Breakaway Wedding Review, the before, during and after!!!

I have been stalking this forum for such a longggg time as it has been a dream of mine to have a cruise wedding. All of the reviews and helpful and informative forums have inspired me to start my review from the beginning middle and end. Hopefully my review of the wedding experience will help others as so many of them have done for me!!!

A little background

My fiance and I have been together for 10 years when he finally popped the question this Christmas Eve. I know what you are thinking, "10 years, who waits that long!!" well I wont bore you with the details of our relationship woes, short version Im 34 he's 28..so needless to say we have had some bumps :eek: At the end of the day we are where we were meant to be and truly are each others best friends and soulmates <3

So after the lonnnnnggg wait and a biological clock thats been ticking for years you can imagine that it didn't take very long for me to get the planning started. Sadly my mom who I was extremely close to had a tragic accident at the end of October which kept her in the hospital through the holidays and eventually took her from us. At the time I kept myself busy in the wedding planning with the hopes that she would come out on the other side and would be able to jump right in with all of the planning as she was on board for my dream wedding and used to tell people about my plans before I was even engaged. None of this feels the same with out her and after her passing I took a short break from the planning but as people keep telling me I have to continue to live my life as she would have wanted.

Carnival vs Norwegian???

When it came to decision time I struggled a little between Carnival and Norwegian as we were familiar with both lines and liked and disliked things about both. I have to say that I do feel like it appears you get more bang for your buck with Carnival when it comes to a wedding but ultimately I wanted our friends and family to really experience Norwegian as we love the idea of free style for our honeymoon so we really have the option to be alone when we want to and with the group when we want to. Also we wanted to be married in the Spring and to go to Bermuda so the itinerary, timing and the fact that it would be on their new ship the Breakaway really sold me. We are from Long Island so we wanted to leave out of NY, also I am a center director for a daycare and it just so happened that our spring break for next year fell on a week that was open as they only do one embarkation wedding on the Breakaway. Everything just started to fall into place.

The Booking Process

In the winter I had attended a bridal expo with one of my bridesmaids and although I didn't need a lot of what they had to offer bc of the type of wedding we were having I did come across a cruise planner agent who had experience with cruise weddings and they have been amazing so far. They have literally taken care of everything for us from our group booking to any questions and concerns we have for the wedding department. How the process of booking worked for us is that our travel agent checked with the wedding department if the date we wanted was available, it was so then we gave her our credit info and she put deposit down on our stateroom as you must be booked for the trip first and then we paid for the ceremony cost. This does not include the reception as that gets paid later on in the process. Also a grat time to book with Norwegian with the offers they have running now..we chose the free drink upgrade. Right now we have 5 rooms booked, the amenities with group booking start at 8 rooms booked with your group which im pretty sure we are going to get at least that many so our travel agent is planning on a cocktail party for our group at some point during the cruise.

Informing Family and Friends

Most people that are close to me have heard about these wedding plans for years so it didnt come as much of a surprise to most when the planning finally began. I debated a few times going back and fourth between a cruise wedding and a banquet hall or a restaurant. My fiance and I have small families or at least we are only close to a few ppl in our families lol and we are not big dancers so the idea of spending all of that money on a hall and then having to extend the invite to space fillers just didnt sit well with us in the end. A short wedding/reception and a week long vacation/celebration is much more our style.

I have a friend who is just starting out as a party planner so we decided to hire her to plan our engagement party. Since our engagement party is planned for May we decided to send the Save the Dates for the cruise and the engagement party invites together. Very easy peasy as my party planner found a cute nautical template which matched our theme for the engagement party. We included our wedding website as well as the group travel webpage that was set up by our travel agent. I plan on doing passport invites later down the line with more detailed info for our guests that may be a little less computer savy.

Hope you are enjoying so far..more tomm..(engagement party update, family and friends booking, what I have received from wedding department so far and cake!)http://www.weddingwire.com/henaghanwedding

So sorry to read about your mom. I look forward to the rest of your review! I am also taking the breakaway for my wedding in Bermuda in July! It's a great ship!

Thank you I appreciate it. I cant wait to hear about your weeding..is it this July???

