Royal Romance (from Royal Caribbean) Problems and Advice?

Does anyone have experience with Royal Romance from Royal Caribbean? I know people have had horror stories dealing with them in the past. I've seen several reviews on here that weren't that great.

I am planning a cruise wedding for April 10th, 2017 and have just started talking to Royal Romance about a week ago. We are already having a few communication problems. I'm worried about continuing on with our wedding planning with them.....

Does anyone have any helpful advice or know if Royal Romance may have improved? I know Royal Caribbean recently changed their weddings packages so I'm hoping they also have improved their wedding department.

My fiancé and I are getting married on Freedom of the Seas in September. Like you, I had read all the horror stories. I was very apprehensive about Royal Weddings. I have been dealing with Stephanie Nicoll and she has been fantastic. She has answered every email and phone call in a timely fashion. My wedding planner is going to be Aislin and from what I heard she is also fantastic. My first consultation with her is February 16th. I hope my experience with her is as good as it has been with Stephanie.

Wow, that is great to hear! I'm glad someone can say they are having a good experience. Maybe we can request to change coordinators.

We have have been in contact with Ingrid Gil. We first called asking about booking a wedding and the call was very brief. She e-mailed us the questionnaire and wedding contract, but did not talk at all about venues or details about the wedding. We filled everything out, signed the contract, and sent it back to her. A day later she e-mails me an invoice for the wedding charges. I look at the invoice and under the "venue" section there was Olive or Twist (a lounge on Freedom of the Seas) listed. But we never even talked about venues! We e-mailed and called her early on Friday, and have yet to hear a response. We will be calling back tomorrow if she doesn't call us first.

Is this similar to the process you went through? We're we supposed to pick a venue before signing the contract? Ingrid never spoke a word of it.

On another note, my fiance and I are also getting married on Freedom of the Seas!! Do you have any advice on wedding plans for that particular ship? We are expecting about 25 guests, and are undecided if we want the ceremony in the chapel or somewhere else onboard. We also are going back and forth on having a lunch reception in a lounge or just making a large group reservation at a specialty restaurant for after the ceremony.

When I initially called, I asked a lot of questions. My main question was ceremony site. The site locations that she gave me were the chapel, Vintages and Cloud Nine. After my call, I emailed her with another list of questions. I requested pictures of all the sites and had them within 24 hours. I requested Cloud Nine. We are getting married on a sea day. I should mention that it will only be the two of us, so that may change the choices for ceremony based on the number of people that will be attending. We chose Cloud Nine because of the panoramic windows. After that she emailed me the contract and we sent it back. I believe we had the contract back within 2 days and paid for the ceremony and marriage license. The initial person you speak with isn't your wedding planner, that is assigned after they have approved your contract. Stephanie did tell me that it is best to communicate by email. I would allow at least at least 2 business days for a response. I have sent pictures of my flowers to Stephanie and received a quote back within 2 days. Her follow up has been amazing.

Since, I am not having guests it is hard for me to help you on that. I think the lounge would be more private than a specialty restaurant. Whatever you decide, I am sure it will be amazing! I would formulate a list of questions and email it to her. If you don't get a response, I can email Stephanie and tell her of the problems you are having and maybe she can help. :)

We finally got in touch with Ingrid today. She was fairly helpful and answered all of our questions about the venue space. She said she pre-filled Olive or Twist as a place holder and that we can always change the ceremony location after we get in contact with the actual wedding planner. I was a little uncomfortable with this however and requested a list of ceremony choices so that I could pick one before I pay, and it will be reflected on my invoice. Ingrid said no problem, and she listed our options for ceremony sites (Viking Crown Lounge, Cloud Nine, Star Lounge, and the Skylight Chapel).

We picked the Chapel and are waiting for her to update our invoice so we can make payment. So I guess the ball is rolling again :) I hope we get assigned the same wedding planner since you said you have heard good things about Aislin!

