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Carnival Imagination Wedding Review w/ Pics October 7, 2013


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Hello Everyone!!

I just got back from my amazing wedding cruise aboard Carnival Imagination. I hope I don’t forget anything, if I do, feel free to ask away!

Our Arrival to Miami…

We flew to Miami from Atlanta on Delta with a group of 8 people (4 kids and 4 adults) two days before the ceremony, everyone had 2 carry-ons and I checked 2 bags. That’s a total of 18 bags. I must say I did over pack for the cruise. My husband, my 2 boys and I did not wear half the outfits we packed. Anyway back to our flight. We booked our flights on Hotwire and paid $197 each. I think we could’ve gotten a cheaper rate if we purchased our tickets earlier in the year. We purchased our tickets 1 week before. When I walked on the plane, the Delta stewardess offered to hang up my dress in the closet. I was glad too because I refuse to let my dress to be checked. I was willing to be uncomfortable and hold my dress the entire flight. LOL! I do regret carrying all those bags through the airport with 4 children who has never flown on an airplane before. It was EXHAUSTING!! (On the way back home we put all our bags in several cars of our guest who drove.)

Our Hotel…

Our guest, my husband & I stayed at the Hampton Inn Miami Airport. I cannot praise and recommend this hotel enough! The rooms were $134 plus tax per night. A lot of our guest complained about the price until they heard about all the amenities. Just to name a few; free airport shuttle, free parking for guest who drive during their stay AND during the cruise, computer room with ability to a printer(our guest were able to print boarding passes), 24 hour access to the pool and hot tub, free breakfast and free Wi-Fi. Bonus: they upgraded my husband and I room to a big 2 room suite fully loaded with refrigerator, stove, dish washer and gave us a bottle of Chardonnay & a bottle of champagne upon arrival (FOR FREE). They also allowed us to use the breakfast area for our welcome dinner meet & greet.

Meet & Greet/Party Bus…

The day before the wedding our guest began to arrive to the hotel. About 9 months ago we purchase a Publix gift card and every pay day we would add money to it. We ended up saving $300 onto the gift card. On the day of the welcome meet and greet, we went to the Publix grocery store and ordered about 7 party platters. We ordered pinwheel sandwiches, variety chicken wings platter, salad, cake platter, fruit platter, etc. After buying all the platters, we still had money leftover on the gift card. Once everyone ate, talked, laughed & took pictures, it was 5:30…..time for the PARTY BUS!!

We used a company called Miami Limo Coach. We were going to go with a company called Millennium Limo but at the last minute, we decided not to because every time we called to confirm, they changed the price. When I read another bride’s review (Shatima), she used Miami Limo Coach and I remember speaking with that company earlier during my research, so we decided to go with them. I’m so glad we did! We booked 2 days before arriving in Miami. All we did was send the contract with our credit card number to reserve the bus. My husband didn’t feel safe sending his card information, so we used one of his pre-paid cards that had a balance of $10.

Once the driver Victor arrived we paid him $675 in cash. We charged each guest $20 and we paid the difference, which was about $85. We originally only booked the bus for 3 hours but he gave us the bus for 4 hours plus an extra 20 minutes to give us time to go to the liquor store to buy a couple of bottles of champagne and 1800 (to take shots). Before we left, we gave each person a “Welcome Aboard Bag” to thank everyone for coming to our wedding. The bags didn’t include as much as I wanted but the guest were pleasantly surprised! We also passed out our passport wedding invitations, which were very last minute but came out really nice!!

The passport invitations included; the wedding & reception information, Carnival Imagination ship information, the map of our ships course, information about each port stop, each sailing guest’s room number and our acknowledgements.

The driver took us all over Miami. We got off only twice, on the strip with all the shops & at the beach. The party bus was a great way to start off our wedding cruise. People were really impressed. The music, drinks, people, dancing, equals a good time!!

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Monday October 7th…….WEDDING DAY!!

