Vow Renewal on Royal Caribbean

[florida cruising]

How anyone renewed their vows with RC? I am on 6/6/04 on the Mariner and was wondering how your experience is?

 

Mariner 6/6/04

[Mrs. Dockside Doc]

Dockside Doc and I renewed our vows on the Feb 1 Mariner sailing. There's a lengthy message about the VR in the archives of a letter I sent to RC (to which they haven't replied).

 

BTW, you do know the VR is $500 on a Voyager-class ship?

 

Mrs. Dockside Doc

[florida cruising]

I paid for the VR in Dec. when I booked the cruise and they only charged $400. Also, where can I find your letter?

 

Mariner 6/6/04

[Mrs. Dockside Doc]

I ordered the VR in January, so I guess the price has gone up.

 

I'm not able to find my post either, so I'll paste in what I sent to RC. Sorry about the length.

 

Mr. Jack Williams

President and Chief Operating Officer

Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.

1050 Caribbean Way

Miami, FL 33132 USA

 

Dear Mr. Williams,

 

My husband and I were on the Mariner of Seas February 1-8, 2004, and we planned a vow renewal on board. I was very disappointed with what happened, because I relied on the information I was given by Royal Caribbean.

 

This is from Royal Caribbean’s (RCCL) Web site:

 

In celebration of your wedding anniversary or just for a romantic surprise, Royal Romance can arrange a Vow Renewal Ceremony for your special occasion. To add to your celebration, you may add any of our enhancements or even a reception if you wish. Please note that this is not a legal ceremony, it is for sentimental purposes only.

Royal Encore $400 USD

 

When I called to book the vow renewal, I was told then that on Voyager-class ships, there was an additional $100 surcharge, and if the ceremony was going to be in June or October, there’d be another charge. No enhancements or reception was mentioned. Just provide a credit card number.

 

Ideal wedding location onboard a Royal Caribbean ship.

 

The Skylight chapel is a beautiful place to hold a ceremony aboard this ship.

 

Memorable ceremony performed by your ship's Social Host.

 

I provided a printed copy of the ceremony given to me by RCCL. It seemed that this was the first time the social host had seen it, and she stumbled over several of the words.

 

Romantic, recorded ceremony music.

 

We provided our own CD. Once the social host loaded it correctly (she first played the wedding march, which we didn’t even use at the original ceremony), it went fine, except for during the ceremony, she left to turn down the music during one song, which made it too quiet for the rest of the time.

 

Simple, elegant bridal bouquet.

 

Simple is the word. I asked RCCL to send me a photo of the standard bouquet, which was a spray of 8-9 white roses. For the vow renewal, my bouquet had only 3 roses.

 

Matching groom's boutonniere.

 

A single white rose with baby’s breath.

 

Keepsake Royal Romance vow renewal certificate.

 

RCCL needs to update these certificates. The year is still 19__, which had to be crossed out. Additionally, it would look more professional if they were printed using any common software program, and the couple’s names printed, rather than being hand-written.

 

Royal Romance wedding cake for bride and groom.

 

What a disappointment. RCCL sent me a photo of their cake topper, which was a small bouquet of white roses. The cake we got was one-layer, heart-shaped, covered in an unpleasant fondant frosting, with three lit candles, like a birthday cake. At least it was fresh.

 

Bottle of Royal Romance champagne with a personalized label including your name and the name of your ship.

 

Never saw it. We did get champagne with the cake, but no personalized bottle, which would have been a nice keepsake.

 

Professional shipboard photography service for the ceremony, cake cutting and champagne toast (one hour of service).

 

This went better than expected. The photographer didn’t come for the cake cutting (we did this at dinner), but we went around the ship and took pictures. We bought about a dozen photos.

 

One 8" x 10" wedding photograph (additional photographs may be purchased onboard).

One 8" x 10" engraved Royal Caribbean silver-plated frame.

 

The photographer selected several photos to enlarge, and we chose one for our keepsake. That photo in its frame is in a place of honor in our living room.

 

This is from the e-mail sent by RCCL after I reserved the vow renewal:

 

Guidelines - Vow Renewals

 

Shipboard Contact

The Social Host will be your shipboard contact. On embarkation day he/she will place a letter of introduction in your cabin with instructions on how he/she can be contacted. The Social Host will also set up a meeting to schedule your vow renewal ceremony and answer any questions. Please be advised that vow renewal ceremonies cannot be held on embarkation day or formal night (s), due to demands on the ship’s staff.

 

There was no letter waiting for us when we embarked on Sunday. I asked the cabin attendant, and he didn’t know anything about it. The next morning, I went down to Guest Relations and left a message. The social host finally called us that evening and we briefly discussed the ceremony and set up a day and time (Thursday, 7 pm). She seemed rushed, so we kept it short, and she promised to send a letter the next day. I didn’t receive that letter until Wednesday evening.

 

This inattention was very stressful to me. I needed to make a hair appointment, but couldn’t do it until we had things set up. Fortunately, the spa was able to fit me in late Thursday afternoon. I also needed to find out exactly when to show up on Thursday, explain about the music, and tell her we had guests coming. I went down to Guest Relations on Thursday morning. They were able to reach the social host by phone and we discussed the remaining details on the phone there at the guest relations counter.

