Evaluation of Royal Carribean-Monarch of the Seas Wedding

[knightsofneech]

Hi folks, I wrote back to someone who asked about our wedding so I thought I would paste my evaluation of our wedding (August 24th, 2006) so anyone else who might be doing this cruise has some "tips":

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Our wedding turned out really great. Royal Carribean is a very nice cruise line and the wedding went pretty smoothly. The wedding itself will be handled by a seperate company, Royal Romance (RR I will call them). RR handles weddings on all the Royal Carribean ships as well as other cruise lines. They should assign a specific person to help you out. We had a few hitches but they were minor so on the whole I think the wedding went really well.

 

When you get to the port of LA, they will escort you seperately and your groom through the line a bit, helping to hold your dress and anything else you will need to bring. RR meets with the Royal Carribean people and coordinates the whole event. It is the RR people you will have coordinate your officiant, music, when you walk the isle, and when the cake gets served, etc... basically all parts of the wedding. After the wedding, the RR people will exit the ship along with any guests that may be coming on board but not sailing with you.

 

We had 55 guests sailing with us after the wedding. 75 people total in attendance at the wedding, so 20 people had to leave after their maximum 2 1/2 hour deadline (I believe). At a certain time, depending on when they get the wedding started, all non-sailing guests are given the 10 minute warning it will be time to leave the ship. This was a bummer, so make sure you spend quality time with those people first, since they won't be able to finish dancing with you, partying later, etc...

 

Another tip I'd give you would be as soon as you get to the room where your wedding will be, (mine was in the Circuit Room, and they did a beautiful job you will see with the pictures) make sure you meet the Royal Carribean person in charge of your wedding. The RR people leave and you will be sailing and following up with that Royal Carribean person to make sure pictures are taken nicely, party favors are put in people's rooms, and all the other little things that take place after the wedding. This person became important to us the 4 days we were on board.

 

One more tip I would give you would be to insist the photographer takes photos from a higher position than the ground. I hate to say this, but the photographer we had was a wonderfully nice little Phillipino man (think he was Phillipino...may have been Indonesian) but he was very short. All of the pictures were taken very quickly and from an angle looking up since he WAS short. My sister's wedding had a tall photographer and even he brought a stepladder to take pictures from a good angle. This is especially important when you take pictures on the deck, in the sun, and any kind of close-ups. If I did the wedding again this is one thing I would like to have asked.

 

Things we found to be very excellent!:

--The cake. Yummy! We had rasberry filling and buttercream.

--The flowers were GORGEOUS. We paid extra for flowers not included in our package, but if you go with just the package flowers (white roses), they were gorgeous too!!!

--The presentation of the food, cake, entire reception area

--Smoothness of the RR staff in getting us on the ship and ready for the wedding

--Sitting with the photographer, looking and picking pictures on the last day of the cruise.

--The table staff for our wedding guests and party. They poured us chamapgne and were very delightful to all 55 of us as we changed tables on various meals

 

Things we found needing some work (tips for you maybe):

--Angles of the photos taken (closeups especially)

--The DJ announced 2 different people in the wedding party wrong. Make sure he has names down well. He called my mother-in-law's boyfriend the "father of the groom" which was slightly embarrasing as well as pronouncing names wrong. He also called out my parents as "parents of the groom" at one point, so get with him for 30 secs before the wedding.

--Party favors (visors and little bags with sundries for our travelling guests) were not distributed to the rooms as promised. We even paid seperately for this service so make sure if you do this, you do not have this problem.

--Important: One guest was added to the guest list very late, (a few days before the wedding) and this person did not get filtered down from RR corporate office, to the boarding people at Royal Carribean that pre-secure all passengers. He ALMOST was denied boarding of the ship. THis guest flew in from out of state just to make it to the wedding so we were all up in arms about it. They got him on last minute before the wedding with a lot of phone calls through security, but he missed out on all the fun before guests boarded the ship SO... if you have last minute additions, make sure you call the morning or the night before to make sure Royal Carribean got that person added (has to go all the way down the line to the people who check passports, etc...)

--If you have sailing guests, and if they will be switching tables for dining within your party, make sure they know ahead of time so they can sit with new people in your wedding party. Our guests weren't informed enough (my mistake) and some didn't know they could switch seats. We pre-paid meal gratuity to be able to do this... so wish our guests had taken more advantage of being able to sit with new folks :(

 

 

Below is a link to pictures of our wedding. If you have any more specific questions, feel free to ask! On the whole, everyone had an amazing time and we really enjoy the memories of our wedding (which was last Aug 24th). My husband had never been on a cruise either and was delighted. You will have a great time!

 

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0CbNmzhm0ZsXHQ

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Meant to tell you: the roses you see by the wedding cake in the pictures are the ones that comes with the wedding package. We chose "Harmony".

After the wedding, they took those beautiful bride and bridesmaid boquets and put them in a glass vase at our dining table in the dining room. Made it feel very special since noone else had gorgeous flowers on their dining table :)

 

The other boquets we paid for, we had sent to our room and put on water. We enjoyed them in our cabin for the 4 day trip. Also we did the same with the wedding cake that came with the Harmony package. Since we paid extra for the white cake you see, the little bitty heart shaped cake the package comes with, we had sent back to our room, so in the evening we had champagne, cake and flowers in our room. It was very very very nice! You might want to do the same if you buy anything above and beyond what comes with the wedding package you purchase. :)

[sas80]

Mazeltov!