Like every other girl, I always dreamt of doing a grand luxury wedding that would be exceptional and make me memories for life. When I found my soul mate and he proposed to me, I had at least 20 different ideas in my mind on how I would want my wedding to look like. At first, I thought of doing a traditional Indian wedding in Udaipur or Jodhpur palaces which are famous wedding venues in Rajasthan. My other options were doing a wedding in my home city, Mumbai. Both of us lived in USA for 10 years and then we have been living in Canada, so our friends were mostly from USA & Canada area while our relatives were from India. Choosing a wedding destination in USA/Canada was an option but it would have taken a lot of time for relatives to file tourist visas and travel all the way for our wedding. So we had ruled out getting married in USA/Canada.

Getting married in India in today’s date in a Palace or in metropolitan cities like Mumbai where you could book a Marriott style hotel would easily cost approx. $50,000 for 500+ guests. If the wedding had to happen in India, then our total guest list would easily be total of 800 guests. So our costs for 800 guests would be approx. $80,000. If the same wedding is up-scaled by including luxury decor, exceptional wedding theme and catering then the wedding cost could easily double up.

Both of us had the same thought process that we needed a wedding where we would only like to have an intimate guest list of approx. 150 people where both of us know every individual attending and at the same time we needed all of our guests to enjoy a vacation with us on our wedding. So yes, we needed a destination wedding but we were looking for a unique concept never tried before. If we did a destination wedding in Cancun or Hawaii or any resort in Thailand, we would have ended up spending a lot of time and effort in decorating the resort. Our main idea was that we needed our major wedding ceremonies to be within 2 hours and we needed guests to enjoy vacation rest of the time. Due to this, we needed minimal decor which could be set up within 1 hour and could be torn apart post event in 1 hour.

The idea behind restricting to 2 hours is that both bride/groom and families can enjoy to the fullest for that 2 hour ceremony and then they can spend the remaining day in vacationing with guests. As a bride, when I searched for Wedcation themed weddings (Wedding + Vacation), I could not find much search results. The fact that there were not many search results told us that the Wedcation theme of the wedding was unique and that we were in the right direction. The next big thing for us was to select where the wedding will take place and what would be the unique concept. He knew I love cruises so he came up with the brilliant idea of doing a unique cruise wedding in a commercial cruise that carries 3000 passengers. Couples have done yacht weddings or 1 day cruise weddings but very few couples have done weddings in a 4 to 7 days cruise. I went on the internet to get ideas on how cruise weddings are done and all of the results that came up were mostly about American weddings done on cruise ships.  That wasn’t helpful as Indian weddings are different and tend to have 3 to 4 ceremonies each day with Indian traditional decor.

I started searching for Indian Hindu weddings done on cruise ships that involves fire pit for couples to do the vow ceremony aka Pheras in Hindi. To my surprise, there were 0 results and there was no information on how to do an Indian Hindu traditional wedding on cruise ships. I decided to take this challenge and went ahead planning for this first ever unique Indian Rajasthani wedding on cruise ship and if it were to be successful as per our plan, I promised to pen this down to lay out all the steps I went through to help other couples.  I had decided that I will be the planner for my wedding as I loved planning events and spending on an event planner was expensive. Before I write down the step by step plan charter for the wedding, given below is our love story.

Our story

As a couple, our story is quite interesting. We met in New York when I had just come from Mumbai, India to study MBA and he was working. We became friends and he taught me driving in USA and very soon drove me crazy in his love. After knowing each other for 1 year, we chose to get into live-in-relationship as my parents were supportive and we were at the peak of our career as well as too young to get married at that time. After living for 3 years in New York, we moved to Florida together and enjoyed our beach life for 2 years. He then decided to move to Vancouver, Canada to move with his family and I was not willing to give up my USA career so soon. So I moved to Seattle to stay closest to him as it is 2 hrs. drive which allowed me to visit him at often and at the same time I was able to fulfill my USA work life dream.

After spending 4 years in long distance and driving back and forth to meet each other, I finally decided to move to Vancouver and start a new trend “Live in relationship with family”. Since both of us are Indian and have traditional roots, we knew if we had to get married we would be staying with family. My thought process was that if I live with family first, I can pass the phase of adjustment and learning everything about his family before I decide to tie the knot. After a successful 1 year of live-in relationship with family, we decided to tie the knot in November 2019 in a Unique Cruise Destination Wedding. By 2019, we had completed 9 years of being together, so it was apt to get married before we completed 10 years.