So happy you got some results! Maybe you can request Aislin? I will let you know how my call goes with her. It is scheduled for February 16th. I think you made a good choice by picking a venue now. I wouldn't want to wait and risk not getting what I want especially after I paid for it. Did she give you a time? I already requested 3:00 in the afternoon. Are you getting married on a sea day?

We just paid for our package and were assigned a wedding planner. We were assigned someone named Desirae...Hopefully she is one of the good ones! Our call is also scheduled for February 16th! At 11:00AM!

And yes we are getting married on the first sea day by the captain :) We didn't want to be stressed out about getting married at a port or on embarkation day. We are so excited!

I am getting married in t-minus 25 days (eep!) we set sail in 23 though. We started working with Stephanie and then moved onto Aislinn. Let me just say I have ZERO clue what everyone is hating on Royal Romance for. Both ladies were incredible!

I'm getting married on Freedom of the seas May 29th sailing. We have around 40 guests going and will get married on the first sea day. The service I have received has been great. Desirae is my royal romance contact and she has been wonderful this far. Everytime I send an email it's returned the same day. So far we are getting married in the chapel and having a reception with appetizers and the soda beer and wine package. I think it will be held in the Viking lounge. I have arranged to have a private photo shoot in St Thomas the next day for the gorgeous pics I want. Hope this helps.

I am looking to set up my wedding with RCC as well. But I am just waiting on them to release the rest of their 2017 cruise schedule.

What has been the average everyone has been seeing for RCC wedding costs?

It looks like it will end up being around $7000 but is that realistic?

So glad to hear that other brides have had success with RCC as of late. I believe they have revamped their wedding services in the last year, so most of the negative reviews are from before that.

I don't have a full picture yet as far as costs are concerned. We are getting married at sea and picked "the ultimate love story" package. The package alone was 3800 I believe. And then with the marriage license costs added, our total cost so far has come to $4600. This also does not include our cruise costs. We picked one of the "large ocean view rooms" and booked last month during the BOGO event, so I think for my fiance and I we are paying around $1600 for our tickets. That adds up to $6,200 already...and we haven't added beverage packages, excursions, shopping expenses, reception expenses, photography picture packages, etc.

I'm hoping once everything is planned we will still be under our budget for $10,000, but I know we will be cutting it close! We don't know how many people will end up sailing with us yet. We've invited around 60 but only expect maybe 25-30 people to actually book. But the more people that go, the bigger our reception will be!

My call was scheduled for today with Aislinn and I received an email that she is no longer in that position and they want to reschedule my call for next week with Ingrid. Everything was going so well and now I am a little nervous.

That's insane!!

My call was scheduled today with Desirae at 11AM est. I was getting nervous because I saw your post and worried something similar would happen to me as well. She did call, but was about 10 minutes late. I had a 3 way call going with her, my mom, and myself. Luckily our call went very well. We only talked for probably 20 minutes and that was more than enough.

I wonder what happened to Aislin? Ingrid wasn't a wedding planner for me, she was just a coordinator who got me to sign the wedding package and pay for it. She assigned me to Desirae for the rest of the wedding planning. I hope this gets cleared up soon for you! Maybe you will end up with Desirae too?

As far as our call goes; Desire confirmed our booking and what day we wanted to get married on. She confirmed that we wanted to get married in the chapel and booked us for a 12noon ceremony so that we could do a lunch reception like we wanted. She explained what comes in our package (The Ultimate Love Story) to us and asked if we knew what we wanted to do for our reception. We told her we were interested in Chops Grille, so she is now going to try and book us in there for our reception! There wasn't much else we talked about. She asked if we were planning to buy flowers from them and we said yes. She said all we have to do is send in pictures of what we want and she can get us a quote.

She did explain that once we are on the boat we will meet with our on-board wedding coordinator who will help us with music timing, ceremony rehearsal, decorations, etc.

Other than that, she basically said she will be sending us a large packet where we can pick and choose what we want to add to our ceremony/reception like cake flavors, food, toasts, music, photography, etc. She said there was no rush in sending it back since my wedding is still 400+ days away :). The important thing to hammer out during this phone call was basically the "when and where". She also answered any miscellaneous questions we had in our heads at the time. So far, I am the only bride getting married on our cruise, and they won't schedule any other weddings on my wedding day.

