By Rusty Pickett, MCC, ECC

Weddings at sea are becoming a popular and very affordable alternative to the traditional church wedding. I recently had the pleasure of participating in the wedding of a wonderful 20-something couple from Ft. Lauderdale aboard Royal Caribbean’s Enchantment of the Seas. It was absolutely perfect!
The planning took 13 months from the initial booking of the group until the actual ceremony. The couple found my company through the Internet, and after talking to them on the phone, I met with them at their home, providing an information package and answering the multitude of questions that they had. We were off and running!
Royal Caribbean, as well as Celebrity Cruises, uses a contractor, “Royal Romances,” to do all of their wedding planning. I need to emphasize that they are a contractor, and are not associated with the cruise line in any “in-house” way. This resulted in some different business practices than those I am accustional to with RCI.
The entire wedding planning is separate from the group cruise planning. The wedding is booked as a separate contract between Royal Romances and the couple. The agent is left totally out of the process unless you are proactive in getting involved, — which I considered a must. Once the wedding contract and group cruise contract were in place, I had the wedding cruise Web site up and running, and the bookings started coming in. Included in the Web site was a link to the couple’s guest registry at two national department store chains, and a recommendation that any wedding guest who can’t find the “right gift,” contribute funds in their name to help offset some of the couple’s wedding expenses. (No one chose this option. It isn’t an original idea. I learned this at a CRUISE-A-THON seminar!)
The bride and groom took care of sending out invitations, and I sent out several cruise-related mailings/E-mails based on the list the bride and groom provided. For embarkation weddings — those onboard the ship while it is in port — guests do not need to sail. They do need, however, to provide address, citizenship/identification, and date of birth info similar to that we provide for ship inspections. Guests also need to arrive the night before the ceremony, as all must be at the terminal at 10:30 a.m., so that they are the first to board. I reserved a block of rooms at a local hotel, which provided a shuttle to the cruise port the morning of the wedding.
The day of the wedding was wonderful. The bride and her party had made prior arrangements with a local hairdresser to get their hair done starting at 7:30 a.m., which was probably a challenge.
All arrived at the terminal promptly, and we were greeted by three Royal Romances wedding planners. All wedding participants who are not sailing must arrive dressed for the wedding as there is no place other than the restrooms or a cruiser’s cabin available to change. Royal Caribbean officials checked cruising guests’ boarding documents, and ushered the non-sailing guests through the security desk where they surrendered their driver’s licenses.
Our wedding group, and another also being conducted on board, were ushered into outer holding areas in two separate locations. The wedding planners sat down with the wedding party and conducted a pre-brief, and the other attendees were told where to be for the wedding (as the Enchantment does not have a wedding chapel, our wedding was in the smaller show lounge). The bride contracted the wedding, complete with still photo coverage by one of the onboard photographers, and a two-hour non-alcoholic reception for 50 people for a cost of about $6,000. Both the ceremony and the reception were in the same venue.
When the ship was cleared for boarding, the wedding planners escorted us through the security checkpoint, cruise check-in and on to the ship — about an hour in advance of the wedding. The bride went to the honeymooners’ cabin (which we had kept a secret) and the groom went to his father’s cabin. At the appointed time the primary wedding planner (we had three planners) escorted the bride from her cabin up to the venue.
Our wedding planner (in her ninth month of pregnancy and obviously uncomfortable) was wonderful. She is licensed by the state of Florida to perform weddings, and, in fact, had had her own wedding several years prior on this same ship and in the same venue. Her ceremony was loving, attentive and happy. The Royal Caribbean DJ and reception servers were polite, attentive, hard working and professional. I saw nothing that I would have done differently. The reception went on until the life boat drill at 4 p.m. Promptly, as soon as the alarm sounded, the non-sailing guests departed the ship, and the bride and groom, in full wedding garb, donned their life vests and manned their muster station, much to the delight and praise of their fellow cruisers! A humorous end to a great beginning!
This was a wonderful ceremony that I would recommend to anyone (I hope my engaged daughter reads this!), as it is very affordable. And, the time during the cruise for the reunion of friends and family was greatly appreciated by all, based on their comments to me during the cruise.
Royal Caribbean International take note: 1. The agency and agent must be involved in the planning/execution process of the wedding package as there are many details and decisions that the bride and groom must make to ensure the whole package is a success. The agency/agent cannot be a third party in this process, given the complexity of today’s cruises. 2. Pay us commission on the wedding! I spent a bunch of hours behind the scenes making this happen but received no compensation for the wedding portion of the package. Though I would continue to recommend this package, the fact that it is not commissionable to some degree is beyond comprehension. This isn’t a shore excursion — it’s the most important day of this couple’s life together.

Russell (Rusty) Pickett is a retired career Naval officer. He has a BS from Yale University and an MBA from Charleston Southern University. As a Home Based agent, he founded Shellback Cruises, a cruise-oriented agency based in Charleston, SC, in 1999.