AIRIKUH

Ahhhhh 27 days!!! I can't believe we are less than a month away. I have been so busy doing last minute stuff I haven't been on here. I'm about to post a lot so bear with me :p

My bridal shower was last month. It was Kate Spade themed and it was perfect. My mom and Maids of Honor worked really hard and it showed! My bachelorette was last weekend in Dewey Beach, Delaware and it was insane in a good way. There was 10 of us in a condo and it was SO MUCH FUN. The perfect send off before our wedding!

I have my final dress fitting this weekend and I am so so so excited. My dad is also taking me to get my wedding day jewelry and I think he is more excited about it than I am haha. I chose my bridesmaids dresses from Forever 21 (SHHHH don't tell anyone but they actually look like really fancy dresses and they were only $40) and I'm letting my girls pick the shoes to match.

I sent my final paperwork in to ROE and Carnival Weddings several weeks ago. Laura @ ROE has been a JOY to work with. I have had no issues communicating with her and she even worked with me to get the bouquet I wanted from Pinterest made at no extra cost. We are doing single stem bouquets for the bridesmaids and boutonnieres for the groomsmen. I wanted full bouquets for bridesmaids and corsages/boutonnieres for parents and grandparents but we are now having a rehearsal dinner at Cucina Del Capitano for HALF THE PRICE of those additional flowers. We paid Carnival for our additional guests (we have 50 attending and only 20 come with the package) and I have also had no problems communicating/getting things done with them. So far it has been a breeze working with these companies to get our wedding planned....I guess we will see how the actual wedding turns out!

My grandmother works for Carnival embarkation in Port Canaveral and lives nearby. She is hosting a "Welcome Dinner" the night before the cruise leaves at her house. She makes AMAZING homemade Italian meals and I think this will be fun for everyone who is in the area the night before we sail. We have a wedding block of hotel rooms at the Country Inn and Suites Port Canaveral the night before the cruise leaves. They have been awesome to work with and gave us a fancy King Jacuzzi Suite so I'm excited for that! A ton of our guests aren't flying/driving in until the day of. My two Maids of Honor are cutting it super close and flying in at 11am the day of the cruise. I've pushed this information into the back of my brain or else I would stress constantly about it. Hopefully NO flights are delayed and everyone makes it :confused:

We made welcome bags and they are finally complete. I went a little overboard with them but I think the guests will love them. Just a little way of us saying thank you for coming! I'm going to have them delivered to staterooms when we board the ship because there is 20 of them. I already spoke with Carnival and Carnival weddings and they said to just take them to the guest services desk as soon as we arrive and it shouldn't be a problem.

I don't get my wedding locations/times confirmation call for another 2 weeks. I requested that our ceremony be in the Spotlight Lounge and I know for sure our Reception is in the Vibe Dance Club because we booked the DJ. Every time I call I'm told there are no other weddings that day so I think we will get Spotlight. I asked them to push back the ceremony time until 3 because we don't even dock until 11am and then we have to go to the courthouse in St. Thomas for our wedding license, come back to the ship, and then get ready.

As for the day of I have a hair appointment at 9am. I'm a little nervous since whoever is doing my hair won't be practicing beforehand. I have reallllllllly long hair and like it curled a certain way. I will have her use a ton of hairspray so it doesn't fall when we get off the ship to go to the courthouse. One of my really good friends coming on the cruise is doing my makeup. We have practices 5 or 6 times and she has a really amazing setting spray that keeps my makeup on for over 12 hours without a smudge. So no worries there!

I'm not doing any extra decor for the ceremony but I do have special songs that we chose to play. We are gonna burn the playlist onto a CD AND give them one of our phones with the songs on them...and probably a list of which songs need to be played when. Just so there are no mistakes :rolleyes: For the reception we have a custom cake topper, a decorative birdcage for cards, a poloroid camera & guestbook for our photo guestbook, and the favors. I ordered some signs off Amazon that say "favors" and "photo guestbook" etc etc that I put into black frames (also off amazon) so people know what is what. Our favors are custom etches wine glasses filled with custom M&M's (they have our faces on them :D:D:D) all in a white ribbon tied box.

WOW that was a lot to type! Makes sense since all of this stuff has been taking over my life the last couple months. All that is left now is to organize all of our paperwork and pack all the wedding stuff. And to twiddle our thumbs and wait 21 days until we fly to FL!

I will post pictures soon of our guest bags and my Bridesmaids gift bags...and other random stuff I think of. YAY!

Your wedding was beautiful! Congrats!

You. Are. Awesome! This review made me laugh over and over again while getting me super excited for the Magic in October. We are sailing the week before you leaving October 8th. My fiance and I are getting married on day 4 (St. Thomas) on the ship :) Your nightly prayers and bacon mac and cheese adventures were hilarious.

You handled missing a port so well that it calmed me down about the possibility of missing St. Thomas (AND OUR WEDDING :confused:) hahaha!

