Review - St. Thomas/Island Bliss/Villa Botanica April Fool's Wedding

Hey Everyone!

I have been so busy catching up with work the past few weeks that even going on CC was completely cut out of my life. I want to do a review on my wedding because I know that a lot of people are using the same wedding planner that I did, and Villa Botanica is getting to be a popular choice. I will start this review tonight or tomorrow morning but I wanted to just lay the basics right now...

We were on the Carnival Liberty doing the exotic eastern cruise (Half Moon Cay, St. Thomas, Puerto Rico, and Grand Turk)

We Were married on April 1 on St. Thomas when we were in port from 8am to 6pm

Ceremony location: Magen's Bay

Reception Location: Villa Botanica

Wedding Planner: Janelle from Island Bliss weddings

Photographer: Elisha Orin

Can't wait to get all the nitty gritty details on here. We had a very fun, stressful, entertaining, and memorable day (with some surprises) and I wouldn't change it for anything! Well I wish I had a picture of my real cake (spoiler :D).

Congratulations

Yeayyyyyyy your back congrats. I've been awaiting your return. I can't wait to here all the details. :D

<3 Crystal

So let’s do a quick sum up of vacation before the trip. We had people coming from mostly eastern seaboard and Ohio. Half of the people flew in the night before and stayed in Ft. Lauderdale with us at the Holiday in on Sheridan St. This hotel exceeded my expectations and accommodated all of us very well. I had a couple fly into Miami the night before and the other half fly into Miami the day of the cruise.

We used All-star transportation from the hotel at Ft. Lauderdale to the cruise port. With 16 people this came to be 13 bucks a person (less than half if we took Carnival transportation from the Ft. Lauderdale Airport). They were a good company to work with. We thought we were getting our own mini bus, but when we got on we found out they also picked up a group of 6 from another hotel. I felt bad for them having to deal with 16 people ready for a party. I can say some of us in the group need to learn volume control.

So its about 11:30 and we are on our way to the Port. I’m sitting with my fiancée with my dress draped over our laps. Let me just say I am sick of carrying this thing around. We flew on our flight with 10 people. I think I handed off my dress to just about everyone that night. Let me just forewarn anyone traveling with their dress on Southwest. One, they will not let you preboard with it. I asked even though I was still one of the first 30 people on the plane. I just didn’t want to be hitting people with it since the dress bag was pretty large. Two, its going to go in the overhead bin. No ifs ands or buts about it.

Luckily, we got a group of six seats together and took our own overhead bin so it didn’t really get smooshed.

Back to getting to the port, we arrived just around noon. I felt bad for the porters because our whole group (most of which hadn't cruised before) just dropped their luggage off next to the bride and groom’s crazy amount of bags and try to walk in. Most of these people did not print off luggage tags, so we had to wrangle everyone until everything was tagged. People started checking in on their own so we just let them go. We opted out of Faster-to-the-fun (even though it would have been handy for getting rid of the dress that was getting on my nerves) to make sure everyone got through the check in process okay. Well we ended up just the two of us anyway.

Finally we arrived on the ship, walk on the boat and my group has set up camp at the first two tables in the lobby. Made it easy to grab people as they were walking on. We set our stuff down and hopped in the Cheers! Line. :D

(I have no idea where those funky shadows came from on our faces, but we are the happy couple!)

We were so happy to be close to our first drinks of the cruise. I have to start mine off with a kiss on the lips and he always has a Boddington’s. Around 1 everyone started dispersing and we were only 6 people short of the cruise group so we headed to our aft wrap room to stow away the dress until I could move it to my grandfather’s room to air out until the wedding.

Our group had 9 rooms in the aft of deck 7. Both aft wraps, two aft-facing balconies, one “bowling alley” balcony (opened the door between our aft wrap and my sisters bowling alley and it was one giant balcony), two normal balconies, and two interiors. We also had three grand suites and an interior on Mid-deck 7, two ocean views on mid-2, and one balcony all the way deck nine forward (some people didn’t want to join in the deck 7 aft party!). I can say we officially had our own cabin crawl and saw almost every type of room.

