As I walked down the aisle, my smile hurt my cheeks. The moment I had been waiting for, through all of the planning and our two years of engagement, was finally here. I was marrying the love of my life. Throughout all of the organization of our cruise wedding, this was the only moment I could think of. And now I was walking down the aisle towards my groom.
Our cruise wedding on the Norwegian Breakaway was one of the most beautiful days of my life. Surrounded by 40 of our friends and family, we said our vows right in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. To this day, I still remember our wedding being perfect and everything we wanted. Want to learn why? Keep reading for the story of our cruise wedding on the Norwegian Breakaway.
What This Post Covers:
The Details
When we first started thinking of a cruise wedding, I did some research to see if it was feasible. Actually, scratch that – I did a lot of research. Before my then-fiancé really even agreed to a cruise wedding, he wanted to see the price difference between this and a “traditional wedding.” So I created a spreadsheet that compared different cruise lines, itineraries, prices, weddings, and drinks packages to see which one would suit us the best. I also went through what we had spent as a gust on past friends’ weddings to see what we spent on hotels, transportation, gifts, etc. to see what the average cost of a wedding was for our guests. (You can learn more about this process in this post, which discusses all of the planning aspects of our cruise wedding.)
After we did a LOT more research, we decided to go on Norwegian Cruise line as felt we would save our guests a lot of money with the included beverage package. Our family and friends enjoy a drink as much as us, so we knew that a lot of them would appreciate the included alcohol package. Once we narrowed it down to the cruise line, we realized that we didn’t want to ask everyone to also have to pay for airline fees on top of the cruise. This meant that the only place we could sail out of was New York City since it was the only Norwegian Cruise Line port within driving distance of Northern Virginia/Maryland, where most of our family and guests were located.
From there, we narrowed it down based on the timing of the cruise (spring break was the cheapest and easiest for everyone) and our cruise wedding planning began! We decided to send invitations out more than a year in advance. This helped our guests find the vacation time to come while also starting to save some money. Since we sent the invitations out at the beginning of 2017, many of them hadn’t planned their 2018 travel yet, so the timing was perfect. And thanks to this extra time, we ended up having 40 people sail with us! The group ranged from close friends to most of our family. Considering we only invited around 100 people, we were pretty happy with the size of the group, especially for a destination wedding.
Once our guests started to book their cruises, we started to look at the different packages from Norwegian Cruise Line. There was a wide variety of choices, but we decided to go with the Symbolic at Sea package, as we realized there was much more flexibility in getting married on the ship. We realized that if we were married at a port, we would not only have to add in the cost of transporting our guests but also the ceremony site, any decorations, and anything else we wanted in our wedding – not to mention we’d have to go back to the ship for our reception. In comparison, the price was negligible to hold it onboard the ship.
Something else we realized is that we would be taking away from any time that our guests wanted to spend in the port – either exploring or taking an excursion – which would also be, in a way, taking away from their vacation. This ended up being a really lucky decision because we initially wanted to get married on Great Stirrup Cay – and it ended being the one port that got canceled during the cruise!
Initially, I didn’t plan on hiring a photographer at all. The ship limited the number of photos we could purchase and the length of the photographer’s time at our ceremony. I was thinking about using what was offered in the package and nothing more, rather asking our friends for their photos. However, my sister had a great idea. She suggested we invite a close friend, who also did photography, to come with us! In return, we paid for his cruise fare and he photographed not only our wedding and reception, but also took some photos of us at one of the ports.
Our Cruise Wedding Day Timeline:
- Wedding Ceremony – Manhattan Main Dining Room, 2:00 p.m.
- Reception – Fat Cats Jazz Club, 4:00 p.m.
- Dinner in the Manhattan Main Dining room – 5:30 p.m.
We also got lucky and were able to participate in the ship’s newlywed game on the same day as our wedding. This ended up being a funny coincidence – we had no clue that the game was going to happen! But it was such a fun way to round out the whole day.
If you want to learn more about how exactly we planned our cruise wedding, and how the planning process was different than a typical wedding, you can read more in our cruise wedding planning post.