Now going back to the cruise wedding planning. I am hoping the given below step-step process would be useful to you. Please feel free to get in touch with me for any additional questions that you may have. You will find my contact information at the end of this blog.

Cruise Wedding planning step-step process:

1) Cruise Selection process

Before selecting a cruise, it was important for us to shortlist all destinations that has cruise ships sailing and where cruise stops at islands to fit Wedcation theme. After reviewing a lot of itineraries, we shortlisted 2 cruises. First one was Royal Caribbean Australia Cruise 3 nights 4 days starting from Sydney and second one was Genting Dream Cruise starting from Singapore. For us, Genting Dream Cruise became a clear winner as the cruise stopped at more islands than any other cruise like Langkawi, Malaysia and Phuket, Thailand. More than anything, this cruise had an open banquet venue which allowed small fire pit for us to do wedding pheras aka vow ceremony. It was getting very hard to get fire permissions on other cruises but due to the unique amphitheater style open deck venue, we were able to comply with cruise ship rules and regulations and get fire permissions.

2)  Who bears cruise room booking cost, flights, guest airport transfers etc. ?

 The million dollar question remains on who will bear the cruise room booking cost? Will it be the bride/groom and their families or will guests be booking their own rooms if they wish to attend the wedding. Well, the answer to this question depends on your culture. In Indian culture, the bride and groom’s families share 50-50% or 60-40% etc for a wedding while in American culture, the bride and groom themselves take care of the expenses. In our case, we let my family book cruise rooms for my relatives and his family take care of booking rooms for his family. Then I took care of décor, hair make up, video/photo team and my outfit expenses while he took care of cocktail party and his outfit expenses. So we all were involved to some extent on spending and we made sure that all guests took care of their own flights and airport transfers as we were sponsoring expensive cruise rooms. Depending on the cruise, an inside or ocean view room per guest could easily be approx. $600 to $850 per person after getting group discount, so for a couple you are easily paying anywhere between $1200 to $1500 for a cruise room booking. For a balcony room, the cost will end up going higher.  If you have 100 guests, then your cruise wedding expense could easily be 100 people x $600 (minimum) = $60,000. Since your cruise room costs are non-negotiable, that cost will be fixed cost and your only bargain points would be around vendors you work with.  This cost will be excluding décor, hair makeup, photo, video expense etc.

You can save loads in vendor negotiations. Since, I am also Miss India Seattle USA crown winner, I was able to save a lot on vendor costs as most of them were willing to work with me on competitive prices due to my profile and the portfolio they would build in exchange for working on my wedding project. Also, I gave them counter proposal of giving them publicity through my profile as they would become a part of my wedding experience and magazines/online portals publishing me will automatically publish them when I put them in credits. It was a win-win situation for all. My cruise wedding was budgeted well and fit perfectly as per our financial estimation mainly because I negotiated well with Video/photo team, Hair/Makeup artists, Décor, DJ. You can easily spend anywhere between $10,000-$30,000 on vendors but I was able to keep them under $12,000.

If you do not have a profile like mine, you can still negotiate by reaching out to maximum vendors and getting their quotes and making counter offers. One of them will for sure accept your offer. Reach out to me if you need help with negotiations.

3)  Creating a guest list, sending digital invites and getting confirmations before booking cruise rooms

 You cannot book cruise rooms before knowing exactly which of your guests are confirmed. If you just get RSVP’s, that doesn’t guarantee if the guest will show up. And if you book a cruise room and if guest cancels 60 days before sailing date, then you will end up not getting refund for your expensive cruise room. To avoid situations like these, we first send digital invite cards as we had guests across the globe. What we did next was that we kept a strict deadline date for confirmed guests to submit their flight copies which assured us that we can book their room and may not get cancelled most likely. Since my wedding was in November, we kept deadline for June 15^th. The ones that could not submit flight tickets by that date for whatever reason had to them make their own cruise room bookings. You have to be pretty strict about the deadline set and you cannot make it flexible for anyone.

Keeping a deadline was the most important step we took. Due to this, out cruise room bookings were hassle free and by June 15^th, we had our confirmed list of 150 people. The ones that could not decide based on the deadline were willing to book their own cruise rooms before the wedding. We had decided we would run a final head count 1 month before the wedding but  irrelevant since cruise was all inclusive in terms of food, headcount didn’t matter once we had our main 150 guests confirmed to join the wedding party.

4) How to choose vendors?

