 hours late to port due to a passenger emergency. We finally left the hotel around 11 and it was pure chaos at the port! At this time, we were thanking God we were not getting married that day! It wouldn't have been good! When we were in line there were people still getting off the ship. The line to get on was mixing with the line to get off. It was so confusing and crazy!

 

Here is a pic of us waiting in line.... (that's me with the thumbs up)

 

We finally got inside and through security around 1215 and Josh and I with our 2 girls went into the VIP line while everyone else went though the regular line. we were on board at 1230!! Was so nice! When we were boarding everyone was still at the back of the line!!! First thing we did was go to our room. The door was shut, but we poked our head through the door and our steward was right there. Josh just asked if we could PLEASE put a dress in there and Andre said "oh yeah! 7270! Your room is ready!" I couldnt believe he knew who were were and what room we were in! It was great to drop that dress off and the luggage we had! My dress was SOOO heavy! In the room were already the funship freddy's we got for the girls. They were so excited!

 

Also waiting in my room was a letter from Carnival thanking us for having our wedding there and also giving us a beeper number to reach our coordinator.

 

Then we went to explore while we waited for the rest of our group to come aboard... And i got my first DOD! Yummy!

Once everyone was on board we went to get lunch. But at that time my cousin and I decided to drop the rest of the stuff at my mom that they were carrying and go make our salon appts. In the room we found the OOT bags and decided to try to deliver them. Every single room was still open except 2 (it was only 1pm). We hung up the signs and put the bags on the beds with the welcome letters. The doors that were closed we asked the nearest stewart to open it, after explaining what we wanted to do and telling them they could watch us, they opened the door and walked away. It was perfect! We made our salon appt (which they were AMAZING! even switching around the girl's schedules to accomidate all 6 of us). We went to have lunch alone and met up with Josh.

 

At dinner that night Ivon came and met with me. She told me that after dinner she will meet with us at the lobby and we can go over everything. She was EXTREMELY nice. We met with her in the lobby where it was really loud. She also had my photographer Mikulas. I will admit, he worried me. He kept saying "I do things a little bit different." He didn't come to my room before the ceremony. I was so worried. Then Ivon took us to the Swingtime lounge to talk about how we wanted the room set up. I was worried because it smelled so bad of smoke. But we talked about set up and the windows. We ended up not turning the room, but just having the curtain on the window directly behind us closed...the rest open.

 

So we went to bed around midnight that night and decided the meeting time for all girls would be 730 at my room. Josh slept in his parents room and planned on exploring Key West in the morning and my girls and my MOH slept in my room. We had a huge room service delivered. Bagels, cereal, yogurt....ect. My mom, aunt, grandma, MIL, and 2 bridesmaids all met at 730. My mom gave me a necklace at this time which is absolutely beautiful! It's a tiny heart and a silver pendant with it. Engraved with 10-3-2011 J&K. I love it!

 

Here is a picture from my balcony the morning of the wedding

[flgatormom29]

We headed to the salon at 9am. I showed them a picture of what I liked and they did it EXACTLY like the picture. It was amazing and took no time! It was $69 for my hair, $35 for my 2 year old and $45 for my 7 year old. I gave about a $10 tip for each of us. Excellent service!!!

 

My hair

 

 

Then we went back to to the room and ordered room service. Turkey sandwiches and grilled cheese sandwiches. It was delivered really fast! Then makeup and time to put my dress on. This is when it got so hectic!!! I had no idea what was going on, but time was on hyper speed! UGH. While putting my dress on, the coordinators (one from carnival-one from Key West) kept calling me. On a normal day, that would have aggriated me, but that day, nothing could have upset me :-). At 130 I started freaking out, we hadn't put the flowers in the flower girl basket yet, my jewelry wasn't on. My bridesmaids weren't ready and my dress wasn't tied up! They called again and asked if we would be ready at 145....uh NO! So she said she would come as close to 2pm as possible. Around 155, we were ready and waiting for them to come get us. The coordinator from Key West came and got us and we forgot about the rings and license! I meant to get them to Josh and forgot, we ran and got them out of the safe and she took them for us to take care of them. I had been fine for the past 18 months. Not nervous, not anything. Very calm.... just didn't feel real to me. But when we got in that elevator, it got very real! I started hyper ventilating a little bit. Once we got down the the 5th level. The room was right around the corner from the elevators.