Our Legal Wedding
When you are legally married on a cruise ship, your marriage license is filed in the ship’s registered port of call. For us, this would have been the Bahamas. We did a little research and realized that this would be difficult to prove our marriage in some cases, especially if there were any legal issues. Therefore, we decided to have our legal wedding a few days before our actual ceremony so that we could have an American wedding certificate.
In our minds, the legal wedding would only be a day of signing paperwork. We decided early on in our planning that the cruise wedding would be the day we would celebrate as our anniversary.
The officiant that we chose performed weddings near my parents’ house. Both sets of our parents accompanied us to what we thought was going to be the signing of some paperwork and nothing more. But the officiant surprised us and did a short but sweet ceremony. She talked about how we made a choice to get married, which meant that we always needed to make a choice to stay in love as well. Once she was done, we signed our marriage certificate and that was it! We were legally married. We celebrated with a small dinner with our families after and then went right back to planning. Because this meant there were only a few days until our cruise wedding!
Pre-Planning Our Cruise Wedding
We planned our cruise for over a year. As I said earlier, we sent our invitations out to our guests for more than a year in advance. However, we only did most of the hardcore planning about three months out. The wedding planner helped us make our choices beforehand and then had us fill out a worksheet with all of our ceremony and reception choices about six weeks before our wedding date. The onboard coordinator then handled everything once we turned in the paperwork. From there, the hardest thing was finalizing details with the ship itself.
Once we arrived onboard, there was a note from our cruise planners, Mary Ann and Gringo (yes, that was really his name). They scheduled a meeting with us the day before our wedding (which was also the day we embarked). After we got on board, but before the muster drill, we met Mary Ann at the guest services desk and sat down in her office. We discussed everything we had reserved before the cruise, such as the D.J. during our reception, as well as the flow of the wedding ceremony itself.
During the meeting, Mary Ann printed out the suggested script for the ceremony and we edited it right then and there with any wording we wanted. She let us ask as many questions as possible and made suggestions to place things in areas we hadn’t thought about before. Mary Ann also took our decorations from us and confirmed how we wanted them set up during the ceremony.
Our photographer came with us and, after we talked everything through, Mary Ann brought us to take a look at our ceremony and reception spaces. During this time, we also talked about the different shots we wanted and Mary Ann took the time to show us some of the best places to take photos on the boat, such as with the chandelier in the main lobby. I loved meeting our coordinators the day before because it brought a face to a name and it allowed both of us to walk away feeling confident about the day.
The biggest downside was that we didn’t have space or time to do a wedding rehearsal. However, most of our wedding party had been a part of other weddings, so we decided to risk it and let everyone do what they thought best.
Our Bachelor/Bachelorette Party
We didn’t want people to spend money outside of our the cruise itself, so we decided to forego any sort of weekend-long bachelor/bachelorette parties (and we also asked that people didn’t bring gifts). However, we still wanted to do something to celebrate, so we decided to ask everyone to spend the first night of the cruise partying away our last night of being single!
We split up into girls and guys and went out in separate parts of the ship to start the Bachelor/Bachelorette parties. My group met in the martini bar, which was a perfect choice for a bachelorette party! The bartenders made some of the best drinks on the ship and they loved having a big group there and they kept making us themed drinks to celebrate! This meant we were all a little tipsy when we left…
My bridesmaids and sister had some bachelorette-themed items, which we opened and, ahem, put on, before hopping around the ship. Throughout the night, we found ourselves at almost every bar, including the Bliss Ultra Lounge on Deck 4 (where they were playing 90’s music!), the piano bar (where they serened me with some dueling piano-styled Britney Spears in honor of my last single night), and the sail away party in the Atrium Bar.
David and his group also had a great time. His best man had a fun idea where everyone put $10 into a fund for David to bet at the casino. We have some friends who like to gamble throughout Vegas, so they found a good craps table for David to bet all of the money on – and he lost it all in the first round! Our friends had told him to bet black and he decided to bet red, which became a running joke throughout the week. After they spent a few hours in the casino, we ran into their group in the atrium bar and we all partied together for the rest of the night.
