Ceremony on location, reception on ship?

[Lumee23]

Hi Everyone! I am new here :) I was hoping to get some advice regarding planning a cruise wedding. It is actually a vow renewal but we want to treat it as a wedding since we weren't able to afford one when we got married.

 

Right now the tentative plan is to have the ceremony on St Thomas using Island Bliss Weddings (not the cruise line) and then have either a lunch reception on the island followed by a group dinner/dancing on the boat or having a private dinner reception on the boat. Right now I am leaning towards the lunch reception.

 

We are looking at NCL Gem cruising in Feb/Mar 2015 but the new Royal Caribbean Quantum cruise in Feb 2015 looks tempting but would definitely make it harder for guests to attend since it is more expensive...

 

Anyway, my question was what do you do for entertainment for the party part of the reception. Do you just go to one of the public dance/dj parties on the boat or did you get a private room on the boat and hire entertainment through the cruise line? I am thinking we will be a fairly small group (15-30ish) so I am not sure if we would really need a private room if that was an option. Did anybody do something like that? I know our families will be spending a lot of money to go with us so I want to show them a really good time but we are also on a budget.

 

Also, if anybody else had a wedding like this I would love to hear about your experience and/or tips!

 

Thank you everyone!

[jaxie001]

Congratulations and Happy Planning! We used Island Bliss this past May and they were awesome! What venue are you planning for?

 

Not sure how helpful this will be since we used Carnival and they may have very different reception planning options than the cruiselines your looking at. We had a group of 17 and reserved tables in the Steakhouse, there was not an option to have a room and a DJ and be private unless we did this while the ship was in Port, not after sailing. After dinner a bunch of us just went down to where one of the bands was playing and danced and celebrated.