Every wedding needs a videographer, photographer, hair artists, make-up artists, decor team, DJ and lights/sound team. With a cruise wedding, getting vendors on the cruise ship to stay with you is an expense as you need to book their rooms for the number of days your cruise trip is. And on top of that, if you decide to choose vendors from your country/city or from India and fly them down to a destination then you will have to bear their flights + hotel stay. Cruises have their own vendor teams but those are very expensive. To keep my costs down, I had made a decision that I would pick my own vendors from Singapore itself as the cruise starting point was Singapore and getting local vendors to board the ship would save me from paying for their hotel and flights.

The biggest challenge was that I had no relatives in Singapore nor did I know anyone in Singapore who could help me get the best vendor team for my dream wedding. I took this as a challenge and thanks to social media, I was able to hunt down all active vendors and was able to view their work profiles mainly on Facebook. I needed vendors who have had an experience working with celebrities as my wedding was being done on a grand scale and I needed a team that has had that kind of experience.

I first started looking for Hair/Make up artists as looking beautiful on my big day was my top priority. I came across few vendors and found a celebrity make up artists in Singapore named ‘Gayathri Menon’ whose work was exactly the way I liked. After stalking her profile for few days and seeing her past work, I reached out and she was excited to take this project as this cruise wedding was a unique concept for her too. She agreed on the pricing I was looking for and decided to bring her assistant on board so that while she does my hair make up, her assistant could do rest of the family as needed.

My next search was on décor as the cruise could only do limited floral decoration and for an Indian wedding, decoration needs to be a bit grand and upscale. I wanted to give an Indian feel to the wedding and needed few palace like structures to make it look like a traditional Rajasthani wedding. Finding a décor company in Singapore was quite challenging because most of the Indian décor companies were not fitting my budget as the cost of getting their workforce to stay on the ship was very expensive and then  adding up their décor cost was going way out of budget. Few vendor companies had no experience in doing a cruise wedding and were not willing to do this project with zero experience. I found a company who was willing to take up the project but after working with them for 1 month, I realized that instead of them working with the cruise managers I had to be a mediator which was wasting a lot of my time. I had to let go that décor company go and I had to begin my décor search again. Since, searching another décor company was taking too long, I started looking for Video/photo team in parallel.

After receiving quotes from several photo/video team members, I found Vividcine Productions. I was very impressed with their website and their unique photography and video shots. They were willing to bring a team of 4 which was within my budget and were willing to include drone video/photo as part of it. Also, the owner of Vividcine Productions Sathia Seelan started guiding me on how locals in Singapore work and assured me that now I have a go-to person in Singapore which was him. That built up more trust and it was very easy for me to pick them up than any other vendor. As soon I selected them, I discussed my challenge with décor team and Sathia became the guardian angel. He recommended a company called ‘Silverstar Décor’ that he worked with in the past and he guaranteed that they were the best in business. He also showed interest in chatting with them first before I speak to them. When I called Silverstar Décor, they were already on board with the idea and were ready to take up this challenging cruise wedding project as that would be a good addition on their portfolio as well. SilverStar décor assured me that from the day I signed them up that I can focus on my other wedding tasks while they will themselves act as a liaison with the cruise ship and fill up necessary paperwork or customs as needed to load décor up on the ship. Loading heavy Indian décor items is tricky as there can be need of cranes or helicopters to load bulky items. Also, we needed a freight forwarding company to take items and pass through customs before loading on the ship. SilverStar Décor took care of all of it. Their owners Pam and Prakash were very good at giving me weekly updates on any blockers they faced or things that made progress.

All I had to do is select from the décor items they offered me for each of my event looks.

For my Sangeet, they added a Palace and in side pieces made use of Moroccan lamps, elephants, back drops, colorful carpets and pillows. For Mandap set up, I wanted my Mandap to be on water, so they added stage risers on water, added 2 palaces on each side with Ganesh statues and decorated venue with scallops drapes and garlands giving it a very Indian feel. Since the reception was in American theme, they added a champagne tower next to the cake, made a backdrop with our name in floral ring and used tussles hanging from the venue ceiling. Overall each of the look they created was better than my imagination and I am very happy with the result. The wedding guests were very impressed looking at the décor and couldn’t imagine that a décor like this could happen on a cruise ship.

As they say, when you try to look for something with your whole heart the whole universe helps you achieve your dream, similarly I found the best of the vendors who worked on my wedding project. I was very fortunate and one of the main reasons my wedding was a huge success was due to their hard work.

5) Bride/Groom outfits & jewelry :

The reason I have lined this item on #5 is because searching for outfits is usually the last thing bride and groom would do. So ideally, any new bride to be/groom to be should follow this sequence. In my case, I searched for outfits the time we decided internally to do a cruise wedding. So even before invites were sent out, I finalized my outfits by travelling to Mumbai because I did not want any last minute outfit/jewelry and my main looks confusion.