The best part of the night? Celebrating with everyone once it turned midnight. Our wedding day had begun! After that, we grabbed some food and everyone passed out around 1 a.m. because we had a cruise wedding to get to in a few hours!
Our Wedding Day
Morning-of and Getting Ready
I woke up around 6 a.m. and all I could think was, “today is our wedding day!” David was still asleep so I went out on our balcony and took in the sunrise while writing a few thank you cards before heading down to breakfast with my family and bridesmaids. Luckily, David didn’t wake up, so we can claim that we didn’t see each other before our wedding 😉
After breakfast, my bridesmaids went off to start their makeup while I headed to the salon. One of the best hairdressers I have ever met helped me that morning. He was so excited it was our wedding day and took my ideas and simply ran with them and took extra time to make my hair perfect. I remember asking my mom and her best friend to sit with me and they said, “No, take this time to relax. It’s going to be a busy day.” Looking back, I’m glad I got that time to reflect on the rest of the day because my Mom was exactly right. It gave me a moment to relax and prepare for the day. The salon looked out over the ocean, so it was nice sitting there with a drink and thinking about what was ahead.
We reserved the conference room behind the ship’s atrium from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m. for the bridesmaids to get ready in. It was a perfect location to get ready in because it was easy for us to hop out and grab a drink from the atrium bar. We spent the morning in our robes, drinking from the personalized tumblers I gifted my bridesmaids, listening to music, and getting ready.
At one point, two of my bridesmaids pulled out their dresses and realized that they got wrinkled in transportation. At that moment, Gringo popped in his head to check on us. I wasn’t worried about the wrinkles, but we asked casually if they had iron or anything to smooth out the dresses. In just a few minutes, he was bringing the dresses to the dry-cleaning staff. He had all of our dresses, including mine, steamed and back within the hour – no charge! It was so sweet.
While we were getting ready, David and his groomsmen got dressed in their individual rooms before having a drink together at the whiskey bar. Our photographer came in and out, moving from David and his groomsmen to us to take group and detail photos all throughout the morning. One of my bridesmaids was ready early and was helping him get photos of my dress. The conference room had no windows and was sort of yellow, and my dress was a champagne color, so it wasn’t looking right. She had the great idea of bringing my dress up to our suite to take a photo of it with the natural light on the ocean.
Around 1:30 p.m., we realized it was time to head down to the ceremony! My Mom is a very punctual person; she took a look at the time and realized we needed to hurry up right then! We couldn’t leave our stuff in the conference room, so everyone rushed to put their stuff back in their staterooms. Everyone started to rush to get to the wedding on time, even though I didn’t get in my dress until around 1:45 p.m. I look back and laugh because what was going to happen? Were they going to start without me? We definitely didn’t need to rush as much.
Before I knew it, I had my dress on, and we were walking across the ship to make it to the Manhattan main dining room. Later on, someone joked with me that they had never been to a wedding that had started on time – but we ended up starting the whole thing at exactly 2 p.m.
My Mom cracked me up because to get from the atrium to The Manhattan Room on the Norwegian Breakaway, you have to walk through the casino on Deck 7. She turned to me and said, “Who else gets to walk through a casino on their wedding day?” But people were stopping to take photos, following us to our ceremony all while saying congratulations. It was a fun way to start getting excited since we were all on our way to our wedding!
Our Cruise Wedding Ceremony
Once we made it to The Manhattan Room, the whole wedding party was there waiting for us. However, Mary Ann had already tucked David inside the doors, getting him ready to walk down the aisle with his parents. My Dad was there too, waiting to walk me down the aisle with my Mom. Everything started to move quickly – our wedding was about to start! I turned to my Mom and said, “It doesn’t feel like my wedding day. It feels like any normal day!” But then the music went off and the doors opened, and my heart leaped in my chest. I couldn’t wait to get down the aisle to my David.
Leading up to our wedding, there was one moment I was looking forward to most – walking down the aisle. I had decided not to do a first look because one of the most important things to me was to have that moment where David and I saw each other down the aisle to be as special as possible. Funny enough, as we were getting ready, one of my bridesmaids said, “I bet David’s going to cry!” His best friend and I laughed and disagreed because David is not one to show a lot of emotion. David and I had even talked about it before the wedding, and he didn’t think that he would want all of that attention that a wedding day would bring on him, so he thought he might feel too awkward to cry.
