Carnival Dream Wedding Review 4-30-11

Hi ladies! I'm back! Let me start off by saying that we had a wonderful ceremony, reception, & cruise! I wouldn't change getting married on the cruise for anything (we both LOVED that part of it). There are a few words of wisdom I'd like to pass along in hopes of helping future brides!

From the top...

We flew into Orlando airport the morning before we left. The space shuttle launch was supposed to go off that day, but unfortunately fell through. We took cabs from the airport to the hotel (radisson at the port in cape canaveral) which was about $110 or so. The hotel met all of our needs. I would def recommend to others staying there pre-cruise with groups. They gave us reduced rates on both standard and suites. The suite is WELL worth the extra $30! Guests who didn't book the suites were sour when they saw them in comparison to their rooms! Everyone hung out at the pool sipping tropical drinks while waiting for everyone to arrive! Great music poolside too! Then dinner time was quickly approaching and we had a hard time dragging everyone away from the pool because everyone was having a great time!

We had reserved a party room at Rusty's Seafood & Oyster bar for dinner (no charge for the room made it a no-brainer!). There were 32 of us! I had attempted to book the hotel shuttle to transport the group from the hotel to Rustys in advance but they told me no. Well upon arrival, we asked at the front desk and they said as long as the driver was available, he'd be able to shuttle us. Luckily he was! The driver "Donnie" even gave us his card and said to call him before we were ready for a ride back (before 11). Which we did! it make life MUCH easier having the shuttle so we didn't have to have some people drive & others take taxis. Anyways, back to dinner...the food was great! everything was reasonably priced. They had a tiki band outside, but since our party room was inside, we weren't really able to hear it. Everyone had a great time!

We all went back to the hotel and sat around the pool bar for awhile with drinks. Then instructed everyone to be in the lobby by 9:45am at the latest (the shuttle was supposed to leave promptly at 10 to take us to the port). In hindsight, i should have told everyone earlier...because i few trickled in late! I threatened to leave without my sister is she wasn't on the bus by 10! haha

We get to the port & the porters and trying to take all of our luggage. My fiance & i explained to them that we intended on carrying our suitcases onboard with us since they both contained items for our wedding. After much back & forth, they guy put our luggage in a different section and guaranteed us that we'd have our bags upon getting to our room. My fiance gave him a healthy tip to ensure this was the case. They literally left us with no choice but to leave the bags with them. they claimed that they were too large to go through the security line. Now I realize all the paperwork said you needed to have everything for the ceremony with you when boarding the ship...but if the Carnival worker tells me that my bags will be in my room, and that it's ok to take them...even after I explain i have items i need for the wedding...call me crazy but i believed him. This is afterall his job. In hindsight, i should have known better!!! WE SHOULD HAVE TAKEN EVERYTHING OUT OF OUR BAGS THAT WE NEEDED AT THIS POINT!!! Don't make this mistake! it made the next 2 hours miserable!!!!

Anyways...so we proceed with only our carry ons to the security checkpoint, my dress went through fine. We're then pretty much lost in what to do, and no one was being of much help. My fiance kept asking me what we were supposed to do or go...and I told him that from everyone's reviews the wedding coordinators are supposed to meet us & whisk us through the lines & process. Unfortunately, this was not the case. After going to several different lines, and asking several different people, we eventually got all the non-sailing & sailing guests checked in. We even made our way to the "waiting" area....and still no wedding coordinators! Clearly they were late. Upon their arrival, we explain what happened with the porters taking our bags from us and they immediately give us attitude that the paperwork said to carry all your items onto the ship with you. Meanwhile, this is what we tried to do when they told us NO). At this point, we made it clear to them that it's their job to find out luggage and get it to us before the ceremony! So between that & them being late, both my fiance and i had a sour taste in our mouth! We did have my dress, his suit, but literally nothing else. Both of our shoes, his shirt for under his suit, my curling iron, etc were all in our suitcases. On a side note, his parents had the same issues (they were going to take their suitcases onboard with them both containing their wedding clothes) so they were in the same boat as us. The grooms mother was about to wear a t-shirt and orange shorts to her son's wedding if those suitcases didn't surface! haha (I can look back and laugh now...at that time...not so much!)

