Carnival Fascination Half Moon Cay Wedding Review

My husband and I just got back from our wedding cruise and have been uploading photos for family so I figured I would do a review while everything is still fresh in my mind.

We opted to get married in Half Moon Cay and have a 2 hour reception back on board in the nightclub Diamonds are Forever. We left on Saturday the 8th of February and were married on Tuesday the 11th. The first thing I did onboard was book an appointment for the salon for the morning of. When we walked into our room, we had a letter thanking us for choosing Carnival for our wedding and it had the information for the on board coordinator and said that she would get in touch with us at dinner. That night she came over at dinner to introduce herself and our photographer and set up an appointment to go over all of the details and make sure that everything was right. She ended up coming over to us every night at dinner to make sure that everything was ok.

I found out later on that my mother in law wanted to get her hair done too but they only had one person on board to do it and it is a one hour appointment so they only had time to do one person before we had to meet to take our tender. Not too big of a deal for us but something to consider if you have a large bridal party who wants to get their hair done!

In the morning I showered, did my makeup, and got into my undergarments and put my robe over and went up to the salon. I brought my wedding dress up there so I could change up there. The woman who did my hair was so nice and after she was finished she helped my mom with the dress. I did have a matron of honor but she was trying to control 4 kids so wasn't really able to help here.

After putting on the dress, we met downstairs on deck 7 which on the Fascination is around guest services. This was at around 10AM. The photographer took a few family photos...i.e. me with my parents and brother, the groom with his family, just other general family photos, etc. I saw the groom but he didn't see me so after all of my pictures were done, I hid in the hallway waiting. They brought us all onto the same tender keeping me and the groom separate. They put me and my matron of honor in the nurse's station and everyone else got on the bus trolley thing down to the other side of the beach where he filled out all of the paperwork and stuff. Once everything was set up, they came and got me and my matron of honor and brought us down to the beach. They didn't have any chairs or anything (we knew this in advance but still kinda wish they had some) but they did provide glasses of ice water for all of the guests.

They had my dad come up to walk me down the beach. They had music for us too. Walking in that sand in a wedding dress sucks. Also, the beach is full of sand burrs that were getting stuck everywhere! But it was so beautiful that I really don't care. Everything was pretty much kept to schedule and our ceremony started around 11:30 or so. The officiant came from an island an hour and a half away by boat! The ceremony was very quick and afterwards they had us sign some paperwork in a tent with the officiant. Then they had our best man and matron of honor sign as witnesses.

After this, we spent probably a good 30-45 minutes on the beach taking photos. Then they crammed us all back onto one of those trolley bus things to go back to the tender.

Once we got back to the tender, they told us to be back at Diamonds are Forever by 1:30. It was about 12:50 when we got back on the boat so we were able to go back to our rooms and wipe down. We got back to the room and they had the towels folded into swans kissing and a heart.

We got back down to Diamonds are Forever around 1:10 because I thought they said they wanted to take more pictures and to be back early but I misunderstood. They were still setting up when we got there which was nice because we had a container full of leaves and some pens that we wanted our guests to sign in lieu of a traditional guest book. The wedding coordinator arranged them onto the table in a heart and they also added our awesome cake topper.

Everyone started going into the room at about 1:20 and they started handing out champagne. They wouldn't let us come in because they wanted to introduce us. At 1:30, everything started on time and they introduced us and we had our first dance. After this, they opened up the buffet and started serving drinks.

The food was AMAZING. I have Celiac disease and can't eat gluten so I requested that they keep some things gluten free so I can have some. They customized EVERYTHING and made the entire thing gluten free. And the food was so good. I am really hoping that someone got a picture of the spread because it was just beautiful as well. They also made our cake gluten free and it was just so delicious. I was a little nervous because the gluten free pizza and bread on board are really bad. The drinks were also really good. They were custom making drinks for people at the bar and there were also waitstaff walking around with trays full of melon balls and blue martinis. It was really cool because the drinks just happened to match our wedding colors.

After we ate a bit, me and the groom walked around thanking everyone for coming and some people started dancing for a bit. Then we did the cake cutting in which we totally smashed cake in each others faces. After this, we had the best man give his speech and had a champagne toast. Then we did the father daughter dance and the mother son dance. The DJ had all of our songs so we didn't need to bring any music. We had selected top 40 for our playlist but people weren't really dancing so he started playing typical wedding songs to get people to dance...Cupid Shuffle, Electric Slide etc...It was a lot of fun and people started dancing. Also we of course had someone request the chicken dance. The DJ was really good. I really couldn't have asked for a better day.

After everything wrapped up with the reception, the photographer took a ton of photos of us around the ship. He said that he would contact us when it was time to go over the pictures.

