Carnival Ecstasy / Bahamas Wedding

[pinkchucks]

Anyone have a Carnival Ecstasy Wedding? In the beginning stages of Planning an April 2013 wedding in the Bahamas...

 

Thanks for any and all info!

[tlmoad]

Hello,

 

We are having our wedding in Key West, Fl on 11/27/11. We sail out on the Carnival Ecstasy on 11/26/11. Our plan is to dock in Key West, and get married on the beach. We will be having an onboard reception after the ceremony. Carnival has been great to work with!! Please let me know if you have any questions.

[pinkchucks]

Hi!!

 

Congrats on your wedding!

How did it go??

Did you work with Carnival to handle the wedding on the beach? Or another company?

 

Thanks for more info!

[tlmoad]

Hello,

 

I have not had time to write a review yet, but our wedding was amazing! We went through Weddings to Go in Key West; their names are Ray and Eileen. We sailed out on Sat 11/26 and hit rough seas so we were late getting into Key West and actually missed our wedding at 1pm. Luckily, my sister was staying in Key West, so I called her from the ship to reschedule everything. Weddings to Go was great and bumped our wedding time to 3pm. We had our reception back on board in the Stripes Disco from 4:30 to 6:30. I would recommend going with the 2 hour reception; it is worth the extra money. I will tell you that we had 28 of us and everyone raved about how beautiful it was. The food was great, and the cake was to die for. I have to say that my husband wanted Chocolate cake with Chocolate filling, and I wanted Vanilla with Strawberry; no one ate the vanilla and was begging for more of the chocolate :)

 

Our photographer Enrico was great, our wedding coordinator Avana, our group coordinator Chantel, and our Social Host Tiffany. Although the Ecstasy is an older ship; I couldn't of asked for a better staff for our wedding day!

[jazzysis]

Hello,

 

We are having our wedding in Key West, Fl on 11/27/11. We sail out on the Carnival Ecstasy on 11/26/11. Our plan is to dock in Key West, and get married on the beach. We will be having an onboard reception after the ceremony. Carnival has been great to work with!! Please let me know if you have any questions.

 

Was wondering what beach did you use with WTG? We have already booked our reception back onboard carnival but are still in the process of nailing down our ceremony site and vendor. any information you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

[cmt8185]

So I'm new to planning my upcoming cruise wedding and I'm a little confused...

 

Does Carnival give you a wedding company to go through (Weddings to Go, etc.) or is that something you have personally decided to do without Carnival?

 

I'm just worried about booking everything through a company without Carnival and something happening... re-routed, etc. especially with it being during hurricane season.

 

Thanks!

[aprill121]

So I'm new to planning my upcoming cruise wedding and I'm a little confused...

 

Does Carnival give you a wedding company to go through (Weddings to Go, etc.) or is that something you have personally decided to do without Carnival?

 

I'm just worried about booking everything through a company without Carnival and something happening... re-routed, etc. especially with it being during hurricane season.

 

Thanks!

 

 

You can do this one of two ways,

carnival offers land wedding packages, here is the link

http://www.carnival.com/cms/fun/weddings/pdf/wedding-info.pdf

if you choose to do this carnival will provide the company to take of your wedding.

or...

you can can find your own wedding planner on-island to take care of things for you, such as

http://www.weddingstogokeywest.com/ in key west

http://weddingstheislandway.com/ in St. Thomas

and they will personalize and custom make a package for you and plan a reception if you want one.

You can use a planner on one of the islands and book a private group party onboard, if you want a no frills reception.

 

Most of the wedding planners I have contacted have generous return policies in the event of a hurricane, just make sure that you express your concerns (whether using carnival or individual wedding planner) and check the cancellation policy before you sign a contract.

 

Congrats! and happy planning.

[pinkchucks]

We've decided to plan directly with a nassau wedding planner instead of Carnival. There were too many restrictions, and they limit you to 20 people. I think we have about 35. :(

[cmt8185]

We've decided to plan directly with a nassau wedding planner instead of Carnival. There were too many restrictions, and they limit you to 20 people. I think we have about 35. :(

 

They limit you to 20 people?? I haven't ever heard of that. I've heard of a base price for the reception which caps off at 20 people and then you pay for each additional.. is that what you're talking about? I sure hope so because I'll be having WAY more than 20 people cruising for our wedding... :confused:

[mcdo0063]

We've decided to plan directly with a nassau wedding planner instead of Carnival. There were too many restrictions, and they limit you to 20 people. I think we have about 35. :(

 

Which wedding planner in Nassau did you choose? Thanks.

[pinkchucks]

They limit you to 20 people?? I haven't ever heard of that. I've heard of a base price for the reception which caps off at 20 people and then you pay for each additional.. is that what you're talking about? I sure hope so because I'll be having WAY more than 20 people cruising for our wedding... :confused:

 

Correct, they charge you for each additional.

The thought of them sliding the final bill under our door the last night with what they charged us for kind of scared us.

 

With the planner, we will know what the cost is before we leave on the cruise.

And their packages cover at least 30 people.

I just like how the planner is able to give us line items...

And I like we're able to make things more personal.

[cmt8185]

Correct, they charge you for each additional.

The thought of them sliding the final bill under our door the last night with what they charged us for kind of scared us.

 

With the planner, we will know what the cost is before we leave on the cruise.