Once onboard, the coordinators led my guests to the lido lunch (which we paid for them to eat). From what i could tell, all the guests enjoyed the lunch and walking around the ship prior to the ceremony. Basically, everyone had until 12:30 before they had to meet at the ceremony site (ceremony was to begin at 1:00 in the Chambers Conference room). We stopped at our room to drop off our carryons & see if the luggage was there. It wasn't! One of the coordinators was with us & starting calling around to the area in charge of luggage to track down our bags. We gave them a description of what all the bags looked like.

From there we both needed a stiff drink, and went to the lido bar to get a few. And with the thought of having to get married 1. barefoot or 2. in flip flops...i'm pretty sure i needed them!

We get back to our room and at 12:15 2 out of the 3 bags of ours had made it to the room! luckily i had my shoes & curling iron...the only thing missing was my fiance's shoes (so he really did have to wear his flip flops!). I literally had 15 minutes to get ready! During which time i touched up my make-up and did a quick re-curling of my hair. (Luckily, i'm good at throwing myself together! haha...but ideally it would have been nice to have more then 15 mins to get myself ready for my wedding! My fiance and i decided to get ready in the same room. He left at 12:30, and once he left the room I put my dress on (up until this point he hadn't seen the dress so at least that much was a suprise!)

Side note on the dress: I had anticipated that it would be a wrinkled mess since i carried it onboard the plane. i flew on southwest so it had to be folded up several times and put in the overhead bin. everyone else was concerned the whole trip about taking it out of the bag so it wouldn't be wrinkled...i kept saying i didn't even want to see it until the time came (so that i wouldn't have time to be upset when it was wrinkled). So...i was pretty much SHOCKED when i unzipped the bag, put on the dress, and there wasn't a wrinkle in sight! I still don't know how it happened?

The photographer had called when we first got the room because he wanted to come take pictures, but there literally was NO TIME. a few minutes after i put my dress on the wedding coordinator came to get me. We got to where the ceremony was and my dad was waiting outside. They had us outside stalled for awhile hoping that the other bag arrived with my fiance's shoes (he's still wearing his flip flops). At this point i wasn't aware of all the drama behind the scenes...but my fiance later told me that the wedding coordinator & officiant were having "melt down" flipping out because the bag hadn't arrived. He said HE was the one to calm them down and tell them to get the show on the road (not wanting to hold things up any longer...with me waiting out int he hallways to come into the ceremony!)

The ceremony room was more than adequate. We chose to do the standard vows that were provided & the Nautical reading. The ceremony was more emotional for everyone than I would have expected. We wanted short & sweet and literally everyone in the audience was crying. Including me (heck, i can't watch an episode of Say Yes to the Dress without crying! haha).

Afterwards, the photographer took a few group shots....then the coordinators took everyone to the Caliente Disco where the reception was. He had the DJ & 1.5 hour open bar & appetizers. The announced us as we entered the dance club & immediately took us to the cake table to do a cutting, champagne toast, my husband thanked everyone for coming, etc. At that point we weren't sure if we were going to do a "first dance" or not...when the coordinators told me i said "maybe at the end" haha.

I can't say enough good things about the reception, drink service was great! food was great! people still talk about how good the cake was (we chose vanilla cake & icing), DJ was great! Everyone danced and had a great time. Literally 10 minutes before the reception was going to be over they located my husbands suitcase (brought it right to the dance club) so he did get to wear his shoes for the last few mins! haha

At the very end, we did end up doing our "first dance". The DJ had the song I wanted (Keane "Somewhere Only We Know"). I'm really glad we decided to do it at the end (non-standard). I feel like at that time you could really enjoy it because you weren't nervous about having everyone watch you. We were loosened up after a few drinks. It was just a nice way to conclude the reception! Then the DJ played one last FUN dance before the nonsailing guests had to leave. We formed a big circle and everyone took their turns dancing in the center! haha...it really was a blast! The only thing bad about the reception is it wasn't long enough. Another hour would have been perfect...but because of the ship having to set sail...there's really nothing you can do about it.