The engagement party is coming along although starting to get much more pricey than I had originally hoped. I wanted to have it at a restaurant and just felt it was too pricey so we are having at a boat club in our town, but between renting the space, food, drinks and decorations Im starting to think we would have been better off at a restaurant. The one positive is that my planner is doing a great job and had found us a lot of cute nautical decor that I can always reuse for the wedding. I will attempt to include a few pics :)

As for the wedding planning that is moving a little slow at the moment but I would expect that to pick up further down the road. Shortly after booking the ceremony date I received a pretty thick wedding package from Royal Ocean Events includung food options, wedding music, entertainment, flowers, photo and cake options.

I had a few questions moving forward for the wedding department so my cruise planners who are also acting as wedding planners emailed a few questions to the wedding Department for me.

We are big fans of red velvet cake and did not see that as a choice and we also werent too fond of the options. I have found that your best bet when dealing with the wedding department is to stick with one person, when you are bounced back from one person to another there seems to be a difference in answers as my planner and I discovered.

Options/Changes

1. Cake: You are not able to bring outside cake on the ship, however, they are allowing us to order a cake from Carlos bakery since they are affiliated with the ship. We are super excited for this cake tasting especially since he is opening a new bakery about 45-55 min from our town by the summer.

2. Signature cocktail: We really wanted to do a signature cocktail but sadly Norwegian does not do it anymore.

3. Luncheon: I did not realize that you do not have the option to do the luncheon for embarkation day wedding..a little bummed about that but we are going to have dinner all together with our sailing guests in the manhattan room.

4. Videographer: No videographer.. a little disappointed with this as well :(

5. FLowers: I am not planning on using their flowers, looking into silk arrangements.

I have attached some pics of our decor for our upcoming engagement party as well as our save the dates!

Love the nautical decor! Yes, my wedding is this July. 3 months (!) eek!

So exciting!! I sometimes wish we had picked a summer date for the warmer weather in Bermuda... Oh well just the excuse I'll need to book another trip!! How is the planning coming along? When did you send out the invitations? Do you have a lot of sailing guests?? How have you found your experience so far with the wedding department??

Hi, I'm getting married on the Norwegian Breakaway next February. I think your thread will be really helpful for future brides since your telling your whole experience from beginning to end.

I was told that we couldn't bring our own cake. So when I read your comment about getting a cake from Carlo's Bakery, I was so excited. I emailed my wedding coordinator right away to confirm, and she says yes and we would be responsible for ordering and ensuring the delivery of the cake to the ship. This is so exciting, now we get to do a cake tasting and really get a customized cake that I wanted!!!

Attached are some nautical cake pictures that I really like.

 

Videographer: No videographer.. a little disappointed with this as well :(

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I would encourage you to join the roll call for your cruise date. You may find that someone on your roll call is experienced with videography or may even have a business (which you could work on arranging privately). I know CC is pretty strict on their rules for not advertising, but someone might be able to point you in the right direction. You just never know who may be cruising with you that might be just the right person to take care of those details.

Even if it is not a professional videographer, you may find that someone is willing to at least video the ceremony for you.

Don't fret sweetie. It will all work out. I see people on these boards all the time arranging to have someone video a proposal or other special moment.

I was told that while the don't offer videography packages onboard, you may bring your own videographer as a visitor. I'm assuming that you can just add that persons name to the list as a wedding guest.

I was told that while the don't offer videography packages onboard, you may bring your own videographer as a visitor. I'm assuming that you can just add that persons name to the list as a wedding guest.

Good information Nell.

Hi, I'm getting married on the Norwegian Breakaway next February. I think your thread will be really helpful for future brides since your telling your whole experience from beginning to end.

 

I was told that we couldn't bring our own cake. So when I read your comment about getting a cake from Carlo's Bakery, I was so excited. I emailed my wedding coordinator right away to confirm, and she says yes and we would be responsible for ordering and ensuring the delivery of the cake to the ship. This is so exciting, now we get to do a cake tasting and really get a customized cake that I wanted!!!

Attached are some nautical cake pictures that I really like.

I'm glad I could help!!! Def looking forward to the cake tasting as well!

I would encourage you to join the roll call for your cruise date. You may find that someone on your roll call is experienced with videography or may even have a business (which you could work on arranging privately). I know CC is pretty strict on their rules for not advertising, but someone might be able to point you in the right direction. You just never know who may be cruising with you that might be just the right person to take care of those details.

 

Even if it is not a professional videographer, you may find that someone is willing to at least video the ceremony for you.

 

Don't fret sweetie. It will all work out. I see people on these boards all the time arranging to have someone video a proposal or other special moment.

Thank you! That is actually a great idea!