But then the doors swung open, and my Dad, Mom and I began to walk down the aisle. I think the music was playing correctly and I think everyone was standing. But I don’t remember anything at all. Because all I could focus on was David. The moment I was waiting for was finally here. And to my surprise, there were tears in his eyes!
Since we hadn’t had a wedding rehearsal, David had walked his parents down the aisle and stood on the side that felt natural to him. He told me later that as soon as he got in place the captain, who was performing our ceremony, leaned over to him and said, “I usually prefer the groom to be standing on the other side.” David stood on the wrong side of the aisle! Ha.
As we got to the end of the aisle and I gave my Mom and Dad a hug – but I remember wanting to get away from them and just get to David. My sister told me after the ceremony that she hadn’t ever been to a wedding where the couple smiled as much as we did. This sounds so funny but looking back, all we did was stand there, hold hands and tell each other how much we loved one another. It was such a beautiful moment.
There’s actually not much that I remember from the ceremony itself. It all went in a blur. However, I do remember a few things: I remember holding David’s hands. I remember his Dad standing up to do a reading. I remember my Mom standing up to do her reading, but then looking at me in horror before saying, “I forgot my reading back in the room!” which cracked everyone up. (Remember me saying that my Mom is extremely punctual?) And I remember doing our sand ceremony.
Mary Ann had decorated our ceremony site and it was exactly what I wanted. She placed two flower arrangements on the stage and had placed small aisle runners next to each of the chairs. She also made a beautiful arrangement around our guest book and our sand ceremony, giving them a beachy vibe. We didn’t even need to ask her to set up the sand ceremony – she prepared it all perfectly.
Later in the week, David told me that when he walked in, the blinds in the back of the dining room, but in the front of our ceremony, were closed. He knew that I had fought really hard to be in The Manhattan Room because we both wanted to be overlooking the ocean when we got married. So, he turned to Mary Ann and said, “This won’t work,” and walked over and began flipping the curtains up. Apparently, Mary Ann said, “Oh. We can’t do tha-… OK. Never mind. We can put them up,” and came over to help him. She told us both later that they aren’t supposed to open the blinds when there’s an event in the room, but looking back at pictures I am so glad we did. Not only did we get married in front of the ocean, but the light in the room was perfect.
After our sand ceremony, we moved back over to the captain for the exchanging of the rings. David’s best man had been joking the entire time that he might lose the rings in the ocean, so I (quietly) breathed a small sigh of relief when he pulled the rings out. The captain said something beautiful about us remembering through our marriage that we were making a choice to be together. And it was official – we were married! The captain introduced us as Mr. and Mrs. and everyone cheered as we walked back down the aisle.
We stopped in the back of the room and all of our guests came to congratulate us. Our photographer then moved everyone back into the ceremony space so that he could capture the one thing I said wanted above all else – a group photo of everyone who had attended! The captain also was nice enough to stick around to take a photo with us and chat with a few of our guests.
After that, we started the typical group and family photos, as well as the bridesmaids and groomsmen photos. We also stepped out on the balcony to take a few photos with the ocean in the background as well. As we “released” people from photos, we encouraged them to go down and grab a drink from the bar outside of our reception venue.
We then finished our time with our photographer, but before our reception, by walking through the ship and grabbing a few photos with different areas. However, after almost an hour and a half straight of photos, our jaws (literally) started to hurt. So we broke off to grab a drink of our own before heading to the reception.
The Reception
After a quick break, we headed up at 4 p.m. to the Fat Cats Jazz Bar (now called Syd Norman’s) on Deck 7. They had a selfie station outside of the venue, so we grabbed a quick photo to celebrate our marriage before heading in. My sister, who was also my maid of honor, went to the venue early to make sure that everything was set up correctly (and of course it was because Mary Ann and Gringo were amazing).