I am super excited and pleased on how our phone call went. Desirae was much easier to talk to than Ingrid, and she seemed genuinely interested in our wedding and making us happy. I hope it stays this way!! Let me know what happens with your wedding planning and who you get assigned to, hope it all works out!

Aislinn is def still with the company. I get married on Feb 23rd after departing on the 21st on the Anthem and she responded to my emails today. So she is 100% still with the company if anything I'm guessing she got a promotion of some sort because she was wonderful and has been since Day 1 with me so I'm sure she is with everyone else.

That would make sense if she got a promotion then. Either way I'd be a lil nervous. I hope they get Melissa taken care of. Wedding stuff just feels so nerve wracking for some reason lol :)

My experience up until today has been 100% positive. I replied to the email from Stephanie and I never heard back about when my call is going to be rescheduled. I know that Aislinn is wonderful and I am really disappointed. The email I received said "Aislinn is leaving her position and we are transitioning her replacement, Ingrid, your new wedding planner is available next week". Not sure if that means she is leaving Royal or moving into a new position. I do know that Aislinn has many years of experience in wedding planning.

Heard back from Stephanie. They have assigned me to Desirae! My new call is on Tuesday.

I am looking at getting married on our Christmas cruise on Explorer of the Seas and have been dealing with Shannon. She didn't answer my first email till I sent it again and then she only answered a couple of my questions and after that she has not replied at all. I think I have sent at least 3 or 4 more emails. I want to know how much the wedding is going to cost and they can't even reply to that. Thinking I should ask to switch to Stephanie. I could try calling but being in Australia makes it expensive and have to deal with the time zones.

My niece is planning her wedding with Royal Caribbean and it has been an absolute nightmare. Even the groom is upset. He's been on RCCL before but now says he'll never cruise on Royal Caribbean again. I am unhappy about this because this is my favorite cruise line. But once she made the deposit she was never contacted. OK, we gave what happened the benefit of the doubt maybe there was some misunderstanding in when she would be contacted. But after the contact no one got back to her about answering questions. Her fiance feels that they just nickle and dime you death. Although the wedding package include guests up to a certain amount there is nothing in the package even pertaining to the guests. The package includes 15 line items but there is only 8 on there that's good the rest they can just get rid of it. He's about ready to cancel the whole thing. I've been thinking maybe they should had went with Carnival. Check Carnival's wedding package out. Makes Royal Caribbean look really bad. Pricing much more reasonable.

Just some info from someone who attended a wedding on the Allure February 8, 2016. As a wedding guest i would have thought everything went perfect but since my daughter was in the wedding i got the scoop afterwards.

NOT good!!!! Both the land based company and the staff on Royal made many errors. The bridge and groom were so upset.

Just to name a few......no flowers delivered to the cabin in time for pre-wedding photos. No wedding planner anywhere until after the start time. no music playing while the attendants and bride walked down the aisle (until someone attending the wedding went and told the wedding coordinator). Some drinks did not have any alcohol in them, just virgin rum punch. wrong cake flavors were served. Wedding coordinator did not know anything about having a first dance/father daughter dance or mother son dance (again until a guest told her to check the brides wedding music list where it was clearly listed).

Just horrible things that ruined the experience for the bride and groom.

Just giving some examples so that those of you getting married on a Royal ship can be aware of some issues. Ask your wedding coordinator on the ship how many wedding she has done. it turns out that for this wedding that this coordinator had only done 5 and that she had no training prior.

Plus if things go wrong with items that have been paid for, like the alcohol, food, music, cake etc.....that the ship staff has no control over any of that. They will tell you that you will need to contact and deal with the land based company itself after you are back in the states.

But like I said....from a guest perspective, the wedding was beautiful and the bride and groom looked amazing.