 

If a service like this is going to be provided, the crew members involved really need to work with the couple to make sure things run smoothly. This is an important occasion to the couple involved. I didn’t enjoy the cruise as much as I could have, from worrying about this.

 

Because of my experience, I would not recommend a vow renewal on RCCL to anyone.

 

 

I really don't want to turn you off about your VR, since other couples have had good experiences, but I was counting on RCCL to live up to their promises, and they fell short.

[florida cruising]

Thanks for you info. I will keep my eyes open for any problems you had. Was your an Eastern or Western Caribbean cruise? We are planning for this to be a big day. This will be our formal wedding, because our first one was not.

 

Mariner 6/6/04

[Mrs. Dockside Doc]

This was the Eastern Caribbean cruise, and the VR happened the evening we left St. Maarten (and me with one nasty sunburn on my back!).

 

Are you going to dress formally for this? If you do, since you can't have the VR on a formal night, when you walk around the ship, you WILL get attention, which was the fun part for me.

[florida cruising]

Oh yes we are dressing up. The dress, headpiece, veil, and him in a tux. We couldn't the first time. Money wouldn't allow it. I am getting so excited. It is a big part of the cruise for me. That's why we booked the cruise.

 

5 weeks and 6 days until sail

 

Mariner 6/6/04

[florida cruising]

Has anyone else renewed their vows or gotten married on the Mariner?

 

Mariner 6/6/04

[Mrs. Dockside Doc]

Just wanted to wish you a wonderful romantic cruise and vow renewal. And being the only ones royally dressed on a non-formal night, you'll get the <sigh>"a bride" look from the women

 

BTW, on May 12, someone from Royal Caribbean called and left a message on my answering machine, saying she wanted to talk about the VR on the Mariner, and since I wasn't there, she'd put something in the mail. I'm still waiting...

 

Mrs. Dockside Doc

[florida cruising]

Just wanted to let everyone know that RC did a wonderful job on my vow renewal. Tracy, the social hostess did the ceremony and she was awesome. I would highly recommend it to anyone. It was perfect for what we were looking for. We brought music for our first dance. We didn't get that the first time. The photographer was good, but I only took the free picture and Tracy took pics with our camera. The pics are very expensive. You couldn't just buy one or two prints, you had to buy a package. For all prints it was $400 and for prints and negatives it was $800. He did go down to $675 when I said I wasn't buying any. You also have 30 or 45 days to purchase online. My pics in my camera were very good so I have decided not to buy. Had a wonderful time and would do it all over in a heartbeat.

 

Nycol

 

Mariner 6/6/04

[Truluv]

We also renewed our vows on the Mariner on the 7/4 cruise. It was a lovely ceremony and Tracy and the photographer did a WONDERFUL job for us. We decided to renew our vows before dinner on a sea day. We met in the chapel at 5:15 (and still made it to dinner that night). We brought a CD of our favorite songs for background music. The ceremony that Tracey read to us was beautiful, and we repeated vows/exchanged rings. It was very romantic. If we had wanted to, we would have been able to personalize the ceremony with our own vows -- Tracy was very sweet & accomodating She offered to get us tickets to the ice show or to arrange anything else that we needed to make the cruise special, so we felt like a King & Queen.

 

We received a copy of the vows with the Certificate on the last day of our cruise The Certificate is nice, with caligraphy names/dates.

 

The photographer took us all over the ship, including the dining room before the doors opened for some special photographs. The photos were ready in 3 days (there were about 45 to choose from). We were able to purchase the 5 X 7 pictures/proofs immediately, and could have any of them made up into 8 X 10s in addition to the one that was included in the package -- we weren't forced to buy a package, which was great. We did buy a little Romance photo album for the 5 X 7 prints that we bought. The photos were slightly discounted from the usual 19.95 & 9.95 prices in the photo gallery. The silver(plate) frame is of a decent quality.

 

The flowers were so-so (only one rose -- Tracy apologized -- but it wasn't her fault). We had asked for our champagne/cake at the dining room at dinner. The champagne was delivered, but not the cake. Tracy was terrific and straightened out for us for the next night (we also rec'd a complimentary bottle of wine to apologise for the cake mix-up). The cake was heart shaped with a delicious fondant frosting...sweet and very yummy. It did come with a few little candles to blow out, like a birthday cake. At first I thought the candles were silly, but they came in handy for making a wish together!!

 

This ceremony was special to us, since hubby has an illness that will eventually be terminal. The vow renewal between us was everything that we wanted it to be -- thank you, RCL and Tracy! We definitely think that the $400 price was a bargain for the romantic ceremony and the special attention that we received. Now I have to try to convince hubby that we should go on another cruise as a "honeymoon" following the vow renewal!

[MandyGirl]

Truluv -

 

I'm so glad your vow renewal went well! :) I'm sure you two make the most of each day you have together... and definitely take that honeymoon cruise! ;)