It was about 3:20 when the nonsailing guests left. I had arranged for the hotel shuttle to come back and pick them up at 3:30 so it worked out perfectely. The hotel tried telling me that they normally pickup nonsailing guests at 3:00 and not 3:30, so I'm glad i insisted on the later time. I told them i didn't want the nonsailing guests having to leave the reception early to catch the shuttle!

After the reception we went back to our room for the safety drill. I took alittle more time getting ready before meeting our photographer to take more pictures! We took them all over the ship and there were a bunch of good ones!

I'm happy to say that i wore my dress all around the ship for the rest of the day/night! I had it on until we got back to our room at the end of the night at 1:30am! Got my money's worth! haha It was great walking aroudn the ship in it. Everyone kept stopping us to tell us they were on the cruise for their anniversary, we got free drinks, you name it!

The only thing from the cruise that still doesn't sit well with me...is the picutre packages. So a few days into the cruise we get a message to meet our photographer and go over the pictures. I had always assumed that he'd be showing them to us in digital format and we'd chose the prints we wanted. Not the case. He had all of the posed pictures he had taken from around the ship printed in 8x10, and all the candid shots from the ceremony & reception in 5x7. He also had a coffee table book he had made (which was $1600!). In addition to the price list Carnival had given us of the picture packages...he also had another pricing sheet of other packages that went upt o $5600! I thought husband was going to have a heart attack when he slapped it down in front of us!). The long story short, is that if you wanted to buy individual 5x7s those were $10 and the 8x10s were $30 each. I was under the impression with the package for $750 that included the CD it would be the CD of all the pictures taken at the wedding...not the case. It was only a CD of the 40 prints you had paid for! All in all i thought the pricing was completely out of whack. Do people really spend more money on pictures than they do on the wedding itself? or the cruise itself? What we really didn't like is that you couldn't get the posed pictures around the ship in the 5x7 size since they were already printed for you. They told us the only way you could get a 5x7 was if you purchased the 8x10 too (which clearly defeats the purpose). So after the meeting with the photographer i left in tears (thinking we weren't going to be able to afford to get enough pictures of the wedding)...and scheduled a meeting later in the week once we decided which to purchase. The saving grace in the picture drama is that one of my friends at the wedding had real nice camera and took lots of pictures. She cruised with us and said she had about 200 pictures from the ceremony & reception. So later in the week, we put it all in perspective and decided to only get the 8x10s of the posed shots around the ship that we liked best. My advice to other brides...make sure you have designated people taking a TON of pictures! Otherwise, it's going to cost you a small fortune for pictures! Also, I forgot to mention that my mother's livid because the photographer didn't print any pictures of her with me (or me & my husband). She came to the last meeting with our photographer to go over the pictures and she told him she remember him taking pictures of us...his response was that he only printed the best ones! apparently the picture of me and my mother wasn't one of the "good ones"? haha

Also, like i said we really did have a GREAT cruise the rest of the week. BUT, i will say that both my husband and i were exhausted after "entertaining" all those who cruised with us for the week! we're used to going on cruises just the 2 of us...so having an additional 10 people onboard takes away from the relaxing nature of the cruise. it's not even that we spent THAT much time with everyone...but it still wears on you! i do kind of feel cheated like i didn't get a proper honeymoon! i'm ready to start planning my next cruise now!

Let me know if anyone has any questions about anything i may have missed! Happy cruising!

forgot to give links to some of our pictures...

if you go to kodakgallery.com

logon heather.capozzi@bnymellon.com

password: wedding

Thanks for all the tips. Sounds like overall you had a great time! I totally agree with you on the photo package thing. It's totally absurd. I've made a list of the photos I want taken and what I want to see because I keep hearing the same things about the photogs.

Can't wait to see your photos!

Congrats again!

It sounds stressful!!

Thanks for the tips about the photographer. That's the one thing that really has me worried and it sounds like I am right to be worried.

Congratulations!

Thank you SO much for your review. We are getting married in Sept. and I am so excited, yet so nervous about getting married in a place that I will have no control over. Haha. Your wedding sounded wonderful, minus the few hiccups with the luggage and the picture fiasco. I am so glad you wrote about your experience and I am about to call my wedding coordinator because that is not what she told me the wedding package included. The pamphlet I received stated that the CD has all of the pictures that are taken the day of the wedding. They also said that we can use the credit toward any pictures taken during the entire cruise. Is that what they told you?

