St. Thomas Wedding Review

[Tropic5115]

Hi Everyone,

Just wanted to post a review of my 2/22 wedding in St. Thomas! I didn’t post too much about it while I was planning but I got a ton of ideas and help from all of you so hopefully my review will be helpful too.

 

We did a back to back cruise on the Caribbean Princess that left San Juan on Sunday 2/21. We got married on Monday morning while in port at St. Thomas. Our ceremony was right on the beach at Megans Bay and everything was beautiful. We used Janelle from Island Bliss Weddings and she did a fabulous job. I would highly recommend her to anyone getting married in St. Thomas, she was so easy to work with and made the whole process stress free. I have to admit I was a little nervous about what to expect since we didn’t really get to see anything in person but I’m so glad I trusted her to do her job and she did not disappoint in any way.

 

St. Thomas was our first stop on this cruise and I’m so glad for that. I don’t think I could have really enjoyed the trip if I had to wait all week for the wedding. We checked out of our hotels and headed right for the ship around 11:00am. The line was not long at all and we were on board and in our rooms by 12:30. We made welcome bags for everyone so once our luggage arrived later that day we had to run around putting them together and then delivering them to the guests. I’m so glad I did them, everyone loved them and said they were so useful. We had stuff like advil, pepto, bandaids (for blisters), little sewing kits, aloe gel, hand sanitizer, snacks, mints, notepads and palm tree pens, shout wipes, lens cleaner pads, nail polish remover pads, nail files, etc. Most of these were from EBay, Minimus, and every dollar store in Western New York. We also made a welcome letter with a directory of room #’s and room phone #’s that was so helpful during the week to find everyone. It was not easy to find everyone to deliver these but the room stewards on each floor were able to put them in the rooms if no one was in there. We also sent chocolate covered strawberries to each room as a little welcome gift and everyone seemed to enjoy them.

 

That same afternoon after we boarded the ship I immediately needed to get my dress and the grooms clothes steamed and pressed for the morning ceremony. The ship actually gave me a hard time about it because they said they can’t usually do any dry cleaning on embarkation day and that it couldn’t be done for the same day. After some pleading they took everything from us and said it could be back to us by 8:30am, we needed to leave the ship by 9:15. I was a little nervous but didn’t really have a choice. The next morning I woke up really early to get ready, had to do my own hair since we had to leave so early and the ship salon would not have been able to get me out in time. At 8:30 still no wedding clothes delivered to us so I had to hunt a room steward down to go get them. It wasn’t a problem and they had everything to us in a couple of minutes.

 

We were picked up right outside the pier by Stuart Scott (Janelle’s husband and our officient) and he took us to the court house to do our paper work. Court took about 10 minutes and then we were on our way. We stopped at a scenic overlook to snap some pictures on the way. Stuart was great and very friendly; he really helped calm our nerves. He also talked to us about the ceremony and the wording and about things he could use to help personalize it for us. Thank god for his super AC too, between nerves and heat I would have been a sweaty mess by the time we arrived.

 

The guests were picked up from the ship at 10:00am and they said the ride was very nice, we had 30 people on the cruise with us and 2 that met us in St. Thomas. We arrived a little early so we got to wait in the car with the air blasting while everyone arrived and took their seats.

 

Janelle did an amazing job with everything. The beach set up looked perfect and everything went off without a hitch. We had a steel pan player that everyone seemed to love although from where I was I couldn’t hear anything except the waves. The actually ceremony was pretty quick and we then had some refreshments and cupcakes while we took pictures with everyone. The cupcakes were amazing! We had three flavors, banana with peanut butter frosting, lemon filled with lemon meringue frosting, coconut cake with pineapple filling and cream cheese frosting. We also had some cheese and fruit and bottles of water and champagne.

 

Our photographer was from Blue Glass and she did a really nice job. I wish I would have had her for more than an hour because it felt very rushed and there were some shots we would have liked to get but no time. I should have done an extra half hour or hour. Still we got a bunch of really nice pictures and I am very happy with them.

 

We chose to do our ceremony in the morning to allow the guests the rest of the day to enjoy St. Thomas and so we could relax a bit before our reception that evening. We chose to have a cocktail hour that night up in Skywalkers lounge before dinner. We had cheese and crackers and shrimp served along with the open bar. They let us bring in a CD so we could have our own music playing in the sound system and and so we could do a first dance while we were there. Not much time for much else since the hour went by really fast. Princess did a really nice job with arranging everything and the bar staff we so wonderful.

 

After that we all had dinner in Crown Grill. We paid for everyone’s cover charge and the grooms parents paid the bar bill for dinner. The dinner was wonderful and so much food! We also had a wedding cake ordered so they had us cut the cake while all the staff sang Happy Wedding to us, it was really funny.

 

The whole day was perfect and very memorable and everyone had a great week aboard the ship. I will say it was exhausting having so many people with us all week and it was definitely nice to have the second week to ourselves so we could just relax.

 

If you have any questions about anything please feel free to let me know!

[may2010bride]

Your pictures came out great! Thanks for posting the review, I'm glad everything went so well for you. :)

[yummymummy99]

Glad you had a good day, thanks for posting the details of the journey, court, ceremony etc. Its good to know roughly what will happen on the day! We are using Janelle also, not long now!

 

Your pics are lovely also!

 

:D

[adetia]

Congratulations! Pretty pics ! :)

[Dgonza]

We will be on the Caribbean Princess for our wedding next year....We will be married in St Thomas too and working with an island coordinator....How did you go about getting a wedding cake? We arent doing anything extra on the ship....but would like to get a wedding cake.

[Tropic5115]

Dgonza,

 

As far as our wedding cake, our TA contacted the ship events coordinator and requested a wedding cake. We were able pick our flavors and send in a pic with how we wanted it to look. I think it cost us about $150 for two tiers.