The morning was very hectic because I had to pack up everything in the hotel, separate my wedding stuff from my cruise stuff, shower, do my own hair, and get makeup done all before 9am. During this whole process, the one thing I regret not doing is hiring someone to do my hair & makeup. I counted on my cousin from another state to do that but I did not like how she did my hair or makeup. She didn’t like it either, so I took matters into my own hands and grabbed the curling iron and makeup. Everything turned out good but that was very stressful.

Once we arrived at the port, we were greeted by two people from the wedding department. I cannot remember their names but they were super nice & helpful. They explained to my husband and I and our guest the order of events. They would send me, my mom, and two of my bridesmaids to one of our guests suites to get dressed and my husband and our two sons to our room to get dressed and our guest to the top deck to eat and explore the ship. They gave everyone a map of the ship and the time everyone had to be at the wedding location. I then gave both wedding planners copies of how I wanted the processional along with my selected music and two copies of how I wanted my decorations laid out. I also gave copies to three of my family members just to make sure the planners got it right.

After I was finished getting dressed, my photographer came in and took a few pictures, then the ships photographer came and took similar pictures. In the end, I’m glad I bought my own photographer because the ship’s photographer pictures came out much darker.

For the ceremony, I wanted pink & blue rose pedals on each side of the white aisle and wedding programs placed on every other chair. For the reception, I wanted my custom wedding guestbook placed on a table with my personalized pink napkins, matches, with a sprinkle of rose pedals. For my cake, I bought a personalized cruise ship cake topper and light stand from Esty.com for $50. It had our names, the date, and the name of our ship Carnival Imagination. I wanted pink ribbon wrapped around each layer of cake ($3 at Michaels). I wanted a double strand of rhinestones ($2 on Amazon) wrapped around each layer of cake (over the pink ribbon). Under the cake I bought a round Styrofoam stand wrapped in rhinestone ribbon.

I bought two boxes of rose pedals (one pink, one blue) from Hobby Lobby for $5 each (originally $10). Hobby Lobby has a 50% off wedding products sales every other week. I bought 24 fan wedding programs from Amazon for $10. I was a little sketchy about the product after reading the reviews but they were easy to do and turned out perfect! Those two boxes of rose pedals were more than enough pedals for the ceremony, reception and flower girl basket.

The Ceremony (Shangri La Lounge)…

My mom was escorted by my brother and my husband’s parents have passed away, so his sisters were escorted by our oldest son. Once my husband and his best man walked down the aisle, the water works begun. My husband began to cry, and this shocked me because, he is not the emotional type. The last time I seen him cry was at his dads’ funeral. Once he started to cry everybody in the room was crying, so by the time I walked in the room, there wasn’t a dry eye left. Now I’m a cry baby on a daily basis so when I saw my husband crying, I had to turn away because I knew I would start crying and I mean the ugly cry too lol.

The bridal party walked down to the John Legend song, “So High”. It’s a really nice song, if you have not heard it before, YouTube it. That also goes for the song I walked out to, Jennifer Hudson’s “Giving Myself”. After we kissed and turned around to our guest the song we chose for them to play was Beyonce’s “At Last”. We chose this song because, we’ve been married for 5 years, but we finally had our wedding!

Our “officiant”, was my uncle who has been married for over 30 years. I wrote our whole vow renewal ceremony, if you would like a copy emailed to you let me know.

The Reception (Illusions Nightclub)…

Our wedding party and we walked into the reception room to Chris Brown’s song, “Forever”. I wanted to incorporate that song into our wedding somehow because I’ve seen a cute YouTube video using this song as a wedding entrance. We did our first dance to Brandy’s remake to “Everything I Do”. After that we went right over to the cake to cut it and for all the toast. Then it was time to eat, drink, and dance! Close to the end of the reception, I was pulled on the dance floor for “Pin money on the bride”. This was not planned at all; it was an idea of one of my cousin’s. I’m glad we did because, we hadn’t received any wedding gifts and we didn’t have much spending money. By the time the song was over, we racked up over $300! My wedding was perfect, I wish I could rewind time and do it all over again.