Once again, thank you for sharing your experience and congratulations!

Amanda

forgot to give links to some of our pictures...

 

if you go to kodakgallery.com

 

logon heather.capozzi@bnymellon.com

password: wedding

Awwww I loved your photos!!! Your dress was beatiful!! Love all the little flowers and worked sooooo well with the bouquet!! :) Glad to see you had a good time overall! Makes me even more anxious/excited for my wedding.

Sounds like you had quite an adventure! I know for my photography package it says "all images on a CD", I have a feeling though it's probably the same and he picks out the images he wants. The description says "approximately 36 exposures will be taken". I don't quite know how to interrupt that.

I think I would have been begging someone to switch shoes with my fiancee if he didn't have any shoes! But it seemed like the wedding attire was pretty informal, so it would probably have been difficult. I have been warned a few times that if your luggage doesn't fit through the x-ray scanner, you can't carry it on and that any luggage checked in won't be ready before the wedding. The coordinator that went over the final details made that pretty clear to me, so I have been thinking about it. I am probably going to have to ask multiple people to carry bags onboard.

But sounds like you had a great time! It's so exciting to hear from other brides and the good experiences they had! :)

Thank you for a great review and great info. I think you were a lot better sport than I would have been :-)

Did the coordinators ever explain why they were late. How did you manage to get everyone checked in on your own. Superwoman on her own wedding day! Congrats!!!

Congratulations!

 

Thank you SO much for your review. We are getting married in Sept. and I am so excited, yet so nervous about getting married in a place that I will have no control over. Haha. Your wedding sounded wonderful, minus the few hiccups with the luggage and the picture fiasco. I am so glad you wrote about your experience and I am about to call my wedding coordinator because that is not what she told me the wedding package included. The pamphlet I received stated that the CD has all of the pictures that are taken the day of the wedding. They also said that we can use the credit toward any pictures taken during the entire cruise. Is that what they told you?

 

Once again, thank you for sharing your experience and congratulations!

 

Amanda

What ship and date are you getting married on? I am on the Dream on Sep 10.

Congratulations!

 

Thank you SO much for your review. We are getting married in Sept. and I am so excited, yet so nervous about getting married in a place that I will have no control over. Haha. Your wedding sounded wonderful, minus the few hiccups with the luggage and the picture fiasco. I am so glad you wrote about your experience and I am about to call my wedding coordinator because that is not what she told me the wedding package included. The pamphlet I received stated that the CD has all of the pictures that are taken the day of the wedding. They also said that we can use the credit toward any pictures taken during the entire cruise. Is that what they told you?

 

Once again, thank you for sharing your experience and congratulations!

 

Amanda

Are you sailing on a Carnival ship? If not, the picture information could be different because each cruise company does handle things separately.

Thanks Everyone!

I'm assuming you're talking about Carnival's photo packages? My intent was to spring for the $750 package thinking that was the cheapest package with the photo CD. I was shocked when i found out that the CD only includes the pictures you purchase in the print format! It's def. misleading! meanwhile, I already took my 8x10s to target and scanned onto a photo cd for 3 dollars!!! That's why we ended up getting all the prints ala carte!

Check your pamplet again...if its Carnival and says "CD of all purchased images" it's only the images you purchase in that specific package (x amount of 8x10s & 5x7s). The technically is the "purchased" images is not all images taken...only the select prints! so even with the $750 package, you're only getting the 40 images on a CD and NOT all that were taken that day!

of the packages they showed us...the only way you got ALL the images taken on the CD was literally if you were willing to spend 5k!

The thing about the xray scanner is that i believe most (if not all our bags) should have fit through! in hind sight we should have forced the issue, and attempted to take the bags through the scanner! or physically removed all the items from the suitcases before they took them away! at the time, everything goes so quick that you don't have time to think about it. Once onboard, Carnival explained to us that the porters are all union workers, and there's not much they can do about situations like ours.

luckily, alot of our guests didn't now the behind the scenes drama...and most of them thought he intentionally wore flip flops for a casual look? haha..now i can laugh about it. at the time, not so funny!

