Step by Step Guide to a Wedding At Sea

You may remember two weeks ago I announced my closest friends became engaged and have decided that after meeting each other on a cruise , they thought the ideal wedding for them would be to get married at sea and have asked me to lead them on this incredibly exciting journey in arranging their wedding for them. I feel very honoured and after booking many land based weddings abroad for many years for hundreds of couples , booking their wedding on a cruise line was going to be alot more straight forward.

I was wrong!! Getting married at sea isn’t as easy as it seems. There is an awful lot of small print and legalities that you need to understand and planning in advance is vital . Legalizing a wedding in a foreign port can also be tricky .

If your image was to be married by the Captain in a romantic ceremony that would give Leonardo De Caprio and Kate Winslet a run for their money then its all about doing your research well in advance. Only a selection of captains on certain cruise ships can marry you.

Remember cruise ship weddings might not be for everyone, if you have dreamed of a home town location in front of hundreds of guests with the perfectly chosen flowers, music and food, then the simple approach of a wedding at sea may not be for you. Also there are other things to take into consideration. Having family and friends with you on your Honeymoon, the size of your cabin, it may be smaller than you would like it to be and would you be happy eating with others, small things I know but all needs to be taken into account when planning your wedding.

Luckily my friends have decided to marry at the end of 2015 so if this is you also then over the next weeks and coming months I will put together a step by step guide as I myself go into every detail into planning their wedding at sea.

On a plus note Weddings at Sea have become hugely popular , so popular that some cruise lines are charging a supplement for getting married at certain times of the year.

As for my friends they are in the early stages and are still  deciding on a location , possibilities at the moment are marrying on a glacier in Alaska, beach side location in Hawaii or Grand Cayman or whilst at sea.  There are many options to consider and of course this also comes down to your guests too. whether your guests will be on the cruise with you or joining you at a port location will all have a deciding factor of the type of wedding you go for. I genuinely do feel though that with every wedding deciding on the location and whether to invite guests can be the most difficult decision of all.

In two weeks time my next blog will be all the packages wedding companies have to offer and their costs and of course the legalities we all face when planning a wedding at sea.

Please feel free to email me if you have decided to marry at sea or have been married at sea, I would love to hear your story .

Holly