We actually have a wedding hotel block at the Country Inn and Suites the night before sailing so I'd like to know how the weird booking cancellation worked out for you? Did they ever end up charging you? I hope it's a nice hotel for all of our guests (we have about 50 guests cruising with us for our wedding :D).

Anyway--thanks for taking away all my worries and getting me really excited for the Magic!! You should do professional reviews for Carnival ;) oh and ps--I love CHEESE so much as well. Cheese over everything :p

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!!

We planned our actual cruise with a Carnival PVP (personal vacation planner). We asked our guests to use our booking number when they booked either online or with our PVP so Carnival could link all of our guests to us. I wasn't sure if that would fly but we got a confirmation email last week when we paid our cruise balance off and all of our guests booking numbers were added on to it as being "linked" to us for dining. So you could try calling Carnival and adding all your guests booking numbers..but my guess would be that they would make your guests call in and link themselves to yours. I have never heard of a pin or having to get birthdays or anything though. That seems excessive. Hope this helps!

We're still deciding on some, but here's where we are so far:

 

Walking down the aisle (myself and the rest of the party): "Dog Days Are Over" - Florence and the Machine

First dance: "Shut Up and Dance" - Walk the Moon

Groom/mother dance: "Humble and Kind" - Tim McGraw

 

Still up in discussion, but leaning toward:

Grand Entrance: "Everything is Awesome" from The Lego Movie.

Bride/father dance: Still deciding, but I'm thinking "The Riddle" by Five for Fighting

 

I've got no idea what to walk back down the aisle to. I'm sure it will be cheesy though.

Florence will be so pretty! She is my favorite artist and I'm trying to figure out which song of hers I want to incorporate into our wedding...I'm currently thinking Cosmic Love as that is my favorite.

Ask your family and friends for ideas! That is how we came up with ours! It's #EandBontheC...my name is Erica and his is Bill hence the E & B. His last name begins with C which is also a play on the word SEA since it's a cruise wedding :)

Thanks for sharing your weDsite! I really enjoyed reading it and it made me super excited for mine (400+ days away).

You are welcome! Sorry I am just now responding I have been absent on here lately. I'll be back now though with four months to go for ours!!

One week to go, one week to go, ONE WEEK TO GO!!!

If I am not mistaken it's your wedding weekend!! I wish you the best of luck and I hope everything turns out wonderful for you :) Can't wait to hear about your adventures when you get back:D

one week to go, one week to go, one week to go!!!

so exciting!!!!

My daughter is sailing on the Carnival Magic this December and getting married while in St. Thomas. Does anyone know if the Carnival salon does hair and makeup? And do you know if the wedding bouquet she gets while at the wedding site is able to be brought back on the ship for the reception? I did hear that she won't be able to take her bouquet off the ship when she gets back to port.

Congrats to your daughter! I am also getting married on the Magic in St. Thomas! Our wedding is October 11th so I'm sure I'll be able to answer some questions for you after our wedding. I know the Carnival salon does hair. I have heard mixed answers on the makeup...I have heard that they do not do makeup and that they will do your makeup if you bring your own supplies. I'm not sure on the wedding bouquet though!

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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This is perfect! Thank you so much for the tips :)

I used a setting spray from ulta to set my make up. I tried it out over the summer in the hottest weather at outdoor events to make sure it held and it did. It was about half the price of the Urban Decay spray. I put it on under my makeup and over as well. As for fake eyelashes I opted for the fiber mascara instead because I knew I would get bothered by the fake eyelashes if they weren't perfect and I didn't want to pay for the lash extensions.

Ahhhhh thank you! I'm gonna have to go get some and try it out. I have little to no eyelashes so I'm just gonna have to practice fake ones until I get it I suppose haha

All of your pictures are beautiful! It looks like it was a wonderful wedding :) Congrats to you!

Did you guys do any sort of rehearsal before the ceremony? and how was your communication & planning with the onboard coordinators in the days leading up to the wedding?

Hi ladies :)

It has been awhile since I posted...we were in the waiting stage for awhile there. As of today we have 40 guests booked! We are overwhelmed with excitement and gratitude to our family/friends because we really didn't expect that many people! I think we will end up with around 45/maybe 50 max.

I got my wedding dress this weekend!!! I went into it with a tiny budget but the more research my mom and I did we learned that wasn't going to work. I ended up going back to the most wonderful boutique in Fredericksburg, VA to get my dress! It's a beautiful (literally the PRETTIEST thing I have ever seen in my life) art deco type dress. I don't want to post any pictures of it because I know some family members and friends have been reading my posts on these boards (Laura ;)). If anyone lives near VA you should really really go to this store! It's been on some type of "say yes to the dress" shows I think...but mostly it was just the greatest experience. They sang to me when I chose my dress and treated me like the only bride around. If you want the name just let me know!

I'm on to bridesmaid dresses now...I promised my girls I would keep them under $100. I probably should have done more research before I said that but I will stick to my word haha.