No. The coordinators never even acknowledged that they were late (which immediately rubbed us the wrong way). Once you go through security, we just kept telling whoever we encountered that we were a wedding party and they'd keep pointing us in the right direction. You just follow the vip lines...from there, there's one area where the nonsailing guests "check in" where they validate their ids and another area where the sailing guests do their "check in" and get sail n' sign cards. luckily, my cousin knew i was stressed trying to keep everyone together and on taste...so she told me to go ahead and she kept the rest of the group together at the tail end...moving them from one place to the next. and her fiance carried my dress through the whole process (which was a HUGE help).

Beautiful pictures and glad everything turned out perfect regardless of the shoe situation :)

Heather... CONGRATULATIONS!!!!

I am so glad that in the end you had a nice wedding.

Just think, you will be able to laugh about all this maybe this time next year! lol

You look so beautiful, and I swear your fella looks like he is a ham! lol

Hi Heather,

First of all your pictures were beautiful. Very photogenic- lucky girl! I love you dress and you all look like you were having so much fun.

You have also shown me I need a major attitude adjustment- I was expecting to relax and thinking nothing might go wrong. I was also expecting the photo package prices to be what the sent me. Wow- yours sound like 2 grand more than what they quoted me. It's actually a relief to know- we have some folks in our party with great cameras and photography skills. For over 5 grand for pics they can kiss my behind :-)

I think we're going to Rusty's too, but not with a big party. Just our respective parents and us.

If you have any other tips I would love to hear them- we're getting married on the Dream in September. Oh- in the Caliente dance club did they offer to use certain color lighting? If I'm not going to be picky about anything else maybe I can there :-)

Take care, Stacy

What ship and date are you getting married on? I am on the Dream on Sep 10.

Carnival Valor. It sails from the 18-25 and we are getting married in Sept. I called our Carnival coordinator and she totally wouldn't admit to it until I literally cornered her with questions. Finally she confirmed that it is only for "purchased photos" and she said that the CD actually has a limit of 75 photos on it! Talk about misleading! Ugh.

Are you sailing on a Carnival ship? If not, the picture information could be different because each cruise company does handle things separately.

Nope, we are on Carnival in Sept. I called my coordinator yesterday and she finally admitted that is how Carnival works. Very misleading...

Lipz...you guessed it! My fella is absolutely a ham! I can't tell you how many beers deep we were when our wedding photos were taken! haha It was funny the photographer had a buddy helping him (who carried my flowered purse along with our beers from one location to the next!)

StacyJ - We didn't even ask about the color choice of the lighting in the dance club?

All...yes, Carnival's photo pricing is definitely misleading. I was literally in shock when i found out about the "all purchased" photos on the price list!

For anyone else getting married on the Dream...I meant to mention in my review that we LOVED the ship itself for the cruise! Don't listen to any bad reviews posted on the message boards about the ship itself (there were alot of them and they had me worried!). I'd probably say that the Dream has been my favorite (in terms of layout of the ship) of all the Carnival ships!

CONGRATULATIONS!!!! I also feel like trying to cater to all our sailing guests (15) was a bit much, and we couldn't relax and really enjoy each other.

Being a photographer myself, the photos have me scared to death! I have my camera, but NOBODY who isn't going to be in the wedding knows how to use it! I have already told everyone to bring their cameras and take a million pictures, but I am so darn picky about pictures! I am literally scared to death, because we don't have a lot of money to spend on the pictures. Ugggh... I hope I'm not too devestated!

I would either 1. show someone how to use your camera...or 2. designate one person to take nonstop pictures (luckily that's what my friend did). I asked everyone (in general) to make sure they took alot of pictures...and only one's pulled through thus far offering them up! I literally only took 10 pictures on my camera during the reception!

You need to stress the importance of having these pictures to a select few attending the wedding. Honestly, if it weren't for the pictures my friend got, i'd be devestated!

Hi Heather,

First of all your pictures were beautiful. Very photogenic- lucky girl! I love you dress and you all look like you were having so much fun.