We should have known this was going to be one drunken mess of a week when we got to our room. There was another group (three aft facing rooms) next to ours who also just made it to their room. All three of the men were wearing drunk 1, drunk 2, and drunk 3 shirts. Drunk one gave me anxiety throughout the cruise. (More about that later). Our luggage was there with an extra piece, we were room 7440 and we got a piece of luggage for room 7400. I know how stressful waiting for your luggage is so after we dropped our stuff off, my fiancée went off to find more in our group and I went to deliver the extra piece of luggage to its rightful room.

On my way back to the lobby bar I ran into the last 5 people from our group. These were the “oldies” in our group. My grandfather (in a room by himself, he got $800+ OBC since they did the single supplement on our cruise two months before we sailed) and the parents of my mother’s boyfriend. I walked my grandfather to his room when he found out he couldn't find his room card. He was so upset and I couldn't help but laugh and tell him this is very fixable. We must have spent 15 minutes in front of his door while he searched though all of his cargo short pockets. As I finally get him to head back up to guest services we run into the other older couple he was traveling with and she had his card somehow. I thought this was going to be a preview of how my week was going to go. Have to entertain and help take care of everyone while I don’t get to enjoy my vacation. ….Luckily I was wrong. :rolleyes:

Enjoying every sentence keep it coming.

Yeayyyyyyy your back congrats. I've been awaiting your return. I can't wait to here all the details. :D

 

<3 Crystal

Correction I meant "hear" whoopsie

So everyone is on the ship, while people go exploring around the ship one of my bridesmaids and I put together the goodie bags in my room. Unfortunately I never grabbed pictures of the bags completed but what was included was:

-a 12 can round soft cooler (our bag)

- samples of: Avon bug wipes, anti hair frizz serum, anti-bac wipes, hand sanitizer, a lint roller, tissues, Advil, aloe, sunscreen, Mary Kay hand lotion & body lotion

- a welcome brochure I made up with itinerary of the ship, room number list, and random information

- a postcard for the guests to fill out at some point and send back to us as a guestbook we could keep

- and an invitation to the “rehearsal party” and cocktail hour for the next evening.

Once we put everything together we went out to deliver these bags. They were cumbersome to lug around and we had to deliver 18 (one to each room booked)! So we enlisted the groom and trekked from Aft deck 7 to the second most front room on deck 9 and in between. Everyone loved the bags and commented on how they were so happy that we included certain items. The most useful turned out to to be Advil and lint rollers. Well the coolers were used by just about everyone as well.

We put a note in the brochure that if you bought the drink package to load up on unopened beers and load your cooler up on the Half moon Cay and Grand Turk days. So after we had our first group dinner with all of our friends, this is what we started to do. For the week it seemed after dinner the casino bar was where we all ended up. My sister and her boyfriend befriended the bartender, Maria, early on and she was amazing to our group for the whole week. So while we are all losing our money, we are all getting unopened Boddington’s and angry orchards for our next day at Half Moon Cay. There was abundant drinking and by a little after midnight we had a couple of people hit there 15 drink limit (which included the 4 beers each that were taken to the room). So a group of us went and grabbed pizza before turning in for the night.

The next morning I woke up to go onto my balcony and see this gorgeous little island in front of me. We seemed to be drifting farther and farther away though. One tender boat is near the ship so this is a good sign right? Yeah I was wrong 20-30 minutes later, the Capitan made the announcement “we are assessing the weather situation right now for the tendering process, We are seeing rough water for the smaller tender boats, we will keep you informed”.

Me and my mom's boyfriend enjoying looking at HMC from the balcony

Well this was upsetting and woke up the future hubby. We ended up not making it on the island. Turned out to good thing because fiancée was under the weather all day. So was our other friend who had the peperoni pizza. I don’t know if it was coincidence or over imbibing but the only two who didn’t feel well had the pepperoni pizza.

So we had an extra day at sea, this was upsetting but we knew we had to cut island time short if we did have the Half moon cay day because our cocktail hour started at 5:15 that night. My fiancée’s mother planned (and footed the bill) for this very nice night. We had a private cocktail hour in the piano bar with the 32 guests.

