On board group activities for wedding guests??

Hi. My daughter is getting married on the Inspiration with about 30 guests. Anyone have any suggestions for on-board activities to pull the group together and how to make it happen? I was thinking of things like maybe a poker/card game, meeting up at at night in one of the clubs, etc. - but with a large group do we have to make arrangements with the ship? Any suggestioins/ideas are appreciated. Thanks. :)

Our DD was married in July aboard the Celebrity Summit; we had a group of 33 friends and family. Our first group activity (other than the chartered bus ride to the port) was an open invitation from the bride for everyone to watch sail away from her balcony (a very large one). She (and several of us) supplied champagne for all who came.

Through the TA, we arranged for a Welcome Cocktail Party the first full day (you usually can't schedule organized group activities for the day of embarkation since the crew is too busy). It was an hour- open bar. We brought "snacks" to put out (in bowls from the buffet). During the party, we gave away wedding souvenirs that we purchased from Vista Print- tee shirts, mousepads, hats, tote bags, etc that said the bride's and groom's names, the ship, the dates, etc and some kind of saying (like "Happily ever after!"). We had one for each cabin- we had the youngest - the 7 yr old junior bridesmaid- pull the cabin numbers out of a hat. When they went up to choose their gift, I explained to the others who they were and their connection to the bride or groom.

On the past evening, our TA provided DD with another cocktail party- so we made this our farewell to everyone. Both parties were arranged through the cruiseline's group services department, so they provided the venue, bar staff, etc.

Also, when we arrived in Bermuda, DD and her friends (the younger crowd) went on a chartered snorkeling trip that she had arranged ahead of time.

DH & I told everyone (actually, the older crowd) that we would be having a drink in a certain bar before each dinner and invited any who were interested to meet us there. DD and the younger crowd met in another bar before each dinner (we wanted to give them some space rather than always try to do something with 33 people all clumping together!).

We tried not to over organize, since we wanted our friends and family members to have some time to themselves- that is to have their own vacation!

We didn't have formal group activities. However, we did choose a different bar or lounge and asked for the group to meet up there each night before dinner. We had a group of 60 and not everyone came each night. Since everyone did their own thing each day, it became a nice way for people to share what they had done in port, and to make plans for the following day. It also gave a chance to try out the variety of bars and lounges onboard.

Jersey Gem and dc diva: Thanks so much! I'm going to print this off, talk to my DD and see what we can do about incorporating some of your ideas into our plans. Jersey, I agree with you too - I don't want to over organize. I hope the Carnival line will be as accommodating as Celebrity. Thanks again!

We has about 89 guests on our cruise, we didn't do too many group activities, since there were so many people we knew it'd be hard to coordinate. We did do a decorating our door contest, which everyone loved and made it easy to identify each others cabins, we had an hour long cocktail party on one of our formal nights, and we did a white night where everyone in our party dressed in white(everyone's fav night, we got soo many good photos and everyone on the ship kept asking us why we were in white, it was awesome) Other than that we had some informal parties in our stateroom and met at the nightclub just about every night. We also told everyone in advance what shore excursions we were taking in case people wanted to join us.

Hope this Helps :)

89 guests!!! Wow. That would be really hard but I'm adding yours to my list to run by my daughter. Thanks, Amy!

Maybe you could do some sort of scavanger hunt. You could do one for adults and if you have children coming, one for the kids. Scavanger hunts are fun for everyone. Plus if you put everyone in teams they get to know each other very well and learn their way around the ship.

We has about 89 guests on our cruise, we didn't do too many group activities, since there were so many people we knew it'd be hard to coordinate. We did do a decorating our door contest, which everyone loved and made it easy to identify each others cabins, we had an hour long cocktail party on one of our formal nights, and we did a white night where everyone in our party dressed in white(everyone's fav night, we got soo many good photos and everyone on the ship kept asking us why we were in white, it was awesome) Other than that we had some informal parties in our stateroom and met at the nightclub just about every night. We also told everyone in advance what shore excursions we were taking in case people wanted to join us.

 

Hope this Helps :)

This sounds like a lot of fun! Did you provide the supplies for decorating the rooms? What all did you use? What did some of the doors look like? Did you do this on the first full day?

For the white out, was that on a formal night? If so, was it the same formal night as the cocktail party?

I forgot to mention that we also did a special photo for the whole group. We didn't do it on the day of the wedding, as there was too much other stuff going on. But on the last sea day, we arranged with the ships photographer to take a photo of our entire group.

This sounds like a lot of fun! Did you provide the supplies for decorating the rooms? What all did you use? What did some of the doors look like? Did you do this on the first full day?

 

For the white out, was that on a formal night? If so, was it the same formal night as the cocktail party?

We did not supply the door decorations, we gave everyone the first full day at sea to decorate and we went around on the second at sea day to "judge" the doors, we gave the 1st and 2nd place rooms each a prize. For my door we did a "wedding theme" (obviously..lol) Everyone was very creative, some used streamers, others used pictures along with other decorations, one room "wrapped" there door with wrapping paper with tropical fish on it, I looved seeing what everyone came up with.

