aandmtakethebahamas

We had a Party of 29 on the Breeze last July, 15 Adults and 14 Children(9-21yo).

The children wanted to sit together so 1 table of 14 , then 2 tables for Adult, 8 and 7. I did email the Maitre D to request that kids sit in 1 table. So they had them squeeze on I think table for 12.

Let me ask you, when you e-mailed the maitre'd did you hear back from anyone or just found out once onboard? I've e-mailed them about our party of 23 (and how we'd like to be arranged at 3 separate tables) but did not get a reply. Just curious, thank you so much!

I will be on it in 18 days. I have heard that if you want to eat at fish and chips that you there the first day since a lot of people won't have discovered it yet.

Same sailing as us and we're getting married aboard her on embarkation day!! Hope you have a fabulous cruise!:D

Were you able to get your dining situation resolved? I am an agent and you should be able to Carnival with the booking numbers (you will need these) and just ask to be linked for dining. If they do not help, just call back an hour or so later .... you can literally speak to a dozen people and get a dozen different answers. Good Luck!

Thank you for your input! No, I haven't gotten this taken care of yet and I thought that it would've been just as easy as you described but when I called the last time (after gathering all of the booking numbers and everyone's birthdays) I was told no and that each person would have to call on their own booking, set up a pin number, and then give that to me for me to call back with all the pin numbers! It is just exhausting thinking about it. But, I will try your suggestion (calling over and over until I get the right person!)

I did however link all of the bookings to my cruise manager on carnival.com...do you think that would help make sure we are all together for dining purposes in case I can't get them to help me on the phone? Thank you so much for the information!

but my guess would be that they would make your guests call in and link themselves to yours.

This is what I was thinking but was hoping to save them all a step! Thank you for your input! :D

Good morning all fellow 2016 brides!

I have made it to the 3-month countdown and everything has been moving along smoothly for the most part. All aspects of the wedding are pretty much taken care of, but I am having one little issue with the actual cruise booking and wondering if anyone can give me some input. We have ourselves plus I think 10 other cabins booked however, we are not in a group booking (I couldn't get enough to book all together in the beginning to get the group rate and once I had all 8 booked Carnival told me there was no more group space available on my sailing) and we did not go through a travel agent (all parties booked online via Carnival.com.) I've called Carnival to try and link all of our cabins together for dinner dining purposes for the 4 nights of the cruise, and according to them the only way to do it is for every person to call Carnival, set up a pin #, give that pin # to me, and then me call and give pin #, every person's birthday and name in order to link every single booking number to my booking number. I really don't want to do this for 2 reasons. 1st of all, I don't want my guests to have to worry about me and fiance having access to their bookings and 2nd of all, it seems like an awful lot of work/information gathering/time spent on the phone with Carnival. I am planning on sending an e-mail to the maitre d' at about 1 month out requesting each cabin to be put together for dinner in the main dining room. Do you all think this would be sufficient or is it risking it? I'd hate for some of our family or friends to end up at other tables with strangers for the duration of the cruise. We have a number of first time cruisers and I want them to be comfortable and not feel left out. It seems like there should be an easier way than described above to handle this.

Other than this one issue, I am happy to report things have been going according to plan and pretty low-stress in the wedding planning department!

I hope you all are doing well with your planning and any input or experience that you may have on this issue I'd love to hear it! Thank you!!

Great review and pictures, thanks! Can't wait to sail in October!

Thank you so much for all the wonderful pictures and information! Will be sailing (and marrying aboard her!!) October 13th...can't wait!!!

Hello future brides! I just got married last week on the Carnival Ecstasy in Charleston. It was a GREAT experience. Stop stressing! We were married in port on embarkation day with the Time to Celebrate BIG package. We had 75 guests with 33 of them sailing. We only had two attendants, a MOH and BM. Boarding the ship was a slow process but we enjoyed talking and the air conditioned buses that they gathered us in were nice. I brought all of my decorations, guestbook, programs and favors in a Rubbermaid tub and assigned someone to carry it. Once onboard I explained the items to the wedding coordinator and she set them all up. I brought my dress in it's garment bag and assigned several strong men to help carry it. My MOH also got dressed on the ship since there were just the two of us. Once onboard we had just enough time to get dressed and then it was time to go! Someone asked about pictures on this thread. Pictures are taken in your stateroom about 20 mins before the ceremony, during the ceremony, after the ceremony (formal shots with guests), during the reception and be ready for a loooooong photo shoot after the reception. We took pictures before and after the muster drill and finished just in time for dinner. Everything was great. We brought our own minister. The pacing of everything was great. I had been worried that the reception was too short, but I think it was the perfect amount of time. The photos are beautiful and I loved being able to have them to show to everyone the last night at dinner. We bought the smallest package and bought a $3 photo album onboard to put the pictures in (photo albums are on sale the last sailing day). We also bought the video. There were a few hiccups, but Carnival has done a good job resolving them. Be prepared for everyone on the ship to know you are the newly weds and have lots of attention. Also, go to the Love and Marriage game on the last day. The questions were embarrassing to answer in front of family but still fun! I am going to try to figure out how to upload some of my pictures. Let me know if you have questions!

What a great review! Thanks for sharing...sounds like you all had a WONDERFUL time! Congrats :D

Dumb question: When do you take wedding pictures?? I'm getting married while the ship is in port while in Galveston. I can't imagine when there would be any time before the ceremony or reception, but I'm also hoping they won't be after the reception because I will probably have sweated my makeup off, my hair will probably fall out, and let's be honest I'll be tipsy.

This is actually a great question, I've wondered myself!

