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Can someone tell me about Vow renewals on RCCL?

ssatterly

By ssatterly,
in Royal Caribbean International

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Shaden1982

Shaden1982

Posted
Posted

We too are looking into the vow renewal on board the ship. We are sailing on Explorer next April and plan on renewing our vows while on board. The RCCL website says the renewal is $400.00 and lists what is included. I also did some research on renewing in one of the ports we will be visiting. I think we'll just do it onboard, easier as far as getting everyone to the place of the ceremony on time and no weather issues to contend with. The only drawback I found was that you will not know the day, time or place of the renewal ceremony until you board the ship and meet with someone on board to arrange it all. You do have to call ahead and pay in advance to Royal Romance.

There is a vow renewal thread. Here is the link:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=259055&page=4&highlight=vow+renewal

 

Congrats & Good Luck.

~Sharon

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sea-cruise

sea-cruise

Posted
Posted

Incase you might be interested, we renewed our vows aboard NCL Dream in the Greek Isles 7 or 8 years ago. They had a priest, a rabbi, and a minister there and anyone who wanted to, met in the chapel and they renewed our vows for free and gave us flowers and a Marraige Vow Renewal Certificate. I thought that was so nice of them. Free champagne and cake afterwards. We had to bring witnesses with us....DH and I were witnesses for another couple and vice-versa. That was the only time we had sailed with NCL.

I just thought it was nice of them not to charge everyone.

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joddav17

joddav17

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We did a vow renewal on our July 2nd sailing on Freedom of the Seas. The cost was $500.00. We found out the date of our renewal (July 4th) the first day onboard. We had our choice as long as it was not a formal night. The ceremony took place at 4:00 in the chapel. A small reception took place right after the ceremony. The photographer took my husband and I all around the ship taking pictures for about 1 hour. He took 250 pictures and did a wonderful job. There are several different photo packages to choose from, but we choose to buy all the pictures and a dvd that included all the renewal photos for $500.00. If you would like to see some of the pictures just e-mail me at joddav17@aol.com and I would be happy to share some pictures with you. If you have any question feel free to e-mail me also. I feel the cost of the renewal was well worth the money.

 

Jody

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bbspin12

bbspin12

Posted
Posted
We did a vow renewal on our July 2nd sailing on Freedom of the Seas. The cost was $500.00. We found out the date of our renewal (July 4th) the first day onboard. We had our choice as long as it was not a formal night. The ceremony took place at 4:00 in the chapel. A small reception took place right after the ceremony. The photographer took my husband and I all around the ship taking pictures for about 1 hour. He took 250 pictures and did a wonderful job. There are several different photo packages to choose from, but we choose to buy all the pictures and a dvd that included all the renewal photos for $500.00. If you would like to see some of the pictures just e-mail me at joddav17@aol.com and I would be happy to share some pictures with you. If you have any question feel free to e-mail me also. I feel the cost of the renewal was well worth the money.

 

Jody

My husband and I will be renewing our vows on the Explorer Oct 1. So glad that you had a great experience. We will have our 6 kids with us and I hope that the day is a little special. I can't believe you paid $500 for pictures..that seems a bit much....how many in total did you receive???

Nivea

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sea-cruise

sea-cruise

Posted
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My husband and I will be renewing our vows on the Explorer Oct 1. So glad that you had a great experience. We will have our 6 kids with us and I hope that the day is a little special. I can't believe you paid $500 for pictures..that seems a bit much....how many in total did you receive???

Nivea

 

Dear Nivea, How wonderful that your 6 children will be there to witness your renewal...congratulations!!!!!!!!

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bbspin12

bbspin12

Posted
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Will you be married a year at the time of the renewal...I believe RCI wants a year of marriage before a renewal can be don onboard. My husband and I also got married a the court house...that is why 5 years later we want to do it again. Although...he keeps asking me for a bachelor party :)

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LuvMyVette

LuvMyVette

Posted
Posted

Hi

First off congrats on your upcoming vow renewal. I hope all of you will have a beautiful day.

DH/I did this for our 10th anniversary on Voyager in July 2005.

The cost was $500 due to the ship having a chapel. Go figure...

Included in this price is...

  • Boutoninere for the groom (white rose).
  • Three white long stem roses for the bride.
  • Photography for one hour (During the ceremony and reception).
  • Vow renewal in the chapel (Make sure you request the chapel).
  • Reception (You could request a special location on the ship but we chose Cloud 9 which is part of the Viking Crown. View was great, room was for us only and it was down one deck from the chapel.)
  • Pre-recorded music (Here Comes The Bride, etc. if you want that).
  • Bottle of champagne at the reception.
  • Inviations to send to the guest but since I made my own I didn't bother using theirs.
  • Copy of the vow renewal (what was said during the ceremony) and certificate.

Vow renewals are held at sea and a non-formal evening. We lucked out that we were able to have ours on our actual anniversary. Since I wore my wedding gown again and DH wore a tuxedo, we hired the photographer for an extra hour to have pictures all over the ship. The pictures were absolutely gorgeous and well worth the money. To purchase the pictures is a separate issue. There are packages and none of them are cheap but if you talk to the photographer he might be able to do something for you.

Royal Romance is a pain to deal with and they drove me up the wall. I had more issues dealing with them then handling my wedding eleven years ago. When they want something they will bug you. When you want something, they don't get back to you. Whenever you contact them, you speak to a different person each time. No one is assigned to you. My advice... send email, print it out and bring it with you on the ship for verification. Whomever you speak to, write down their name, time and date you called them. If you would like your reception in a specific location as well as the vow renewal, tell them. They can't make any promises but they will indicate it in your file. If you plan on having a reception after the ceremony, you will need to provide them a list of people along with their cabin numbers prior to the cruise.