 

So Mikulas took some pictures of us in the hallway with all the girls and everyone started walking in. I freaked a little bit because we hadn't even rehersed anything...so i had no idea what was going on!! I was fine until my girls started walking in, they turned around and waved at me. They were so damn cute. I started crying. When we walked in, i couldn't even look at Josh, i was trying not to cry and I knew if i looked at him I would bust out sobbing!

 

 

I don't remember much of the ceremony. I was too busy looking at Josh, as I couldn't believe how good he looked. Although, he did wear the wrong tie. We bought him a fuschia tie, and he wore the black one that came with the rental, but nothing could upset me that day! And i was a little happy that he was crying too ;). He kept saying he wouldn't cry, but we kept telling each other to stop during the ceremony cuz him crying made me cry and me crying made him cry! We did the Rose and Vase ceremony and that turned out great. So happy we did that. Then it was official!!!

 

 

After the ceremony we took some pictures in the swingtime Lounge and went into the reception next door. We decided to only do an hour, as that extra $160 was enough to pay for us to go to Mickey's Very Merry Christmas event in November. An hour flew by, but we had time to do our dances, cake cutting, toast, eat, and dance! Since our party was so small, we decided to not do garter toss ect...which i'm glad we didn't. An hour was plenty, but couldn't believe when it was over!

 

 

Then it was over and Mikulas took us for pictures. Now Josh and I are not very good at those poses and he said it would only take 45 mins. 2 hours later we were done! My aunt wanted to take us for some pictures too but we were so tired we only took a few with her. I'm glad she took some pictures, but the photographer was very good at getting in her way!

 

When we were done with pictures it was already 545 and dinner was at 6, so it worked out that we stayed in our clothes. Then the Matre'd announced us to the entire dining room. It was so great! We also did the Adult game show that night. The cruise director picked us for the last game. We had to use our bodies to pop balloons. We sucked, cuz i suck at tying balloons! But we did come in 3rd, so we did get a bottle of wine. I was still in my dress at that time and had to straddle Josh to pop balloons. It was so much fun!

 

 

 

When we finally went back to our room my MOH and bridesmaid had decorated it for us. It was so cute!

 

All week, i kept saying that I was going to hate all of his pictures. I hate those fake posed ones and we spent the majority of time on those. He didn't do any on the stairs and we didn't get the poses we wanted, but I was so done with pictures I didn't even think to say anything. We got one by the funnel and one outside with the water behind us, but that was it. My aunt ended up taking one of us with the life savor which i like.... but that's it. :( I was so worried all week.

 

On friday was the newlywed game, we got on it and it was so much fun! Quite embarassing and everyone kept asking Josh how he liked my "green dress" cuz he had to remember what i was wearing and I was wearing his FAVORITE purple dress but he said green! haha. I was sad it was on friday, our last sea day...as we wanted to be "famous" all week and people to notice us, but it was just one day that people noticed. But Josh was on our balcony and someone on theirs saw him and was making fun of him. It was cute. We got another bottle of champagne, but since we don't drink we asked for a ship on a stick instead! He said we could keep the champagne and get a ship, so we gave the champagne to a couple who got married saturday and wanted to be on the show, but we beat them out.

 

Me completely embarrassed on stage. We had to show them what a 10+ kiss looked like and then Josh grabbed my butt!

 

Our stick on a ship

 

 

We were out taking pictures on thursday night before going to the steakhouse, when we ran into Mikulas who was doing some pictures by the piano. I had been wondering about him ALL week. We still hadn't heard from him and Friday was our last day! I wanted to meet wth him earlier, so we could walk away and negotiate price a little more... So when we saw him he said he had JUST called us to make an appt, we set one up with him the next day at 10am.

 

So Friday before we met with Mikulas, we went to the photo gallery to gather up all the pictures we wanted from the week. We knew that we planned on getting him to add those to our package.

 

Now we budgetted $1500-with the hopes that we wouldn't spend more than $1000. He showed us the DVD of our pictures played to music and then showed us the coffee table book he made. Then he showed us the price sheet. It was $6800 for everything. I almost died! So he said he would do better. He dropped it to $3200. I tried to get him to lower the price even more by asking for no canvases but when he showed me the price for them, it wasn't worth it to take them off. Then I told him i wanted the pictures from all week added. He said he could not do that, he could lose his job (there was another carnival employee in the library). I told him OK, and went to go put more money on our sail n sign card. When i came back, the library was empty and I had found my mom. He threw in all of our pictures, all of my mom's pictures and an extra canvas. Then I told him I would take it all if he could get it under $3000. He went down to $2950 and i told him we would do it. Now only reason we went so over our budget is Josh's parents told us at our reception that they were giving us $1000 as our wedding gift. Or no way I would have spent that much! I was sick to my stomach signing that reciept. But when we got home and i was looking through them all, i was so glad i got them all. I would have HATED picking and chosing as they were ALL so amazing! When we were talking he even went outside and brought me a scrapbook and scrapbook inserts, 2 8X10 photo albums, the 8X10 frame I was planning on buying and 3 5X7 photo books that hold one picture and light up. He threw all of that in for free as well! I have so far made 4 photo books. (the 2 8X10s he gave us, plus 1 book of 4X6s from the ceremony/reception and 1 4X6 book from the cruise), plus the coffee table book.