Does anyone have experience with Royal Romance from Royal Caribbean? I know people have had horror stories dealing with them in the past. I've seen several reviews on here that weren't that great.

 

I am planning a cruise wedding for April 10th, 2017 and have just started talking to Royal Romance about a week ago. We are already having a few communication problems. I'm worried about continuing on with our wedding planning with them.....

 

Does anyone have any helpful advice or know if Royal Romance may have improved? I know Royal Caribbean recently changed their weddings packages so I'm hoping they also have improved their wedding department.

See my post here:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showpost.php?p=49403750&postcount=9

After sending an email requesting to change consultants I heard back from someone I assume is a manager saying that that it was an error on Shannon's end as she thought she had answered my questions and I could change consultants if I wish. Since I was just after a price I chose to stay with Shannon. I then received the first email she sent me so I replied saying I already had that and was requesting a price. Nearly fell off my chair when a response came back within 30 minutes with the price I was chasing. She also sent me the forms I would need if I proceed.

After this experience I'm pretty sure I won't be getting married on board... we will do it in Melbourne the day before sailing so that we will both have family present.

Good luck and congratulations to all those getting married on board :-)

We just paid for our package and were assigned a wedding planner. We were assigned someone named Desirae...Hopefully she is one of the good ones! Our call is also scheduled for February 16th! At 11:00AM!

 

And yes we are getting married on the first sea day by the captain :) We didn't want to be stressed out about getting married at a port or on embarkation day. We are so excited!

That's the name of our planner too. We are getting married on 8/7/16 on the Allure.

We were married aboard the Independence of the Seas in January of 2016. My personal experiences with Royal Romance and the on-board wedding coordinator could not be more positive.

I had my reservations based on the abundance of negative reviews for Royal Romance out there. Every bride/groom is different - I personally did not want to have to spend time stressing over the little details, so a wedding on a cruise ship seemed perfect. I made the choices that were important to me and they handled everything else amazingly.

Don't expect weekly (or even monthly if you book far in advance) interactions with them. There are weddings being held on every cruise ship every week. There is only a small staff at Royal Romance to handle all the brides (and grooms). I would recommend saving up all your questions. I wrote out lengthy emails with all of my questions and would send them to my coordinator a few days before the next scheduled phone call. She loved it as it gave her time to gather up all the answers. As it got closer to our wedding date, the frequency of emails/calls picked up.

What I was pleasantly surprised to learn was that they go way above and beyond the options listed in the wedding details packet. They custom made our ceremony welcome drinks to match the wedding colors. There were over a dozen different cake/filling choices not listed. We found out that they offer the wedding cakes in square as well as round. I had the option to send pictures of flower arrangements I liked and work with the onboard florist to get a quote. Same thing with custom decorating of the cake - I sent pictures of what I wanted it to look like. I personally hated the idea of white rose boutineers and they were able to change the flower without a problem. They provided "kid plates" for the younger guests attending the reception. There are MANY more examples, but I think you get the idea. Basically, if there is something you really want for your wedding day - definitely ask. I don't recall hearing "no" once. Maybe I didn't have outlandish requests, but its certainly worth a shot.

One thing I definitely recommend is reviewing the wedding details contract with a fine toothed comb. You will receive a form to fill out with your selections 2-3 months before your wedding, and is typically finalized around 45 before you set sail. Ours wasn't finalized till 2-3 weeks before we set sail, but everything went fine. This is important as it is the primary document the onboard coordinator will receive. Make sure everything is correct and any special requests you may have are included in it.

I would not recommend a cruise/destination wedding for brides that like to plan every detail. However, it was a perfect match for my husband and I. We wanted to minimize the stress level while planning our wedding. RCCL is very experienced at weddings as they do them week in and week out aboard the ships. We could not be any happier about our decision.

I am relieved to see a positive review of Royal Romance. You noted they provided kids plates. We were told that all guests are charged as adults no matter the age. Was this true for you? Approximately, what was the cost of your flowers. Just trying to get a sense as I am getting married on RCL next February.