The next day, we had an invite under our door with one of our pictures and telling us to meet him in the photo gallery at 8pm. We had a few people come with us who were interested in the pictures. The only thing that sucked about this is that dinner service ended earlier than normal and we got there at about 7:30. There was a really nasty storm going on. While we were waiting up there, the ship caught some wind and lifted like crazy. we heard a bunch of bottles break in the lower bars, quarters and casino chips just started going everywhere, people were running up the stairs and running to their rooms to get life jackets....up on the Lido deck I guess all of the pool water dumped out of the pool, thousands of dollars of alcohol in the fun shops got broken...it was NUTS. The ship was still tilted when the photographer got there and made us sit by the window and the entire time I felt so sick and was having a mini panic attack.

He handed us this huge stack of 8 by 10s and 5 by 7s. He wouldn't give us any pricing. (I already knew what it was because I saw on this board). When we were half way through he showed us this DVD slide show thing that made us all cry...then he showed us this photo book. Then he busted out the price list. There wasn't anything about a photo book so we asked and he said it wasn't included in the package and was an additional $1,200.00!! We ended up getting the biggest package and working it out so instead of the canvas, we got the photo book, 3 copies of the DVD and he also printed us a bunch of copies of DVD covers so we can make copies of it to send to all of our guests with the thank you cards. They really get you by the balls because the pictures in the photo book aren't included on the CD and aren't in any of the copies that were printed. The 5 by 7s aren't the same as the 8 by 10s. We ended up with 154 pictures on the disc that we got and they are really all so beautiful. We also figured that if we were to hire a photographer locally, it would cost twice that for what we got. Luckily we also had some family pitch in for it.

Overall, everything was completely amazing and it was such a beautiful day. I am really happy with how everything turned out. My now husband was really happy too but because he is tall, the photographer kept making him hold these yoga like poses and he was getting really tired. If I had to do it all over again, I honestly wouldn't change a thing!

Here is a link to some of our pictures:

http://www.flickr.com/x/t/0095009/photos/11121194@N06/sets/72157640935641953/

I am hoping to get some more pictures from family members and we need to go through our prints to see what we don't have digital copies of. He gave us way more prints than were in our package since he just gave us everything but he only gave us on a disc what was actually in our package.

At dinner that night, they brought the extra wedding cake up to our tables. It was also the night of the conga line so we had to do that since we were still in our wedding attire! Towards the end of dinner, some of the waitstaff came over and sang Happy Honeymoon. It was really sweet :)

We went back to our room and there was chocolate covered strawberries, a bottle of champagne, and our flutes that they had taken after the reception. It was very nice :)

Congratulations on getting married! I can't wait to get home and look at the wedding pics! (my job has flickr blocked) lol

Sounds like everything went smoothly!

Thank you so much for posting all of these details... we are doing an island wedding on Grand Turk and I was curious on how they were going to make this happen. Do you think the 2 hour reception was adequate?

Yes I think 2 hours was perfect. We had plenty of time for everything we wanted to do (first dance, father daughter dance, mother son dance, toast, cake cutting). We didn't feel rushed at all and since all of our guests were sailing we got to spend so much time with them too. The only thing is that once your two hours are up, they clear you out pretty quick so make sure you have a drink in your hand ;-)

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hi

Thanks for sharing. I'm planning on getting married on the Valor, Aug 17,2014. I was considering an on shore ceremony via carnival, however, I have heard that booking a private planner on the island may be better.

Did you ever consider this? How was your experience w/ Carnival on shore wedding and did they accommodate all your guests?:D

We did not consider because we wanted to get married on Half Moon Cay and that is privately owned by the cruise lines so a 3rd party option isn't really possible. With the experience I had though, I wouldn't feel comfortable with a cruise wedding booked through a 3rd party. We were originally supposed to get married from a different cruise but they changed the itinerary on us so it would no longer be going to Half Moon Cay. Dealing with that was a nightmare and a half but because we were booked through the cruise line, they sorted everything out and got all of my guests switched to a different sailing. They were really nasty about it until they realized that we also had a wedding booked and they waived all of the fees for us and our guests. Also the wedding coordinator I had on board was amazing. She came over and checked on us every night and made sure all of my guests were where they needed to be when they needed to be there. She was with us the entire day of the wedding helping to make sure everything went smoothly...from the ceremony to the reception back on board.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Congratulations and thank you so much for sharing.

Hey guys. I got some pictures of the food table from my father in law and figured I would share. This was set up for 39 people...not sure what it would be for more or less.

Absolutely gorgeous pictures. Thank you for sharing!!!

Thank you so much for posting this! I'm looking into the exact same cruise only in Sept '15 to be married in Half Moon Cay. This post is exactly what I was looking for!

Live the review thanks

Beautiful sounds great

And your pics great

Thanks

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

Thanks for sharing.

Best wishes for a happy married life.

Thank you for sharing. i seen a few post and none as detailed as yours on Half Moon Cay. My fiance and I booked our wedding March 2016 and I had so many questions but your post answered many of them,

Where was the ceremony held on the island?