COBride2019

First off congrats! I recently got engaged and my fiancé and I just finalized our plans on getting married in port (keywest) during a 4 day cruise from Miami in January 2019. I did a lot of research (before we were engaged since we decided a cruise wedding awhile ago) so I will explain my decision process in hopes that it will help in some way.

 

I chose port wedding because I didn't like the idea of debarkation wedding due to many things (we chose a cruise wedding to alleviate costs, I have a HUGE family so if we did destination the people that really wanted to attend would attend and would save us from having 200 people at the wedding hence save costs).. I also talked to the people who meant the most to me before hand to make sure they would be able to go on the cruise.

 

I like the idea of a beach wedding instead of an on the ship wedding which didn't have the feel or decor that I was looking for.

 

Carnival's pricing increased substantially from

When I first researched cruise wedding (it used to be very inexpensive now their pricing is almost as bad as having a land wedding). Having an in port wedding allowed me to use a 3rd party company that gave me wayyyyyy more for wayyyy less. (And the piece in mind given in case of for whatever reason the cruise doesn't go to keywest, I would get my money back)

 

I didn't like the idea of the wedding being rushed. Yes I am still being rushed with an in port wedding based on the timeline of arriving and departing but I felt as if i rather have that rush (after we were all already on board and settled in) instead of it being the day getting on the ship and dealing with customs etc.

 

After we decided having an in port wedding now we had to decide what port.. we wanted to do a 4 or 5 day cruise so it wasn't too expensive for our guests.. the Bahamas is a port that many 4/5 cruises travel to.. the Bahamas however has legal requirements that require you to be in Bahamian water for 24 hrs (we decided we didn't want to do that). I researched and found cruises going to key west. This would also allow guests to fly directly key west if they didn't to cruise and it also solved the legality issues surround other non US countries (since we are in the US). We picked January because A) its one of the most inexpensive months of the year to cruise and B) my siblings are both In college and I didn't want them missing school.. may and June are more expensive to cruise so we didn't want to pick those months either since my whole plan was to save as much money as possible for the guests.

 

I should mention that my fiancé and i are still planning on doing a honeymoon that is separate from the cruise. I don't think you mentioned if you were using the cruise as your honeymoon or not but if not you could consider going to St. Thomas for your honeymoon and doing an inexpensive cruise for your wedding. I understand you wanting to explore St. Thomas and therefore are considering an aboard the ship wedding to allow that. This is another reason

We chose key west since it wasn't a bucket list once in a lifetime destination that we would

Be upset on missing.

 

Please keep in mind we didn't get married yet so I can't comment on the actual experiences but the above are all explanation of my decision making. (Sorry it's so long I can get carried away [emoji3])

 

Congrats again!

 

 

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Hello!!! We are doing an in port wedding as well. Are you guys planning a reception? I'm trying to decide what to do reception wise and I'm struggling.

We're getting married February 5th in St Thomas while cruising on the Carnival Glory!!