American Table is going to be served in all the dining rooms. I think we had a version of the menu on the Liberty two years ago and I really enjoyed the Port Day options - something that I actually was disappointed was not already a regular feature when I first started cruising.

 

I have not been a cruise where I got to experience the entire concept, but can see that not having tablecloths would make dining in the MDR feel more mundane, they do add something. But I won't get to experience it in full until we sail on the Magic next year.

 

On Elegant Nights the menu is going to be American Feast and they will have table cloths on the tables those nights.

 

The FAQ section on the Carnival website explains it a bit better and has sample menus: https://help.carnival.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1107/kw/American%20Table

Sounds great! I will check that out, thank you!

I think that anytime dining has a more casual feel and the American table menu fits it very well. :D

Does this mean the American Table menu and concept is only an option with anytime dining? We are booked for late dining but I was actually looking forward to trying a new menu, not as thrilled about the more casual approach, but excited about new menu items.

Thanks all for the info.!!

Ladies I am 30 short days away from saying I DO on the Carnival Magic! I have mostly everything done. I need to paint my card box and wait for other things to arrive in the mail.

 

I do have a question though: are any of you ladies going to spray tan or self tan? Any experience with that on a cruise? Best products if you do self tan?

 

Thank you!

Congratulations! 30 days out is so exciting!

I spray tanned once (the kind where the lady actually used a hand-held machine to airbrush my whole body) last October for a beach trip (and also to test it out for my wedding cruise this October) and the results were great, BUT sadly only lasted for about the first 3 days. It faded really quickly. I would recommend it but it can be kind of costly for it not to last very long. But for someone who is so fair as I am, it was nice to have a bronzed look on the beach that first day in Florida.

I have not tried any self-tanning products but am looking forward to seeing anyone else's recommendations on here!

In just came upon this thread by accident! First off congrats to all of the brides!

 

In my experience, ( I'm a makeup artist), fibre mascaras flake like crazy, and in the heat can actually start to curve downward.

 

Best way to apply false lashes: squeeze out some glue, use an eyeliner brush and apply glue to your eyelid lash line as if it were eyeliner. Let it become tacky, then position your strip lashes on top.

 

Try it a few times way easier than putting glue on lashes themselves, particularly if you are a beginner

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Nice tip, thanks!

That is great info. Thanks for posting!

It is actually true and your PVP (the person who booked your cruise) will link your cabins all together and then you will be arranged accordingly at dinner. I plan on contacting the Maitre d' to let them know who we would specifically like to dine with. For example, our little boy isn't in our room but we would prefer to have him at our dinner table. I have to check another forum for the Maitre d' email addresses for carnival but plan on doing it when we are 1 month out.

Thank you!

Hello all 2016 brides! I haven't been on here in a while since wedding planning has been on hold a bit. Our date is not until 10/13/16 on Carnival Valor out of Port Canaveral. Right now I am at a holding point because invites have all gone out but RSVP date is not until mid-April (I gave myself 6 months for some wiggle room!) and we have only received a handful back, immediate family only so far. We did not go with a group booking because as someone mentioned before, I knew we didn't have 8 cabins all at once right in the beginning, and wanted to let people book at their leisure.

My main question here regarding this subject is, once I do have the final tally of booked cabins, how do I arrange it so everyone that is booked into the late dining (as we are) all dine together every night of the cruise in the same area of the dining room (3 tables of 8 or however many guests we have) instead of being spread around and put with other strangers. Sorry to be so long-winded about this but I wasn't quite sure how to word it to get my point across. Also, when I recently sent an e-mail to my Carnival wedding coordinator asking this question, I got a reply 5 days later from someone else in the wedding department basically telling me this is not part of the wedding department's responsibility but the cruise booking department.

Soooooo...I thought I'd pick you ladies' brains about this since everyone on here is so knowledgeable about the subject! Thank you so much and congrats to you all!!

Hello future cruise brides! DF and I will be tying the knot on the Carnival Breeze out of Galveston on embarkation day August 28, 2016. We chose the Time to Celebrate... BIG package. Our wedding website is complete and viewable if you'd like to check it out! www.weddingwire.com/michaelandmakeshia

 

Save the dates are going out this week. Invitations will be sent a few months later. We expect about 25 sailing guests and since we live in Texas we will likely have the full 50 non-sailing guests, although, we hope more will decide to sail! I plan to order wooden flowers for my bouquet and our four attendants bouquets/boutonnieres. I plan to bring ribbon, seashell decorations, and an anchored wedding topper for the cake. We have booked the DJ so our reception will be in the Liquid Nightclub. I'm thinking of adding some flowers to the aisle runner they provide. We're pretty much set on our OOT bags for cruisers being cinch backpacks with a custom tumbler, travel sized ibuprofen, dramamine, sunscreen, and hand sanitizer. Wedding favors will be custom candy bars and either a wine stopper or bottle opener. I think that's it so far! 308 days haha

Congratulations on your upcoming wedding! We are getting married aboard the Carnival Valor 10/13/16, the Celebrate Big package as well! Thank you for sharing your website! It looks awesome and will be a helpful tool in designing my own :) Have you written/designed your invitations yet? I'm having trouble figuring out what and how much information to include on the actual invitation. Will you just be including the basic wedding information on the invitation and then just directing guests to the website for all of the details?

Hello to all fellow 2016 brides! Very excited to be getting married aboard the Carnival Valor on 10/13/16 in Port Canaveral, Time to Celebrate Big! Thanks to you all for the information...this thread has been very helpful to me so far. At this point we are only at save the dates but will be sending official invitations around October or November.