It was a nice little chance for everyone to mingle. The servers started bringing out premade drinks on their trays so we had to inform everyone that they could order whatever they wanted.

The fact that they tried to push premade drinks on us was a little annoying given the price paid per person for this.

After I handed out the gifts for my bridesmaids and family and said hello to everyone it seemed to be over. Speaking of gifts, we ended up not being able to bring on the gifts that we got for the groomsmen and FOB. My fiancée ordered bottle openers made out of .50 caliber bullets. All of the groomsmen are big craft beer drinkers and gun owners so we figured why not, it was a cool idea. Well carnival couldn’t get past the fact that they were empty shells turned into bottle openers and wouldn’t allow us to bring them. It’s a good thing we called before we left.

So Fiancée was feeling a little better by now and actually had a drink to celebrate! :p

We made our way to the steakhouse where we had half of it rented out for our party.

Our largerst table of the group

I felt bad about how loud we might have gotten throughout the dinner since there were guests on the other side of the restaurant. We had a limited menu even though we paid full price per person. No one was aware about that but the four of us who have dined on a carnival steakhouse before so it really wasn’t a big deal. I just missed having the Ahi tuna appetizer and Fiancée missed his porterhouse steak that could feed a family. Everyone enjoyed their dinners and it was fun to have everyone together for this night. The chefs and servers were great!

We gave a few speeches and after dinner back to the casino bar to lose some more money!

So we are going to fast forward through the next day at sea since nothing of really importance happened. Just the usual sunning, eating, and drinking. That evening however was interesting. My Fiancée packed up his things for the wedding and schlepped all the way to deck 9 forward where he stayed in his mom’s room that night. I had a heart to heart with one of my bridesmaids for a while on our balcony until little after midnight. She decides to head back to her room (the interior across the hall from my wrap) so she gathers her things and promises to be back a little before 6 the next morning. When she opens my door to mosey across the hall “Drunk 1” (never got his name) was sprawled out on the floor in front of my door, or his door, well both doors. It was obvious he was trashed beyond comprehension. My bridesmaid sort of skirts him and goes into her room. This guy is moaning outside of my door, saying his wife will be here soon with his key. All I’m hearing is “this is my room. Wife comes with key in little, my room!”

Well, I don’t deal well with overly intoxicated people because I have an irrational fear of getting sick and having other people get sick around me. My bridesmaid knows this and calls me (from across the hall) asking me if I can deal with this. I’m trying to figure out how to call security to get this guy out of the hallway. I mean this is supposed to be prime beauty sleep for me! Well a few minutes later some woman from the other side of the starboard side of the aft balconies comes back to her room and sees this man. She takes care of him by bringing out her trashcan and having him get sick in it. This night couldn’t be any more stressful! It’s the night before my wedding, I’m alone in my room, and I’m having a massive anxiety attack over this guy getting sick outside of my door! Finally this lady (bless her heart for taking care of him, since I was no way cap bible of figuring out that 911 was also the number for security) gets a hold of the room steward and gets him into his room.

Finally in starting to calm down, and then his wife finally returns! This is a little past one in the morning. I have to get up around 5:30 to start getting ready! (My normal working wake up time anyway but still!) This lady is landing into him. I usually never hear my neighbors and since the bathroom and the walls are between our rooms I was shocked that I could. So I turned up my TV and set the timer and finally fell asleep.

Next morning I woke up around 5, walked out of my balcony and glanced across the stern of the boat to see if my mom was awake yet. Her room was the farthest aft balcony from me (next to our other aft wrap) she was, and after some hand waving and gesturing she walked down the hall to my room. We both couldn’t believe the day was here! All the hard work (and fighting) and planning (and fighting) and money spent on crafts and such for the wedding was finally here. We went up to the lido to see if anything was out at 5am and then headed back down to my room to wait for my two bridesmaids, One who did my hair, and the other that dealt with Drunk 1. My MOH was still sleeping for quite some time, she is my sister and I knew she wouldn’t be up until 8ish anyway.

…..On to the pictures and everything wedding wise! Hopefully I still have some interested people….

Sorry for the few typos before..... by the time I saw them I couldn't edit them...and its capable not "cap bible"

onto the next part....