The Social Host on Voyager (Shannon) was phenominal. We met her on Day Two and went over everything. She was a sweetheart and everything we asked for we were able to get which was a blessing. I wanted a special reading done at the ceremony and something mentioned in memory of DH's mom and my father. No problem at all. Shannon was wonderful to deal with and all my nerves was put at ease. I told her that Royal Romance was the pits and how they never responded to my email/phone calls. She took note of it but not sure if anything happened.

If you decide to do this.. make sure you contact the Social Host as soon as you get on the ship since he/she will have to meet with you. You can go to Guest Relations and ask who it is, tell them that you are renewing your vows on the ship and they will assist you with his/her phone number.

Yes it's very expensive but to us this was a ten year dream. We don't regret anything that we did and loved every minute of our anniversary.

Best wishes and hope your day will be as wonderful as ours.

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Shaden1982

Shaden1982

Posted
Posted

Lets Party--did you write your own vows or does RR have a specific vow renewal they follow?

 

What was included in your reception?

 

Did you pay to have any 'extras' at the reception? I know they offer a few different type to choose from for an extra cost.

 

I have been in contact with RR once and they didn't seem very helpful at all. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us.

 

~Sharon

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bbspin12

bbspin12

Posted
Posted
We received 250 pictures in total. Some of them being 8x10's and most 5x7's. We also received a dvd with all the pictures. A few frames and a royal romance album.

Wow that seems like alot of pictures....now I am getting excited..

:( I have no pictures from my first wedding. I was so unhappy about getting married at the court house that I did not want any pictures of the day. My experience with Royal Romance was good. I felt that corresponding via email was best and they responded within 48 hours.

I am now very excited about meeting my on board "person" for the vows...sounds like they will make it special.:)

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LuvMyVette

LuvMyVette

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Sharon ~Shanon went over the vow renewals with us. Pretty standard stuff but it was nicely done and geared toward a vow renewal. I found a poem and asked her to read it to my DH from me and that was no problem.

The reception included a cake (which was really good btw), bottle of champagne and the photographer was there during that time. We had it in Cloud 9 which was a perfect location and was private.

The only other extra at the reception was purchasing another bottle of champagne for our guests. One bottle and fourteen people didn't quite cut it. Other than that we didn't do anything else.

Besides that it was hiring the photographer for an extra hour so we could have pictures taken before the ceremony. Money well spent since they came out beautiful.

Shaden ~ Royal Romance will ask you to fax over a copy of your marriage license to verify that you're legally married. I did make a copy and brought it with me on the ship but it wasn't necessary. I also brought all email from Royal Romance as well just in case information wasn't passed on to the Social Host.

More than happy to help. Some people have had luck with RR but for me it was nothing but a hassle. Only one person was helpful and she called me the day before our cruise to go over everything. Of course I noted that in the survey that I received. Unreal what I had to go through with them. They seem to be very unorganized from my experience.

Good luck!

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jessicarwills

jessicarwills

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Hello, I was married (vow renewal) , through Royal Caribbean, While in Port at Grand Cayman, in 2005., We considered it our wedding, it was actually a renewal though because prior to that we got our license in the states. Anyway it was wonderful, would do it again in a heartbeat,

 

You cannot get married at sea, only in Port or on an island stop., We got married at Smith Cove beach (beautiful), and it was great because everything was taken care of for us., Cake was awesome, everyone said the best they have ever had. Pictures and photographer were awesome, we were given all originals and a disk, in the package price , was like maybey, $300.oo, but we got a ton of pics, a 5x7 of everything she took, extra balck and whites, 8x10's and frames, picture albums, etc., all great quality. Pictures were taken of everything, before, during, after wedding, beach, family, ship, and on the ship, on the tender, everything.

 

We had 38 people with us, only problems we had were with dining, we were suppose to all sit by each other, so that was kind of a mess trying to figure out when we got on board., RCCL did give us a free party on board for the misshaps that happened while planning, it was alot of fun, and free drinks of whatever for an hour was included.

 

Our minister was native to the island, and was a wondeful man.

 

My husband, actually went to a florist on the island (with no previous planning) and bought all of our flowers (except my bouquet, and my girls) for around 100.00, it was super cheap.

 

We all had champange, they set up glasses and serve, drinks, and cake., it was all very organized. (they do collect the glasses quickly though to take back to the ship, so then we drank from the bottle,

 

I am a planner so it was hard fro me not to know until the last minute what time the ceremony would take place, (you don't find out until a few weeks before the wedding), even though we requested morning, so after we could enjoy the island some, it ended up being 2 pm

 

I think total cost for us was maybey 1,000, not bad for a nice ceremony !!! Any other questions just ask

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Wildblue

Wildblue

Posted
Posted

Thanks for this thread and the info, my wife and I are also planning on renewing our vows on RCI, for our 10 year anniversary. We're cruising alone, so no guests, and really don't have any specific requirements or requests. Our anniversary date isn't even during the cruise, it's just close. Formal night would be nice, but will they really flat-out NOT do them those nights?

 

I'd like to bring a bottle or our personal special wine for that night, but from what I understand NO alcohol is allowed to be brought onboard, regardless of the circumstances.

 

Anybody know what the chapel is like on Freedom of the Seas? Rather expensive, too, especially if we're not looking for anything special or big.

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