As of now we have 5 staterooms booked..us, my dad, my sister and her boyfriend and nephew, sister in law and one of my bridesmaids. I have a few family members and friends that are planning on booking. At what point did you all send you actual invitations, how many months out? I am planning on doing passport invitations as I feel a lot of people need an explanation in writing how this whole thing works. I do have a website that we update regularly but I still seem to get flooded with questions. I guess its to be expected with this type of wedding as it is pretty unique.

I am also curious in others experience with family and friends, how did they take to you all choosing this style of wedding?

I sent my invitations last month, so that was at like 11 months out. I didn't do save the dates I felt that people would have even more questions. With the invitations they were able to get more information and have a lot of time to plan. I also have a wedding website but there still was definitely a lot of questions.

A lot of my family and friends thought the cruise wedding was a really unique idea. Everyone seems to love the idea but I only have 3 rooms booked so far. So I'm not sure who really will be going on the cruise.

Hey there. I plan on getting my invitations out in the next week or so. That will be three months ahead of time, which I heard was good for a destination wedding. The cruise leaves July 26th so we put the rsvp date as July 1st. We figured anyone booking will have done it by then.

So far we have 10 rooms booked on the ship and 3 couples booked on the island.

My friends and family have been excited for the most part, but a little frustrated with the prices. Bermuda cruises are significantly pricier than Caribbean cruises so some had a hard time understanding why the room was so much...

So things have been a little hectic and I've def been slacking on the updates! The engagement party was a lot of fun but it went by so fast! It really helped to be able to get together with a lot of our guests to go over questions anyone had about the trip/wedding. We have the party at a local marina/boat club so the setting went perfect with our nautical theme. Everyone loved the decor! I am fortunate to have a great group of bridesmaids who really pulled through for me and pulled everything together. I had a little table set up with a print out of the cruise itinerary as well as FAQ and answers. Since we will not be able to have a signature drink we took advantage for the engagement party and our "Ocean Blue" was a big hit! Everyone was so generous with their gifts and the party just got me even more excited for our big day and even more excited to say "I Do" officially to my other half!!!

I am attempting to put up pics but having issues so hopefully will be able to upload soon...

In the mean time my travel agent is working on transportation and hotel blocks. I found a great/reasonable priced woman to do our passport invites on twitter. Planning on getting them ordered and sent out by Sept/Oct the latest. What did you all do in terms of transportation? We are looking into shuttle service to take us to hotel in the city the day before. Im not sure if I should offer this up to everyone or just the bridal party and the people we know are sailing? Also price is another factor..is it tacky to ask everyone to chip in?

Thats all for now ..happy planning!!!

Pics are finally attached :)

A Few more :)

Been awhile since I have posted an update. Invitations went out last week with an RSVP date of February 17th. I know once we get through the holidays it is going to fly by!!! So far wedding dress and bridesmaid dresses have been chosen, invitations out and our cake consultation at Carlos Bakery is Nov 23rd!! Im getting so anxious!!!

How is the planning going for the r4est of the Norwegian Brides???

Can not believe we are just about 3 months out!!! So many little details to take care of!!! How is the planning coming along for everyone else? And at what point did you start harrassing people for rsvp???:D

I have def been slacking on my updates!!! Can not believe we are 5 weeks out!!! Things are really starting to come together although I really feel like I wont be able to officially relax until I'm walking down the isle to my fiance <3.

Unfortunately we did not end up having enough rooms booked to be considered a group, are final count is 14 sailing (including bride and groom) and 42 non sailing. Reception and dress are paid which were my two major costs so that has take a huge weight off my shoulders!

I can not say enough positive things about Royal Ocean Events so far. I've been dealing with Puneet from Royal Ocean and she has been great. She always responds to any of my emails within 24 hours if not less. She's really been a great help.

Our Ceremony and reception will be held in the Manhattan Room which is exactly what I wanted so I'm happy about that. I did originally want to have the reception in the disco but after more thought I think its perfect being that the reception is so short. We are going to go straight from the ceremony into the cake cutting/ first dances, which are the only wedding traditions we were interested in anyway.

I still have quite a few things to check off the list such as favors/gifts for our wedding party/ jewelry and paying for flowers and of course packing!!! But so far things are moving nicely!!

Once all the details are finalized I will write up one more review on the planning process and then my final review once we return from the wedding!

Hope this helps and if anyone has any questions about norwegian or royal ocean i'd be glad to help :)