 

So, all those pictures I was worried about came out AMAZING. I don't know why I was so worried! He did amazing. I was so unsure about him when I met him Sunday. He's very standoff-ish and quiet and just wasn't sure. He turned out being such a great guy and an amazing photographer. He took a bunch with Josh, me and the girls...and just Josh and I. Very happy.

[flgatormom29]

Ivon was also great. She came and checked on us every night at dinner. We saw her a few times at breakfast and she would always chat with us. The matre'd visited us everynight and even knew our names from the first night. The cruise director, Jacque was great...but the assistant cruise director, George, was AMAZING. He's this short little gay guy and he's so fricken adorable. So much energy and full of fun. We fell in love with him! I told him I want to take him home with me and put him in my pocket. I wish he was going go be on the Ecstacy in december!

 

Here is my cousin and I with the fabulous George

 

So that's it in a nutshell. I started proof reading this and It's crazy. I started typing this a few hours ago and stopped while i took my girls to gymnastics and then restarted while Josh drove home, then stopped to put them to bed....so it's probably a mess.

 

If you have any other questions just ask! This was an amazing experience, and I'm so glad we got married onboard! Wish we could do it again! The only thing i regret, is i wish we had put a babysitting schedule in my welcome letter. No one helped but Josh's parents. My 2 year old was scared of the camp, so we had her most all day. Then the only night we didn't have them was our wedding night, but we got them back at 9am the next day. Tuesday and Wednesday night we had to go back to the room early to put them to bed while the rest of my family went to the shows. Then thursday my in-laws kept them while we went to the steakhouse. There was so staying up late, no sleeping in... It was horrible. I was so upset that my family didn't help out. But we just kept telling each other we get an alone cruise in 2 months....so we stuck it out.

 

I will post pictures once i finish uploading them to photobucket. Just trying to pick and choose :rolleyes:

 

Here are the 2 good ones my aunt took. The rest I will post the website to them...

[flgatormom29]

One more picture I wanted to share before I upload all the professional pictures.

This was in the dining room the night after the wedding. It's kinda dark but I like it because you can actually see my dress. In every picture either my flowers or something else is in front of me and you can't see my whole dress

[flgatormom29]

Here is the link to all the professional pictures (well, not all-there were over 400-but my favorites)

http://www.photobucket.com/rabenerwedding

 

Here is the link to the copy of the coffee table book Mikulas made.

http://photobucket.com/carnivalweddingbook

 

That's it. That's my review. I will be more than happy to answer any questions. :-)

[Mara4166]

Thank you for posting the review. The pictures are lovely!

[Bostoncruiser35]

Thank you so much for posting with such detail. Your pictures are awesome! I was questioning if the 1 hour reception would be enough to get in our dances, us,my husband(we are renewing)/his mom, Me and my Dad and us and our Kids and still have time for everyone to dance, you answered my question. I sounds and looks like you had a wonderful day. Congrats to you both!

[bridetobe52012]

You pictures are beautiful!!

Did Carnival do your flowers?

[KenyaCruise]

I'm glad everything went well. The pictures are awesome and your dress is absolutely gorgeous!!

 

Great review.....

[Duzzy]

Beautiful pictures!

 

Love the book layout too!

[Host Caroline]

Great review, great pics! Thanks for posting.:)

[Herbaltees]

Great Review. Thanks for the information.

 

I know what you mean about the baby sitting. That was one of my concerns about inviting everyone along. People would take this as their vacation too, and maybe not help as much as I would like, with our 2 year old.

[flgatormom29]

You pictures are beautiful!!

Did Carnival do your flowers?

 

 

I did! They are real! Patty from A Wedding For You was amazing! I sent her a picture of what I wanted and she delivered exactly what I asked for.

So glad we did that!

