Guest Post: The Pros & Cons to Boat Weddings

Weddings can be an awful lot of fuss, stress and expenses on all sides – but if you want to make your efforts and money invested in a pitch-perfect ceremony to truly prove efficient and rewarding, you’d better think of an original venue that goes beyond mere restaurant and church arrangements. Though I’m not a big fan of open waters, I recently had a chance to attend a marvelous boat wedding: a friend of mine decided to get hitched on a cruiser off the Australian shore and as her BFF, I had no other option but to play along. Much to my surprise, the whole deal went excellently and it was extremely romantic and well-organized, which left me with a pressing need to re-examine my take on advantages and downsides of wedding cruises. So, here’s my short aftermath on the subject.

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Source: Flickr

Wedding cruise pros

1. Arrangements made easy

Thanks to their growing popularity, wedding cruisers offer a range of packages to facilitate the organization and arrangements for your big day. You can get the all-inclusive deal and have experts take care of various services for you, like wedding planning, music, photography, catering, flower decorations and tux rentals. This is extremely convenient and leaves your hands free of extra stress and lengthy TO DO lists like DJ booking, cake orders, dinner menus and venue arrangements after the party’s over.

2. Best value for money

Another great thing about boat weddings is the fact that you can plan the ceremony on a budget and still get the best deal for your money. With a stunning seascape backdrop, trained caterers and lower prices of the wedding reception itself, a wedding cruise is more cost-effective than a ceremony on land.

3. A honeymoon to go

Once you’ve set sail on your much-awaited marital waters, you may as well proceed to your honeymoon immediately.  Skip the trip expenses and have the boat take you to your nuptial destination with the party still on: this will save you extra money and time you’d otherwise spend hopping trains and planes on the way to your honeymoon Mecca.

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Source: Pinterest

Boat wedding downsides

1. Numbers do matter

One potential pitfall of a boat wedding is limited seating space. For instance, if you’ve set your mind on staging a major wedding event with hundreds of guests, you may want to check with the cruiser authorities whether their vessel can accommodate all the people you want to invite (typically, boats can host small-scope wedding venues with a relatively short guest list).

2. A preemptive inspection

Though most wedding boats provide cleaning services on their own, you shouldn’t rely on good faith. Once you’ve booked the cruise, pay a visit to the ship (e.g. on the day before your wedding) to check the state of the boat and pout your mind at peace. In case the vessel doesn’t conform to your cleanliness standards, you may want to hire boat cleaning professionals to doll it up in the last minute – after all, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

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Source: Pinterest

3. Restrictions that can’t be bended

One more downside of a wedding cruise is found in the ship rulebooks and port regulations. For example, you may be required to ditch live flowers for paper or silk decorations, and some ports have limitations on the items you can bring along onboard with you – and if you’re getting hitched on foreign waters, you will also have to get the wedding permit on your own.

4. Punctuality is essential

Unlike with church weddings, the future newlyweds and their guests will have to be punctual when arriving to the cruiser-borne wedding venue. Unless you show up on time, the boat may well leave without you – so make this clear to everyone in your wedding company unless you want to see some belated guests waving farewell from the shore as your cruise sails out.

Post written by Roxana Oliver.




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