We have a little over 7 months until the big day! Lots of little things to purchase/accomplish but I can honestly say this process has been extremely easy so far. We are also in the middle of purchasing a house so I am extremely glad we chose to go the cruise wedding route!

Some things I am concerned/anxious about:

-Makeup...I am fairly confident in my own makeup skills but it will be the fourth day of the cruise in St. Thomas so I don't want it to melt off. I also have no clue how to apply fake eyelashes and yes, I have watched TONS of videos on it.

-Rehearsal...since our wedding is on the fourth day I am hoping they will let us rehearse at least once before then. I know people have talked about it on these boards but I honestly have read so much it all blurs together and I can't remember peoples experiences with that.

-The day of courthouse adventure...the ship doesn't dock until 11:00 in St. Thomas. I was told we will be picked up at 11:30 to go to the courthouse to get our marriage license. She said it never takes more than an hour so we would be back by 12:30. I already made it clear that a 1:30 ceremony is absolutely not enough time because I will need to get my hair and makeup touched up (or completely redone...depending on the weather in St. Thomas that day) and I will need to get dressed. The reason we chose to not have a embarkation day wedding is because I did not want to feel rushed in any way whatsoever...but now I am nervous this is going to cause us to be rushed. I want to spend time getting ready and enjoying that time with my family and bridesmaids. She said she will make sure we have at least 2 hours from when we return to the ship until the ceremony. That would put the ceremony at 2:30. I asked her to try for 3 or 3:30 but we obviously won't know anything for sure until right before the cruise!

Anyway--these are just some of my current thoughts! Hope everyone else's planning is going well!

You are using Patricia! Isn't she great? I hope we can get more Carnival Brides to hook her up with some commissions!! :)

Yes!!! She is wonderful! Thank you so much for giving me her info. She is so easy to work with and she sent all of our guests that have booked Christmas cards. We've had several people book via the Carnival website or their own travel agent but I just call her and add them to our wedding party.

Loved your site! I'm a Potterhead too!!! I liked the wording used, I'm sure I will reference your page.

Thank you!!! and go Harry Potter ;) And please do! I referenced 5 or 6 different cruise wedding websites to figure out how to word ours!

Woops double posted!

Save the dates came in the mail this weekend!!!!!

 

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Those are really cute!

Congratulations to all of you ladies! This must mean all of the 2016 weddings are coming so soon :D

Congratulations! Let the adventure begin :)

your invite is beautiful! I went with a nautical theme for our save the dates and i'm thinking about going with the simple coral for the invites. I want to stick to the whole nautical theme so our colors are navy, silver, and white. I ended up making my own wedding website on WIX for free.

Thank you! I wanted something that was beachy/nautical but laid back also. I finished our website before I sent the invites out because guests have to RSVP on the website. I got ALL of my inspiration from previous cruise bride's wedding websites. It was so helpful to see what others have done seeing as our weddings are not traditional. I'm still working on some things (like accommodations and our registry but here it is if anyone needs ideas!

http://www.weddingwire.com/eandbonthec

I went with minted for my save the dates, i love that I didn't have to address any of the cards. What design did you choose?

We chose the Whimsical Kelp invites! I really liked that I could customize the wording on it since we can't put the time/certain info on it. I also ended up getting a pretty big discount just for signing up to make a wedding website with them (I didn't end up using Minted to make our website because their websites didn't allow for customization). Here is a picture of our invites!

All of the information posted has been so helpful! I'm recently engaged and we're looking at Dec 2016 on carnival. Is it recommended to purchase the cruise through an agent instead of carnival directly? Would we be able to receive a free room if a certain number of rooms are booked? I have a large family who loves to travel, so I want to explore all possibilities.

 

Thanks!

Hi and congrats!! I'm October 2016 on Carnival! As for using a travel agent or Carnival I think everyone has different opinions. I know there are a ton of perks if you go through a travel agent but you would have to contact individual agents to see what they offer. I ended up just going through Carnival because the travel agent we were going to use ended up being significantly more expensive than just booking through Carnival. You can do a Carnival Group booking but you will need 8 or more cabins to book when you book. I know Carnival Group bookings have good perks as well. We didn't do a Carnival Group booking because I wanted everyone to be able to book at their leisure instead of all at once with us. Good luck to you!!

Congrats!! I'm so sorry to hear about the mix ups and issues you had but the pictures you do have are gorgeous nonetheless. I hope Carnival solves your CD issues as soon as possible. My fiance and I were debating renting tuxes from Carnival but after reading about your experience we will probably just pick out a nice suit for him to buy (or a tux if it's a good price). Congrats again! Your dress was beautiful :D

I have read over your review several times and I just wanted to thank you for all of the details! The review helped me so much when I was deciding on all of the little details!! If you could send me all of your documents I would really appreciate it! My email is ericajherbst@gmail.com ---thanks!!