And their packages cover at least 30 people.

I just like how the planner is able to give us line items...

And I like we're able to make things more personal.

 

 

I don't blame ya.. which planner are you going through?

[CruiseWedding13]

I would love to know which planner you are using. I'm searching for a highly recommended well reasonably priced planner in Bahamas.

[tlmoad]

Jazzysis...

 

We had our wedding on Smathers Beach. It was a beautiful location. Smathers is a public beach, so it is on a first come first serve basis.

 

Weddings to Go does a great job getting there early and getting the site set up.

[Nisha1210]

Hey, I am in the beginning steps of planning a Bahamas wedding in April 2013 as well. I don't know where to start. How are you informing your guest about this with the date being a way out? I'm having the hardest time figuring this out.

[Kutie076]

"How are you informing your guest about this with the date being a way out? I'm having the hardest time figuring this out."

 

I'm also in the beginning stages of planning our wedding. Trying to decide if a cruise is the way to go. But I would suggest the best way to let your guests know is to send out a "save the date" for your cruise. I've received one for a destination wedding that they attached a small letter with all the information regarding booking in advance the resort and even the travel agent to contact. You can also set up one of those free wedding websites from theknot.com or similiar sites and keep everyone up to date with where the cruise leaves from and how to arrange booking it.

 

Hope this helped some :)

[Nkcaf720]

Hello,

 

I have not had time to write a review yet, but our wedding was amazing! We went through Weddings to Go in Key West; their names are Ray and Eileen. We sailed out on Sat 11/26 and hit rough seas so we were late getting into Key West and actually missed our wedding at 1pm. Luckily, my sister was staying in Key West, so I called her from the ship to reschedule everything. Weddings to Go was great and bumped our wedding time to 3pm. We had our reception back on board in the Stripes Disco from 4:30 to 6:30. I would recommend going with the 2 hour reception; it is worth the extra money. I will tell you that we had 28 of us and everyone raved about how beautiful it was. The food was great, and the cake was to die for. I have to say that my husband wanted Chocolate cake with Chocolate filling, and I wanted Vanilla with Strawberry; no one ate the vanilla and was begging for more of the chocolate :)

 

Omg!!! I was looking on the site for reviews and saw your post. This is exactly what I'm planning and am looking at the same company weddings to go. I'm so glad to hear you had a good experience. We're planning for January 2014.

Our photographer Enrico was great, our wedding coordinator Avana, our group coordinator Chantel, and our Social Host Tiffany. Although the Ecstasy is an older ship; I couldn't of asked for a better staff for our wedding day!

[valerie22w]

Thank you for pulling the review from the depths of the threads. I am getting married on the Ecstasy on the Oct 26, 2013 sailing and the ceremony will be on Smathers beach in key west on the 27th with weddings to go and the reception back on ship. We opted for the 2 hour reception. I'm so excited.

[Nkcaf720]

Thats awesome! Congrats! I'm still in the planning stages but all the dates we want are open. I think we're going to wait til after the holidays to book everything. How did carnival work with you in regards to the wedding package? Was it the same price 1795? Since your only doing reception versus the ceremony and reception did they lower the price. I have to call on Monday. Also with the beaches to go they give you a cake for some of the packages is carnival letting you bring it back on board or are you doing cake on the beach. But then carnival also provides a cake. I'm sorry for all the questions just so excited and nervous! I'll be so much happier when everything gets booked. We'll have about 20 guests with us. And we're trying to book everything at once so we get on board credit and 1 hour free cocktail hour for having 8 rooms or more. Did you go this route as well?

 

Thanks in advance and again congradalations!

[valerie22w]

Because we're just doing reception through Carnival, it's a lower price. We're paying $800 for the reception and $185 for the DJ. The package with weddings to go that we picked does not have a cake because we wouldn't be able to bring it back on board. We're doing ceremony only. Now working on getting the steel drummer for the wedding music. :-)

[Nkcaf720]

I called Carnival weddings today and they quoted the same price. The only downside is she told us the reception had to be over by 4pm and we'll be in keywest from 12 to 8pm. So now I have to figure out what to do til we have dinner later that night. Also we have 2 hours between docking and the reception to have the ceremony and take pictures on the beach. Hopefully that will be enough time and that's only if the cruise ship arrives on time.

[CarnivalDreamWedding]

Hi ladies!

 

My husband and I were married on the beach in the Bahamas. Orange Hill beach, 20 min from the Nassau port. Beautiful!!!

 

We went through Carnival. They sorted everything for us. They did this in conjunction with an on-land company that they use. We had 50 sailing guests. Everything was literally perfect. We have zero complaints :)

 

There are no surprises in the payments. You tell them how many guests you have and what you want and they send you a bill and you pay. Actually, it has to be paid X amount of days before the wedding. ( I cant remember how many). I think we paid in full 3 months b4 our wedding.

 

Also someone mentioned something about cake...you can bring cake back onto the ship. Same with flowers. This is confusing. You can bring them back on the ship, but can't take them OFF the ship back in the USA with you. So, we carried an entire bahamas wedding cake and all of our flowers (real) back onto the ship. But these things cant go back home with you... i.e. no first anniversay cake topper, no saving your flowers if you use real ones.

 

Hope this helps!!

 

Enjoy getting married married in paradise!!