After my fiancé left the night before I brought over my dress to hang on my closet door. This became my inspiration to write the love note that was going to be delivered the morning of the wedding to my fiancé along with his wedding gift! A shiny Movado watch that I had been saving up for forever! (And bought on black Friday, months before the wedding with helped out a lot)

The bridesmaids dresses were left in my room also so I could steam them if needed, (I snuck not one but TWO steamers onto the ship….. I was very surprised). So my bridesmaid across the hall came over and we had fun figuring out ways to take the “pre-wedding dress picture” in such a small room. Having our balcony divider open, killed that hanging spot so this is what we came up with.

So we waited around for my other bridesmaid to make it over to start on my hair. She is my normal at home hair stylist which was perfect that she was also a lifelong friend. We started on the hair which took longer than we thought from the time at the trial, so it was a mad rush to get my make up on and me into my dress before 10:15am! I also had a bridesmaid do the gift exchange while I was getting my hair done, my fiancé got me a beautiful blue topaz and diamond necklace and earing set to wear for the wedding!

I was supposed to be outside at my car at 10:30 and I hate being late! So we rushed and my MOH was getting her hair done when my mother, a family friend, and I started walking off the ship. There was a lot of attention and I was in no mood to deal with it right then because I was so flustered with time. I smiled and said thank you but I know I wasn’t the kindest of brides that morning. Finally we are off the ship and a man walks up to me and I recognize him from many of Island Bliss wedding pictures, He is Janelle’s husband and the Officiate of our wedding, Stewart. He takes us in a SUV to the courthouse where I was to sign my paperwork and then to Magen’s Bay. Everything is going so well, we arrive at the beach I see the set up and I am flabbergasted by the beautiful place I am about to get married in. Janelle and her assistant did an amazing job of setting everything up!!

Photo by Elisha Orin

Janelle comes over and introduces herself and tells me about how everything else has been going this morning. It seems the other private SUV driver (picking up fiancé and his parents at 10:45) couldn’t find him, it took extra time but he is on his way to the courthouse now. The “safari” busses picking up all of the wedding guests hasn’t left the ship yet because we are 6 people short. She posed the question, “did she want me to have them leave and just leave the people behind at the ship? This is pushing the wedding back and cutting into the reception.” I asked who was it that was missing…..was my bridesmaids!!!! And my father who went looking for them! (Turns out only my sister's hair and mine were finished for the wedding, everyone else just sort of threw it together on the ride over! Love them for that!) I had them wait and finally got the call that they made it on the bus and were on their way over as well.

Well I am a nervous wreck by now and getting very impatient because I am a very punctual person, sitting in the SUV is killing me! Finally I see everyone getting off the bus! I get out of the SUV where no one can see me, my fiancé has been instructed to stare at the water so he can’t see me, and my mother tightens up the laces on my dress because I had them looser to be more comfortable sitting in the car (very glad I did this as it was very hard to sit at all for the rest of the day!) My father walks over and its time to get the show on the road!

It was stunning!!!! Absolutely gorgeous! There were a lot of people and quite many speedos but it was perfect! Everyone later told me that we looked nervous up there during the ceremony because we were non stop laughing. Well that’s why we are good together, we make each other laugh, and this whole situation was a fodder of quick jokes and one liners.

We were in our own little world. Do we remember any of the words we recited to each other… no. Do we remember who was sitting where in the first row of seats….no, Do I even remember what the beach looked like that we were at…. No. but I remember the twinkle in Cody’s (my hubby) hazel eyes as we laughed at how long the reciting of vows was and how loud my heartbeat was in my ears when we first made eye contact when I walked towards him at the isle. It could have been just us or 100 people on the beach, what we did was perfect for US, no one else.

Photo by Elisha Orin

We were married on April Fool’s Day 2014, a perfect day for us because we are jokesters and live to make each other smile and laugh. We got to share that with 32 other amazing people, and everyone else on the beach! Oh and we got “Go pro-ed” by some random man, our whole ceremony. I’m still trying to look for it online, it’s a free videographer if I can find it!

Photo by Elisha Orin

Onto reception next……

Absolutely beautiful!