 

You have also shown me I need a major attitude adjustment- I was expecting to relax and thinking nothing might go wrong. I was also expecting the photo package prices to be what the sent me. Wow- yours sound like 2 grand more than what they quoted me. It's actually a relief to know- we have some folks in our party with great cameras and photography skills. For over 5 grand for pics they can kiss my behind :-)

 

I think we're going to Rusty's too, but not with a big party. Just our respective parents and us.

 

If you have any other tips I would love to hear them- we're getting married on the Dream in September. Oh- in the Caliente dance club did they offer to use certain color lighting? If I'm not going to be picky about anything else maybe I can there :-)

 

Take care, Stacy

Carnival doesn't "offer" certain color lighting, you have to request it. I requested certain colors in the Caliente Disco and my contact with Carnival wasn't sure until she contacted the DJ who told her yes it was possible. So, you may have to be a bit pushy to get it but it can be done. They displayed the colors I requested.

Hi Heather!

So glad your wedding turned out nice in spite of few mishaps. You two looked great! And I don't think the flip flops looked all that bad either. :)

I know what you mean about the photo prices. I was disappointed in how they were presented too. We were shocked when we took our first look at our photos. We were expecting to see thumbprints and choose which photos we wanted. And thought the packages would have been a bit more affordable like the flyer we were shown when we first booked our wedding. Instead, they were already preprinted in 8x 10's and 5 x7's. We were handed a package price sheet with the lowest package being $349, which gave you next to nothing. We had to go through them (over 150 prints) one by one which took us about 45 minutes just to place them in piles of "like or don't like". There were some taken that we didn't even see in the prints. I don't have a formal of me with my mother or my MOH. And my husband didn't have any with just him and the best man. Then later in the week (last day), after we had time to think about blowing our picture budget, we went down and purchased the $749 package. The table book was beautiful and had photos in it that he didn't print for us but he wanted $1200 for it! No way we could afford that. I started tearing up having to give up so many photos because we couldn't afford them. When the photographer saw this, he threw in an extra 10 8x10's as a "wedding gift". So they have room to work with the numbers, but it may take some heavy haggling to get them to budge.

We love the Dream and are going to take another cruise with Carnival next year for our 1yr anniversary. Maybe it will be on the Dream again. Still thinking about which cruise to take. lol

Being a photographer myself, the photos have me scared to death! I have my camera, but NOBODY who isn't going to be in the wedding knows how to use it! I have already told everyone to bring their cameras and take a million pictures, but I am so darn picky about pictures! I am literally scared to death, because we don't have a lot of money to spend on the pictures. Ugggh... I hope I'm not too devestated!

I would suggest budgeting at least $750 for your Carnival Wedding photos. And definitely have a written list of must have photo's to give to the photographer beforehand. Your coordinator will make sure the photographer does it if you give her the list. The photo's taken with natural lighting on board came out the best for us. It seemed that the photographer had issues with the right lighting inside. A lot of our photo's were taken near a window.

I would either 1. show someone how to use your camera...or 2. designate one person to take nonstop pictures (luckily that's what my friend did). I asked everyone (in general) to make sure they took alot of pictures...and only one's pulled through thus far offering them up! I literally only took 10 pictures on my camera during the reception!

 

You need to stress the importance of having these pictures to a select few attending the wedding. Honestly, if it weren't for the pictures my friend got, i'd be devestated!

You were absolutely beautiful in your dress! I love that dress! Im sorry you had all that confusion before the wedding, i would be freaking out, but you handled it well and had an amazing wedding!

I am budgetting $1500 for the pictures but that still only includes the cd of my pictures purchased.... I have also paid my aunt's cabin's tips as a "payment" for her bringing her really nice camera and taking a ton of pictures. We will then hook her camera to a laptop and look at the pictures before we meet with the photographer! I'm hoping paying $120 for her tips will save me $1000!!!!! I have a scanner so i'm fine with just buying a few 8X10s and scanning them onto my computer....

Anyways, thanks so much for your review, lots for us to think/and plan for (esp the luggage and photo stuff!).

Congrats again on a beautiful wedding!!!!