 

Well that concludes my review…………..ask all the questions you like!!

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YAY! right before i go i get to read a review! LOVE IT! was great! Love the small details i also didnt know i should write down every single thing i want i have two friends who know i figured they will tell them maybe i should write it down tho......YOU LOOKED GREAT! loved the pictures!!! Wonderful review! Thank yoU!

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OMG!!!!!! CONGRATULATIONS and thanks so much for that review. Your pictures were beautiful! I'm having my wedding on Carnival Sensation in Feb 2014 leaving from Port Canaveral. Your review just got me even more excited!

Is your bouquet the bouquet that came with the package?

Did you have the hour or 1.5 hr reception and how was it?

I am working on making my passport wedding programs and I would love to get information on how you created yours!

My email is brian.n.courtneyhayes@gmail.com

Thanks!!!!

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Congrats!!! Your pics are beautiful!!!! Thank you for sharing your review. Question what kind of cake did you go with? Also I have read some horror stories about purchasing photos from the photographer, how was your experience with them?

 

Thank you! We had a 2 tiered cake, my husband chose the top tier flavor, red velvet with cream cheese filling and I chose the bottom tier flavor, butter cream. The red velvet tier was awful! lol

I brought my own photographer with me but Carnival's photographer came with my package so, they were there also. When I finally seen Carnival photographer's photo prints, I was so glad I brought my own photographer because Carnival photographer's pictures came out darker than I like.

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OMG!!!!!! CONGRATULATIONS and thanks so much for that review. Your pictures were beautiful! I'm having my wedding on Carnival Sensation in Feb 2014 leaving from Port Canaveral. Your review just got me even more excited!

Is your bouquet the bouquet that came with the package?

Did you have the hour or 1.5 hr reception and how was it?

I am working on making my passport wedding programs and I would love to get information on how you created yours!

My email is brian.n.courtneyhayes@gmail.com

Thanks!!!!

 

Thanks I'm still excited from my wedding, I think my FaceBook friends are so annoyed with me. LOL!! Yes the bouquet I was holding came with my package and they asked me 2 weeks before what color I wanted and I told them hot pink.

Yes, I had the 1.5 reception and it was plenty of time! When I first found out that's all the time we were getting, I was a little worried, but it was more than enough time. Sure I'll send you an email of my passport documents and a few more goodies.

Edited by MrsFreeman21408
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YAY! right before i go i get to read a review! LOVE IT! was great! Love the small details i also didnt know i should write down every single thing i want i have two friends who know i figured they will tell them maybe i should write it down tho......YOU LOOKED GREAT! loved the pictures!!! Wonderful review! Thank yoU!

 

You want to know what's funny? I've been reading reviews for over a year so during my wedding day I was thinking in the back of my mind what I would say on my CC wedding review LOL! Thank You!

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Thanks I'm still excited from my wedding, I think my FaceBook friends are so annoyed with me. LOL!! Yes the bouquet I was holding came with my package and they asked me 2 weeks before what color I wanted and I told them hot pink.

Yes, I had the 1.5 reception and it was plenty of time! When I first found out that's all the time we were getting, I was a little worried, but it was more than enough time. Sure I'll send you an email of my passport documents and a few more goodies.

 

Thanks so much!!!!! I was worried about the time too but I figure if they want more time, then invest on a vacation on the cruise with us! Lol I had some bouquets made for my bridesmaids and wasn't sure if I should make mine or use the one included. Thanks for your input. I'll be looking for that email! :-)

 

Sent from my SGH-M919 using Tapatalk

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Thanks so much!!!!! I was worried about the time too but I figure if they want more time, then invest on a vacation on the cruise with us! Lol I had some bouquets made for my bridesmaids and wasn't sure if I should make mine or use the one included. Thanks for your input. I'll be looking for that email! :-)

 

Sent from my SGH-M919 using Tapatalk

 

Sent! Sorry for the delay!

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