Oh yes we are very much interested. I wait patiently every morning to check and see your posts. So far everything looks so beautiful, you look amazing and you picked an great color for your bridesmaid dresses. Keep it coming.

<3 Crystal

Sorry its been a few days, my husband and I had to go through the death of a high school friend, and all I can say is 26 is just too young..... Back to the review.

We had our customary group shot that Janelle has for every wedding she does. Then the guests were escorted back to the busses to go up to the reception. The reception was held at Villa Botanica up on Crown Mountain. So while they are up there enjoying their steel drum music and passed hor d’ourves (we had Jerk Chicken and mini crab cakes, delicious!) the bridal party took some group photos. I was expecting all beach pictures and when Elisha started trekking back to the woods behind the beach I was a little confused and annoyed, since my mom (who has left already) has my flip flops. Elisha is talking about some tree that we needed to use for the pictures and I was skeptical, but I knew I loved her work from the first minute I saw her online blog and boy, did she deliver. This is one of my favorite group shots.

Photo by Elisha Orin

We also had the normal depth poses and fun group shots.

Photo by Elisha Orin

And then I told her the one picture I had to get (I came across the pose years ago and fell in love with it). I described what I wanted and at first she seem skeptical, but she did it anyway because I’m the bride haha. And it is one of my favorite pictures of the whole bunch!

Photo by Elisha Orin

The bridal party is sent back to look for our private van while we take some couples shots. Most were original but some were funky and that’s why I loved Elisha’s style. She didn’t always do cookie cutter.

Photo by Elisha Orin

So we finally head back out to pavement, which was bittersweet, I didn’t have to worry about stepping on nettles and other island-y things but that pavement was hot on bare feet! I run into one bridesmaid who thinks she left her purse somewhere (we found it) and everyone else wanting to head up to the party to start drinking and grab some grub. It was almost one and we were all running on empty. The driver was great and he slowed down to the best he could for some picture opportunities on the way up the mountain. The view of Charlotte Amelie was amazing.

And finally we get to villa botanica. Elisha just arrived and she had Janelle greet the wedding party and whisk them away while Elisha took us up the long entrance to take some more pictures. This place was amazing and so large! I know I didn’t get to see everything. (and I want to rent out this villa for a vacation because it was amazing!)

photo by Elisha Orin

So Right after this amazing time taking pictures and enjoying the landscaping (and the peacock!) Janelle walks up to us to give us a rundown for the introductions and dance songs. She then pulls me aside as Cody is getting some single shots and drops the bomb…

The cake is not going to make it! :confused::mad::eek:

As im trying to process this and find out what happened to my cake; That I had special ordered. I had Janelle find a bakery willing to do a custom cannoli wedding cake, Janelle is trying to tell me back up plans. All I wanted to know was what happened to it. All I got was, “the bottom tier is destroyed and they don’t think the top was salvageable, there is no back up tiers because it was a custom order”. So back to listening to plan B. Janelle said that we could either A) forgo cake all together, but then we wouldn't have anything sweet to serve, or B) She could run to the closest grocery store during first course and try to grab something. We went with option B because, well, we had to. So this is what the cake was supposed to look like, but with a green ribbon instead of blue.

And this is what we got, which still was nice anyway:

So what Janelle did was buy the prettiest cake she could find for the cake cutting pictures, which turned out to be a coconut cream cake (I hate coconut and having that shoved in my face wasn't the highlight of my day but oh well). And she bought a giant Italian Cream sheet cake to serve. We were both surprised that she could find something even remotely similar to what we wanted. It wasn't fancy but it did taste good!

Oh and to continue without cake part of the wedding. Our cake topper was custom ordered through miscaketops.com. This is a local (Philadelphia) place that I found online that would do custom firefighter cake toppers. I saw this one and knew it was the one. The beach base and all was perfect! My husband is a volunteer fire fighter where we live and we had the figuring done all out in his gear colors and engine numbers. It was an awesome topper and we got a lot of compliments.