 

Thank you so much. I can't stop looking at my pictures! 3rd best day of my life!! (1st and 2nd being the birth of my children ;)). Wish I could go back and do it all over again!

[mrsgomez2011]

Totally gorgeous!!!! Love it!!! :) Glad your wedding went so well. See told you it would be great!!! :)

[B&BE]

What an awesome review! It brought back so many memories of my Dec. wedding on the Freedom. Great pictures (I know what you mean by being so over the pictues :) Wishing you a long and happy life together!

[DesiNicole25]

Great review and VERY beautiful pics!!! You looked AMAZING!!!! Best wishes to you and your new husband. :D Thanks for Sharing!!!! If you dont mind me asking, where did your bridesmaids get the pink and black dresses? LOVE them and these are my colors as well. Also looove your favor boxes? What did you fill them with?

Thanks

Desiree

[flgatormom29]

Great review and VERY beautiful pics!!! You looked AMAZING!!!! Best wishes to you and your new husband. :D Thanks for Sharing!!!! If you dont mind me asking, where did your bridesmaids get the pink and black dresses? LOVE them and these are my colors as well. Also looove your favor boxes? What did you fill them with?

Thanks

Desiree

 

I don't mind you asking at all!

The dresses were from Alfred Angelo. They were just black dresses and then they bought the fuschia sashes and we tied them around them. Turned out really cute!

The boxes I got from Michaels. I filled them with hershey hugs & kisses and Dove promises. Then the tags said

"Hugs & Kisses

A Promise to treasure

Thank you for sharing

Our first day Together."

 

They turned out really cute and I loved that i could incorporate my colors in them as well!

[MagicofLove]

Wonderful review! Congrats! You guys look like you had lots of fun. Beautiful pictures!

[DesiNicole25]

I don't mind you asking at all!

The dresses were from Alfred Angelo. They were just black dresses and then they bought the fuschia sashes and we tied them around them. Turned out really cute!

The boxes I got from Michaels. I filled them with hershey hugs & kisses and Dove promises. Then the tags said

"Hugs & Kisses

A Promise to treasure

Thank you for sharing

Our first day Together."

 

They turned out really cute and I loved that i could incorporate my colors in them as well!

 

I agree the dresses came out beautiful!!!!

What a cute idea for the favors, I absolutely love it!!! Thanks for sharing and CONGRATS:D

[Dancinblind]

Congratulations!! You looked stunning in your dress and your photo's are beautiful.

[Spiralshell]

Fabulous!!!!!! Thank you for sharing this great review and gorgeous pics!

There was one of you and your girls that is just The Sweetest Pic Ever!

[Spiralshell]

We are getting married on the Miracle in April and after reading your review my heart is just breaking about the pictures. $3000 is so much more than I have budgeted! But I can see the dilemma of all these great pics and not being able to choose. I definitely hear you about feeling sick at how much! Those memories are priceless... But we could take a whole other cruisefor $3k!

Agh!!!

[flgatormom29]

We are getting married on the Miracle in April and after reading your review my heart is just breaking about the pictures. $3000 is so much more than I have budgeted! But I can see the dilemma of all these great pics and not being able to choose. I definitely hear you about feeling sick at how much! Those memories are priceless... But we could take a whole other cruisefor $3k!

Agh!!!

 

I agree. I didn't plan on spending that much, esp when we are going on another cruise in december and want to start planning a cruise to Alaska. Usually, my hubby is the one that is very cautious about money (which is weird, since I'm the one who balances the check book and pays the bills) but he was telling me to do it! He said it was a good deal. He also said that his parents paid a lot more money for their pictures a long long time ago and got a lot less than we did....

 

Also, when I told him that was WAY out of our budget he never talked about any other packages. And me being in the moment never even thought to ask about the other packages. We would have dropped probably $150 on the pictures we wanted from the gallery wall.

 

In the end, we spent WAY too much money. But I only plan on getting married once :rolleyes:, so it was all worth it. I don't regret it one bit!

 

And I'm STILL looking at my pictures everyday. Can't get enough of them! Working on getting my canvases framed this weekend, can't wait to hang them up too! Although, that costs a pretty penny too!

[flgatormom29]

Fabulous!!!!!! Thank you for sharing this great review and gorgeous pics!

There was one of you and your girls that is just The Sweetest Pic Ever!

 

Thanks. My favorite is me and my oldest looking at each other and laughing. I absoltely love that picture!! I wanted to get that as a canvas, but couldn't get a picture of one kid and not the other... so we did the one of the two girls together instead :D

[WDrake_98]

Great Review.