While my sister was checking everything out before the reception, the D.J came up to her and said, “No line dances?” I have a thing about line dances at weddings. I know that they are supposed to get everyone up to start dancing. But I also think that they can be cheesy and overwhelming for people since not everyone feels comfortable doing them. So, one of the only things I specified for our reception wedding music was no line dances. My sister and I went back and forth on that, but ultimately, I decided not to do any. However, at that moment, my sister made an executive decision and said, “No, you can do some line dances.” Needless to say, I was surprised when they started to play later on… 😂
The first thing I noticed when our reception started was the D.J. was phenomenal! Without even asking, he emceed our whole wedding without a flaw – all based on the timeline I provided to our coordinator. All I provided was a “must-play” list (which only really included our entrance song, our first dance and the father/daughter and mother/son dances) and a “do not play” list (which only included line dances, but that was out the window by now…) He took those lists and absolutely ran with them! Like any good D.J., he knew exactly what we needed to keep the party going the whole time.
So we entered our reception and were introduced for the first time as husband and wife with “I’m on a Boat” by The Lonely Island playing in the background. We then started into our first dance song of “Now” by Lonestar.
Mary Ann had made the space perfect – all of the tables and chairs were set in a horseshoe around the dancefloor, with two chairs next to the main table. She also moved the guest book from the ceremony and set it up on the room’s main table, alongside the cake. This made a focal point of the space and really made it feel like a reception. Mary Ann also decorated the table with ocean-themed decorations and worked with the theatre crew to make sure that there were spotlights on the important stuff like the cake, the dance floor, the guest book, and so on.
Mary Ann also set up a “Couples’ Table”-type area space for us, complete with a table that had my bouquet, our wedding certification, and she had even put a bucket with champagne for us right next to us, free of charge!
We then moved into a traditional reception, and had a wide variety of speeches after our entrance, with David’s father giving a speech, my mom giving her reading from earlier that she had forgotten, and some great speeches from my sister and David’s best man. My Dad gave the best speech of the night, talking about how much he appreciated our family and even tearing up! It was a highlight for everyone.
After the speeches finished, David and his mom did the mother/son dance before I moved into my dance with my Dad. Something that was really important to my Dad was doing a goofy dance at the end of our song. I didn’t indicate how I wanted it to happen, so we were overjoyed when the D.J. played a scratched record sound and moved right into the chicken dance. This ended up being a great transition, and we got my family up to dance before bringing everyone else on to the dance floor to start the party! (Which maybe made me eat my words about line dances…)
We danced for about half an hour with waiters going around the room bringing people drinks as soon as they wanted one. Something that still amuses me from our reception was me walking up to a waiter to ask for another drink. All throughout my cruise wedding day I was drinking one of the ship’s signature drinks, “The Rebellious Fish.” (see below. I drank these in style!)
At one point, I ran out, so I casually walked up to ask the waiter for a new one. He wasn’t 100% paying attention, so out of the corner of my eye as I waited for him to see me, I saw Mary Ann walk up to him, hit him (gently) with the papers she had in hand, and said, “She’s the bride! Get her what she wants right now!” While it wasn’t necessary (I can wait for a drink, even on my wedding day), it just went to show how attentive Mary Ann was. Needless to say, I had a Rebellious Fish in my hand quite frequently after that.
Thanks to the dancing and the copious amount of Rebellious Fishes, the night started to become a blur. We did a few traditional wedding things, like the garter and bouquet toss. One of my bridesmaids and a good friend of ours caught the garter and bouquet and did a funny dance together afterward. And then it was time to cut the cake!
There was a complimentary cake included in our package, which we decided not to upgrade. We had noticed when we attended our friends’ weddings in the past, no one ever ate the cake! Therefore, we replaced our cake portion with a complimentary champagne toast (and, because everyone had the alcohol package, it was included for everyone!) And then that was it! Our reception was over. Everyone started making their way down to The Manhattan Room again for our group dinner reservation.
Dinner and the Rest of the Night
Once we made it to the dining room, we realized that they had three semi-private tables set aside in the back of the room for our party of 40. They let us and everyone else in our party bypass the line waiting outside of the dining room and sat us immediately. All of a sudden, two bottles of champagne appeared in front of us once we sat. Mary Ann had again thought of everything – we didn’t use all of our champagne for our toast, so she sent the rest to our table!