Back to the wedding…… We decided Janelle was going to go grab the cake so she set us up for the dances and off she went. We had the normal couple dance, father daughter, and mother son. It was nice and I was so happy that at the end of my dance my dad asks, “what can I get you from the bar?”. So as Cody is dancing with his mother I am enjoying my first drink of the day! (finally!)

Our package included an amazing open bar. Included was: Cuervo, Smirnoff, Cruzan and Bacardi rum, Tanqueray, Dewars and Johnnie Walker, Hennessy V.S., Evan Williams bourbon, heiniken and coors light beer, and Robert Mondavi wine. This was their LOW TIER beverage package. In our area this would be high shelf pay a premium open bar. I was amazed that the included bar wasn’t all banker’s club alcohol (since they make every type of alcohol). I can tell you honestly, that we ran out of beer and bourbon. I only had two bourbons before they ran out! Bourbon is my poison of choice and I can’t believe that my family killed the supply, the bride should have had her own stashed bottle :p.

After the dances, we were able to grab a bite to eat. We had samples of the passed hor ‘dourves and the first course at our table. I was thankful to Janelle to include the samples of what was served before we got there.

Photo by Elisha Orin

Our favors were already on the table filled waiting for the first toast. I ordered 72 shot glasses from Discountmugs.com and ended up with around 90 after I complained about some glasses that should not have made it past their QC. There were some bad printing on a few.

Photo by Elisha Orin

My mother and I also made the table runners on the tables and we supplied the napkins, lime green just wasn’t a choice of linens and it was what I wanted. Those runners were a labor of love and im so glad we did them as it was something different. I also made the name cards for everyone, each table had a different animal and they all hung on the side of the water glasses.

After we ate our amazing first course, a marinated snapper salad, and had our first toast; Janelle was back with the cakes and Elisha wanted to get the cake cutting shot before she had to leave. I couldn't believe that her three hours was already up!

So we said our goodbyes to Elisha and set up our meeting time a week later when we were back in St. Thomas for our honeymoon cruise. Elisha was awesome to work with, she was fun, very nice, and took amazing pictures! She never got in the way and still was able to get the best shots.

So we now get to sit down and enjoy what was the highlight of our entire trip, the amazing food served at our wedding. Most people have okay food, since we were only 32 people I think the care was taken to a very very high standard. The NY strip steak I had was the best I have ever had, and the Mahi Mahi was gorgeous! I am so upset that we only got to eat a small portion of it and we didn’t get to sit and enjoy. We wanted to go around to all of the tables and thank everyone while there were all sitting. This was my one regret, I wish I could have made a point to enjoy this amazing food!

I need to get back to work :D.... I will finish up with the reception and the last bit of the cruise next....

So Elisha left and the party started. I had a DJ that was able to get everyone up and moving pretty well. I also think that the bar which was always packed helped out too. One of my friends for some reason decided to pack her bikini in her purse and decided to go for a quick dip in the pool on the property. That was interesting to see her run around the wedding in a bikini! Only on the islands I tell you!

Everything seemed to go by to quickly and before you knew it, I heard the 2nd to last song. I specifically asked for two last songs so I knew to get most of the people on the dance floor for the final song. The second to last song was “Bottom’s Up” by Brantley Gilbert and the last song was “friends in Low Places” by Garth Brooks. We had everyone on the dance floor singing at the top of their lungs. I think we might have scared the DJ because this was the most action the dance floor got all day and it was just us all singing to each other!

So herded back to the busses we go. Everyone was feeling pretty good and we talked the drivers into “drag racing” at some of the lights. It helps when the busses are all open air and you can yell back and forth to each other. We went around this one bend and I heard my sister behind me say “what was that”. We were about 10 minutes from the ship and I didn’t really think anything of it. Finally arriving back to the ship, we got into the two long lines that always form during the last half an hour of boarding. From behind me I hear one of my bridesmaids yell and get really upset. She just realized that her wallet that she thought was in her mother’s purse was actually what my sister heard falling out of the bus. She was upset because she didn’t know how she was going to get back on the ship. Her wallet had her ID and ship card (as well as money and cards) but her passport was back in her cabin safe. Everyone was trying to console her so I decided to walk up to the security officer at the gate and explain the situation. My bridesmaid was whisked away to I don’t even know where to prove that she was actually a guest of the ship. It was all fixed but she had a rough afternoon.

