Carnival Wedding..Onboard vs Destination

I am helping my daughter plan her wedding for July 2015. We are interested in hearing from anyone that did on board, but also those that did destinations. We will have around 13 to 20 people sailing on the cruise. I have cruised many times, but never attended a wedding. We will be doing the 8 day Eastern on the Splendor, out of New York!

We are having our wedding in Sept. on the Conquest. The nice thing about having the wedding on the ship while in port on embarkation day is that you can have up to 20 guest attend who are not sailing. they can come to the wedding and get off the boat after the reception.

We had our wedding on St. Thomas (which I believe is a stop on your cruise) in April. We booked the entire wedding through a private wedding planner. The thing with having an on-island wedding is it can range from much cheaper than the ship wedding to close to the full cost of an "at-home" wedding. I can say with having everything that we wanted, which was a full blown ceremony-cocktail hour-and 4 hr reception we were on the pricier side of things (but still cheaper than what we would have paid for an at-home wedding). But we wouldn't change anything at all. It was an amazing time with our friends and family. We also had 32 guests, which adds to the grand total.

If you are interested, I have a link in my signature for a thread about our wedding, includes pictures. Whatever you and your daughter choose to do, it will be amazing! I have heard great things about embarkment weddings and island weddings.

We are doing an embarkation day wedding. With our families it works out better that they don't have to sail with us or fly out of the country to attend as our parents are older. This way they can attend the wedding and then de-bark prior to sailing. We will sail with our friends and have a four day celebration of our marriage.

I think a lot of it just depends on your vision of your day. If she has always envisioned a certain type of ceremony or setting, then an embarkation day wedding may not fulfill her wishes. You have limits set mainly by time restraints. In a port you have similar limits however you can have your wedding and a small reception in port and then continue your reception on board if you wish.