In March 2018, David and I were married on the Norwegian Breakaway. And when we talk about getting married on a cruise, the same questions get asked: “Do you regret not having a normal wedding?” “Were you avoiding the price of a traditional ceremony?” and “How did you coordinate 40 guests on a cruise ship?” And my answers are always: no, of course, and with the right planning!
Having your wedding on a cruise is not for everyone. If you want a church ceremony with all the quintessential traditions, then a cruise isn’t for you. If you want a wedding filled to the brim with hundreds of guests, then a cruise isn’t for you. But if you want a ceremony that is budget-friendly, and filled with people you love, then a cruise wedding is a great option! Here’s why:
1. You (and your family and friends) love to travel.
This one is a no-brainer. Anyone who wants to get married on a cruise probably loves to travel. And what is a better time to incorporate travel in your life other than your wedding? With a cruise, you can say your vows in a setting others can only dream of. Imagine being able to tell someone, “Our wedding is on a beach in the Bahamas!” or “We are getting married on the bow of the ship while overlooking the ocean!” For the travel-lover, a cruise wedding is a perfect way to bring you to a unique destination to say your vows with the person you love. And the best part is you get to spend a few more days traveling in celebration!
Many people who came to our wedding did so because they were looking for an excuse to go on a vacation. And if you’re someone that loves to travel, chances are your friends and family love to travel too. If you’re not sure if your guests will want to come – ask! We spread the word that we wanted to have a cruise wedding. And our friends immediately jumped on the chance to come with us (which surprised us). With this, we quickly realized our loved ones loved to travel just as much as we did.
2. You don’t want the fuss of a traditional wedding.
Cruise weddings are not traditional. While you can incorporate traditional elements into your ceremony, your wedding will still be out of the ordinary. I mean, how many people can say that they had a ceremony on the ocean or a beach in the Caribbean? Holding a wedding on a cruise is not something that is done every day. And that’s a good thing! It’s what makes a cruise wedding memorable and why it is a great idea for the non-traditional couple. And if you still want to incorporate some traditional elements, they can easily be added to the ceremony.
But without having the stress of a traditional wedding, you’re free to make the ceremony, the reception, the day, and quite frankly, the whole cruise what you want it to be. Want to get married on the aft of the ship while Celine Dion plays in the background à la Titanic? Be my guest. Want to get married on the beach with no one else around except the two of you? Have at it. Most wedding cruise companies will do anything they can to help you realize your ceremony, making the day you dreamed of easily within your reach.
3. You don’t have a huge guest list.
Let’s be honest here: you can’t have 200 people on a cruise wedding. You simply can’t. From price to logistics, to even herding 200 people on a boat, it would be near impossible. There is a lot that goes into coordinating guests for a cruise wedding. From making sure your family and friends have their booking reservations correct, to getting them on the boat, to your wedding ceremony and then the cruise itself, it can be a long process.
40 people were hard for me to coordinate and I know that it would be near-impossible for groups much larger than that. If you are looking for a large wedding, with many people in attendance, then good for you! If that is what you want, then it is a great idea. But it probably won’t be easy (or even possible) to pull off on a cruise.
However, if you are looking for a chance to pare down your guest list, or you are only planning to invite those closest to you, then a cruise wedding is a great choice for you. For example, we invited around 120 people to our wedding, which included a lot of family members. We ended up receiving about 40 RSVPs, half of which were family and half of which were friends. And the 40 people that did come ended up being a very fun group. By having a cruise wedding, we were able to naturally narrow it down to the people who wanted to be there and celebrate with us – and that made our experience that much more special!
4. You want someone to plan the wedding for you.
The best part of planning a cruise wedding is the lack of planning! For our wedding, the most we had to do was plan some of the details – but ultimately, all we did was submit a form with what we wanted, and the cruise ship handled everything else from there without a hitch.
The great part about our wedding was that we were able to personalize any part of the wedding we wanted. For example, they gave us the option of pre-written wedding vows, but we could use our own if we wanted. But that wasn’t all: we could also pick our ceremony songs, the decor, our cake flavor, the order of our day, and what ship venues we wanted to use (just to name a few!). No matter what we asked for, they handled our requests with ease, and we just had to show up.
5. You want to spend time with your family and friends for more than one day.
In my opinion, this is the best reason to get married on a cruise. As we began planning our wedding, I knew immediately that I wanted to find a venue that would allow us to spend the majority of the day with our family and friends. In my opinion, a wedding is the only occasion when everyone you care about will be in the same place at the same time. You will never have this opportunity again. It turns out: most places don’t allow more than a few hours in a venue. And our budget didn’t allow for us to extend a venue’s timeframe. But with a cruise, we found that we could take the opportunity to spend time with our loved ones and spread the time we had with them over a week.
I call our wedding cruise our “wedding week” because I spent all week celebrating and spending time with the people I love most in the world. And it was the most exhausting week of my life – but in a good way, because I spent almost every waking moment with those I love. And now when I think back on it, it was the most special time in my life. Because when else are you going to have the chance to wake up and have breakfast with your grandmother before having a drink with your roommate from college and then going on a cruise excursion with your aunt? Not at a traditional wedding, that’s for sure. And those memories make it all worth it.
Want to learn more about a cruise wedding? Read more about our wedding, including a guide to our planning post, below.
Have you been on a wedding cruise? Are you thinking of a cruise wedding? Let me know in the comments below! I want to hear about your experience or help you with your thought process.
And don’t forget to save this post via the images below.
I really love the aspect of getting to spend more time together with your closest friends and family. It’s so true that a wedding will bring together loved one who live far away or you rarely get to see all in one place anymore. What a wonderful opportunity to have that unity be able to last a little longer!
Hi! Thank you so much for this! I am getting married in April on Norwegian with so far 35-40 attendees. I would love to hear some tips and tricks for how to make the best of a cruise wedding. I also was curious what venue options you received. I haven’t spoke with my coordinator yet because we are still waiting on a few more to book or not. With that many people what were your options for your ceremony location? Thanks so much!
Bethany – I hope that this comment finds you safe and healthy! I apologize for my delay in response, as I was working on a post that addressed exactly this! You can read more about how we planned our cruise wedding, as well as what we learned, here: https://www.anyadventurewithyou.com/cruise-wedding-planning/ I hope that your wedding planning is still going well among this pandemic! Please let me know if you have any further questions. Happy to help!
How do I get started?