We all decided to meet at the casino bar to head out for some pictures around the ship. Only half the guests actually went straight to the casino bar so we ended up going off on our own to get the pictures taken. Here are a few of those shots:

We were given a lot of compliments and attention which my husband wasn’t a huge fan of but oh well he is standing next to a girl in a white dress, what do you expect! I actually got him to go to dinner in our wedding garb because I was eating all the attention up! I was mean bride getting off the ship but I made up for it after.

To sum up the rest of our cruise (because I am taking way to long getting this out to the CC world!) Our ship then went to Puerto Rico, and Grand Turk and then back to Miami with no further bumps in the road. When we got off the ship and back to the airport, our guests flew home and we flew to Puerto Rico!

The next day we embarked on the Valor to explore the southern Caribbean! My husband “surprised” me with a grand suite upgrade, that we had to talk about earlier to see if it would fit into our budget so it wasn’t really a surprise but he took it so it wasn’t what we originally booked. Our ship went to St. Thomas, Barbados, St. Kitts, St. Lucia, and St. Marteen. It was a great cruise but very exhausting with so many stops and coming off of the earlier cruise.

When we went back to St. Thomas we had set it up that Elisha would pick us up from the ship and take us around to her favorite spots to take pictures and then to the beach for some slight trashing of the dress. I actually got “Mr. I hate attention” to throw on his suit and do this all over again, and of course everyone thought we were eloping and getting married on our own at the island. We had some very friendly people trying to help us as we were looking for Elisha at the port!

Here are some pictures from that:

I would not change what we did for anything in the world. It was fun and unique. I hope you all get some ideas or help from all of this. Elisha is a great option for a photographer and Janelle with Island Bliss Weddings was amazing to work with (even though I had a few issues with her organization along the way with wedding planning). Let me know if there is anything I can help with! I’m still going to be stalking the boards and hope everyone has as great of a trip as we did!

Absolutely gorgeous pictures! Sounds like a wonderful time was had by all which is the point! :) Congratulations again and best wishes for a wonderful life!

Absolutely gorgeous pictures! Sounds like a wonderful time was had by all which is the point! :) Congratulations again and best wishes for a wonderful life!

Thank you!!!! I was a blast and with all the stress of planning and getting the group together it was all worth it in the end! Enjoy your process and have an amazing wedding!!!! the next 8 months will fly by!

Thank you so much for you great review and amazingly fabulous photos. I truly wish you and the hubster the best. You have been a huge source of information for many of us.

Congrats! Great pics...Elisha is fantastic isn't she?? I liked seeing the Villa pics...makes me want to go back there again soon!!

Congrats! Great pics...Elisha is fantastic isn't she?? I liked seeing the Villa pics...makes me want to go back there again soon!!

I loved working with her. I was so glad to do the two days with her, made the second day more fun already being relaxed around her (which didn't take too long on the first day either). I'm hoping to use her again later down the road since she does shoots in NY and PA.

Thank you so much for you great review and amazingly fabulous photos. I truly wish you and the hubster the best. You have been a huge source of information for many of us.

Thanks!!! I had to go through your old posts to figure out when your wedding is. Is it still going to be in March?? how is your planning going? hopefully a little smoother than mine did. Enjoy everything that leads up to your event, it goes by so quickly!

You have no idea how much your post has helped me!!! We are getting married on the Carnival Liberty in April. We are getting off to have the ceremony in Nassau. I hope to learn from you!!! Did you like the Liberty?

You have no idea how much your post has helped me!!! We are getting married on the Carnival Liberty in April. We are getting off to have the ceremony in Nassau. I hope to learn from you!!! Did you like the Liberty?

I love the liberty! If I could do every itinerary I wanted to do on the liberty I would be a happy person! I've been on small ships and big ships and its like goldielocks, it's just right (for dh and I at least!)

Liberty had all the 2.0 upgrades, I wish serenity was a little larger since its always so crowded but that is my only negative. Enjoy it! I hope planning is going well and it becomes everything the both of you dream of. Let me know if I can answer any questions for you!

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