For the white night we had it on a casual night because it gave ppl more options of what they wanted to wear, for example; I wore a white dress, my husb wore a white polo, with light beige shorts and white flip flops, My mom wore white capris with a white shirt, etc.

We had our Cocktail party on a formal night, i actually forgot that we also had a group photo, but this was one of our "perks" for have so many sailing staterooms. That was done on the other formal night. It was nice that we had the pic for one and the party for the other.

If i can figure out how to post some pictures of white night i can, but i have no clue how to do it..lol!

Hope this helps :D

Thank you all so much for these great ideas. Now I need to sit down, pull them all together and see what my daughter would like to do. This should be fun!;)

We did not supply the door decorations, we gave everyone the first full day at sea to decorate and we went around on the second at sea day to "judge" the doors, we gave the 1st and 2nd place rooms each a prize. For my door we did a "wedding theme" (obviously..lol) Everyone was very creative, some used streamers, others used pictures along with other decorations, one room "wrapped" there door with wrapping paper with tropical fish on it, I looved seeing what everyone came up with.

 

For the white night we had it on a casual night because it gave ppl more options of what they wanted to wear, for example; I wore a white dress, my husb wore a white polo, with light beige shorts and white flip flops, My mom wore white capris with a white shirt, etc.

 

We had our Cocktail party on a formal night, i actually forgot that we also had a group photo, but this was one of our "perks" for have so many sailing staterooms. That was done on the other formal night. It was nice that we had the pic for one and the party for the other.

 

If i can figure out how to post some pictures of white night i can, but i have no clue how to do it..lol!

 

Hope this helps :D

How did you tell everyone to bring stuff for the door decorating and the white night?

We are having the free cocktail party also. So far we have 40 people that will be cruising with us.

To insert pictures, there is a small yellow box towards the top of the reply box that has a mountain and sun in black on it. You could also use http://tinypic.com/ which would make the picture bigger than what they allow you to upload here.

This might help too:

How did you tell everyone to bring stuff for the door decorating and the white night?

 

We are having the free cocktail party also. So far we have 40 people that will be cruising with us.

 

To insert pictures, there is a small yellow box towards the top of the reply box that has a mountain and sun in black on it. You could also use http://tinypic.com/ which would make the picture bigger than what they allow you to upload here.

I actually sent out a letter with my wedding invitations, In the letter it outlined what time we needed to be at the pier, what documents sailing and non-sailing guests needed, the TA info, the pier info, our hotel info, i also included the special activities we were doing. We also had a wedding website were we put the same info, and about two weeks before we started making phone calls to remind everyone, i took a few ppl, my husband did, we also had our siblings and parents calling everyone who was booked on the cruise so everyone would remember!

We also made up a cruise newsletter, i'm sure you have seen them on here, outlining our activities, what nights they were on, and it also had our ports, and everyone's room numbers on it. We had our made of honor and best man go around right after the wedding and slide them under everyone's door, so every room got one. It turned out to be very helpful for a lot of ppl that week!

White night turned out being a huge success, even ppl who forgot their clothes (my brother!) were able to borrow or come up with something since we did it half way thru the cruise and we had already been into a few ports. Here are some pictures! (thanks for the tips!)

The first pic is our table for dinner, my husband and I and our immediate families. The rest are various pics of the rest of our group :D

Slot pull is fun!

I have more than 30 friends in my wedding day, and we get together to play interesting games such as rob the bride and teasing the bride and the bridegroom on wedding night.

We sailed the Carnival Fascination in the beginning of June and we sailed with 16 guests. Everyone gathered for the Newlywed game because we told everyone that we were going to try to get on this game, which we did.

We also saw everyone at dinner every night. At dinner we caught up with everyone and made plans with different people each evening. The guests who we had with us were from both sides of the family, and we were able to spend fairly equal amounts of time with everyone.

I know that you are probably stressing over it now, but it really isn't as stressful when you get on the ship. Everything will just fall into place.

We didn't plan a bunch of group activities as we wanted guest to have their 'own' vacation. However, we did do a newsletter for guest and it highlighted what we would be doing for the week if people wanted to join. In the end we ended up:

- All going to Cocoa Beach together on our port day in Florida.

- All going on the private island together. Here we took a group picture with everyone wearing the t-shirts we have in their OOT bag.

- All getting a day pass at the Sheraton on our port day in Nassau.

- All wearing white on white night.

- All having dinner together on the night of the wedding to continue the wedding festivities.

- All having dinner together on the 1st sea day and the last. On the last sea day we treated our guest to one of the speciality restaurants as a 'thank you' for sailing with us.

We were a small group of 14 so easy to coordinate. Our guest actually wanted to hang with us (probably because most never cruised before) and it was so much fun hanging with the group (this was NOT considered our honeymoon trip either).

We had such a great group cruise trip that we are already booked for next August and almost everyone who attended is coming again, plus more family & friends are attending.

Lipz, what did yo look for on scavenger hunt?