The Manhattan Room was beautiful for a wedding and was also just as beautiful for dinner. During dinner they had a singer and band playing live, making it a beautiful ambiance for a wedding night dinner. At some point, while we were making our rounds, a friend of ours let us know that they noticed in that day’s cruise compass that the ship was doing a Newlywed Game in the atrium that night! So we rallied everyone to join us, with the hope that we would be selected as the newlyweds!
We were headed down to the atrium around 7:30 p.m. for an 8 p.m. game. At that point, they asked anyone who wanted to participate to head to the left of the stage. And as soon as we walked over, the cruise director’s assistant told us, “HA. You’re in a wedding dress! OK, he will more than likely pick you.” We waited about twenty minutes before the cruise director started picking couples. He started off with the newlyweds, but I could tell that his assistant had warned him because as soon as I started jumping up and down, he said, “Did you get married today!? Is that a wedding dress? OK, I don’t think anyone can get more newlywed than you. A cruise wedding here, folks. Come on up!”
They picked some other fun couples for us to play with. We played with a middle-wed couple that was married for ten years, and a hilarious older couple who were together for about 60 years. The cruise director was quite funny and got some great answers out of people. It was such a fun way to celebrate our marriage with my new husband (husband!) and to close out our wedding day. And the best part? We won! David and I got almost every question right (I think we only missed one). We got a Norwegian Cruise Line package (with winners’ T-shirts, water bottles, koozies, a drawstring bag, and a bottle of champagne).
Some of our guests were exhausted at this point and many started going back to their staterooms. A few stragglers joined us for end-of-the-night drinks at the whiskey bar on Deck 8. Before we joined them, we headed back to our room to drop our winnings off – and we found that my family had decorated our room with a bunch of “Just Married” memorabilia! And that wasn’t it for the surprises – we also found a platter of chocolate-covered strawberries in our room!
David and I realized we couldn’t eat them all, and we couldn’t fit them in our mini-fridge. So, we brought them down to the rest of our guests and they were eaten in just a few minutes. Someone stepped outside at one point and realized we were on the coast of Florida.
We moved outside and had a few more drinks while watching the ocean. The weather was cool and perfect, and it was a great way to end our wedding day. We ended up heading to bed around one or two in the morning. But when we did, we found that we walked back to the room with the biggest smiles on our faces. The day had been perfect and we were so lucky to spend so much time with the ones we loved. What a great way to start off our married life together! It was truly, truly the best day ever.
Looking for more cruise wedding and destination wedding tips? Check out some of my other posts below:
- Eight Ways to Make Your Destination Wedding the Best Day Ever
- How We Planned Our Cruise Wedding
- How to Know if a Cruise Wedding is Right For You
Any Questions?
I hope that my description of our destination cruise wedding was helpful to you! If you have any questions about our wedding, feel free to ask away in the comments and I will get back to you ASAP!
Want to see more of our cruise wedding and our other travels? Take a look at my Instagram stories. Were you married on a cruise? What did you love the most about your experience? Do you want to get married on a cruise wedding? Make sure to comment below.
And don’t forget to save our cruise wedding story via the images below.
This looks absolutely amazing!! A dream wedding!!
Congratulations! It looks beautiful!!
Wow! What an amazing experience. And so unique. Thank you for sharing and its looks like you guys has a truly wonderful day.
Woww, this is awesome! Can we discuss the prices you were charged for the reception? We are having our wedding soon on the Breakaway also and we are surprised at the amounts they charge for the reception!
Thinking of doing a cruise wedding as well! Can you tell me about what you had to eat at the Fat Catz time? I would like to do that as a cocktail like hour and then head to the actual dining hall for our dinner. Thank you so much for your very thorough review of your event!!
My daughter is hoping to get married on the breakaway early 2026, thanks for sharing your story. One thing I’ve been wondering is when you had your sit dow.n dinner in the Manhattan room, was there an extra charge for this? Given everyone has dinner there included in their own cruise?
Thank you for writing about your spectacular wedding with Norwegian! I am considering this for 2025 on the same ship. Your story not only gives great tips, but got me even more excited about the possibility!