Carnival Cruise Wedding

In beginning the plannings of what was going to be a large-expensive small town wedding, I started doing some research into doing a wedding on a cruise.  One of my dream places to visit in life was Atlantis, Paradise Island in the Bahamas so I based my cruise searchings on the Eastern Caribbean, but of course only those that stopped at Atlantis for more than just a few hours.  After doing a fair bit of research it was decided we were going to set sail on the Eastern Caribbean to get hitched on a white sandy beach in St. Thomas.

The cost of arranging this dream come true wedding was much cheaper than the small town wedding we had originally started to plan, and the cruise was not just for the groom and bride, but also our 9 year old son!

Now, because this was by far the most astounding trips I’ve ever been on and I want to be sure you get to hear all about the fabulousness, I am going to blog a day of the trip each day hopefully intriguing you enough to want to know more!

Our cruise wedding turned out to be so easy to plan, little stress and yet it was so beautifully elegant.  We had 23 family and friends grace us with their presence on our special day/week.  We chose the Carnival Freedom, 8 day cruise on the Eastern Caribbean.  A ship with 2,974 passenger capacity with a crew of 1,150.  We were setting sail from Fort Lauderdale, Florida porting in San Juan, a day at sea, our big day in St. Thomas, a day at Antigua, a pit stop in Tortola, another day at sea and our last at sea stop at Nassau and then back to port in Fort Lauderdale.

With everything on ship from theaters to a library, a spa (with the most amazing masseuses ever), a 70’s bar, piano bar, disco club, lounges, casino, sports bar, suishi bar, restaurants, cafes, shops and the list goes on and on with mini golf, waterslide, big outdoor movie screen by some of the pools.  There were  more things to do and see on the ship than what a person could ever take all in within 8 days.

To ensure we would make it to the port on time in case of any flight delays, we decided to fly down to Fort Lauderdale a day early to take a quick tour of Fort Lauderdale/Miami.  The guys toured the Miami Strip while the gals hung around the beach and pool doing a bit of shopping of course.   We stayed at the Ocean Sky Resort which was beach front with an amazing view.

Day 1 - Pulling up to the port is a sight of its own - gigantic cruise ships everywhere!  The hustle and bustle of thousands of people and their luggage registering to get onto the ship was quite a process, very smooth and painless and considering they were trying to get nearly 3,000 people booked in and on board in a matter of 2 hours it was flawless.

Once on board it was overwhelming, no one knew where to begin - the kids wanted to swim so then the decision became which pool and where is it.   We ended up finding a pool on the same floor near our balcony oceanview room, and there was a bar, restaurant and the outdoor big screen there so we ended up spending time there daily and it became our meeting grounds in the morning for breakfast for those who wanted to meet up.

This first day on ship we spent the day touring, getting lost, finding our rooms and just being breathless at how amazing everything was.  We got the kids registered in the Camp Carnival for whenever they wished to join in some of the kid activities.  Spent the evening checking out some of the lounges and comedy shows.