The only outfits I kept until end moment were my secondary outfits for lunch/dinner etc.  where I still wanted to look like a bride.  From Mumbai, after searching for outfits in around 25 boutiques and visiting 10 luxury label designers, I chose to buy all of my main event outfits from Kalki as their designs were unique, modern and yet traditional. The best part was that the outfits were extremely in budget but they looked like they were extremely expensive. I chose colors that were universal so that I can wear the garments for other events in future. Along with garments, I had completed jewelry shopping beforehand from Mumbai.

My ring was designed from Lakhewale Jewelers in Canada and his ring was designed in Florida, USA. Few of my secondary outfits and my mom’s outfits were chosen from Paaneri, Mumbai. My floral jewelry was sponsored by Pearls & Petals in Washington, USA. My wedding events jewelry was by Aanya jewelers, Mumbai

So as part of #5, I started looking for gowns as I wanted to wear a white American gown when we would dock at Malaysia islands. I was wearing traditional Indian Lehenga for my Phera aka vow ceremony on ship and right after that, I was changing into a white American gown. I also got a black ball gown with plunging neckline for my Reception diner post reception ceremony. The last gown I bought was a slit gown for our thank you lunch. All of groom’s outfits were selected from Manyavar, Mumbai.

6) Dance Choreography :

 Since dance is a major part of Indian wedding tradition, I prioritized choreographing for my dance sequences and for other relatives’ sequences from August itself. A lot of my friends were travelling from across the globe Like India, UK, Canada and USA on the cruise. I sent them videos via whatsapp or through skype call to teach them steps. I also took support of a dance company from Vancouver ‘Flare Dance co’ that choreographed few of my dances as I was busy with the overall wedding planning.

Our first major event on cruise was Sangeet dance night and we had a list of 14 performances. I arranged it in a way that my side of relatives perform a dance dedicating to us followed by his side of relatives. I arranged for use of LED screen in the backdrop for additional effects. The sangeet was planned on an open deck venue on 16^th floor of the cruise where audience could see the stage and the ship sailing in ocean as backdrop. I had also planned to open the ceremony by exchanging rings at first since we had to officially get engaged in front of relatives before being married the next day as per the Indian tradition.

7) DJ & production :

The last segment that I focused on in terms of program planning was to send my playlist to the cruise DJ. Unlike other weddings where you can hire a DJ who just makes playlists for you, cruise DJ’s operate in a different way. You as a client have to give them every song you wish to play for your entrance, for your walk, for an ambience and for every program segment that you plan. So I had to invest a lot of time making my own song playlists, which songs I wanted to play when and had to list it all down on an excel sheet so that the DJ exactly knows what to play when. Along with that, I had to make my best friend and few cousins to stand next to the DJ booth throughout my event to ensure that the program plan is followed by the DJ. So if you are planning a cruise wedding, at least give 1 month on creating DJ playlists.

8) Selecting bridesmaids & bachelorette party

 Planning a good bachelorette party with your closest friends is a must. I planned it in Las Vegas for my USA & Canada friends and I planned a 2^nd one in Singapore before my cruise wedding so that my friends from India can party with this single lady for one last time. My bachelorette in Vegas had a Victoria’s Secret angels theme that had all Maid of Honors and no bridesmaids. I had 12 maid of honor so each of them wore Maid of honor labelled robes in pink along with white angel wings while I wore a blush pink robe that was labelled as Bride along with black devil wings. For me, it was hard to choose a maid of honor as all of my friends made a difference in my life in some way and hence I just named all of them as my MOH. It was a well synchronized look. We also had tee-shirts with bride squad written on it for our spa day.

I had an extended bachelorette celebration where few other friends took me for a pole dance class, a club night in Vancouver, high tea and spa day. Then I had my last bachelorette party in Airlift lounge in Singapore. I was lucky to get 3 bachelorette parties but as far as you are able to celebrate once, you have done a good job being planned. Since my friends from India couldn’t get the MOH robes, I had to follow the normal convention of more bridesmaids and less Maid of Honors on the cruise ship. I did photo-shoots with my bridesmaids team and my 2 best friends aka Maid of honors in Singapore cruise.

9) Final program run down & baggage packing:

 When it is time to pack your bags to leave for your wedding, you should do a quick rehearsal in your mind on all the things that may go wrong at the wedding and prepare a plan B. One of the major plan B ‘s would be carrying extra back up outfits for destination weddings in case one of your bags go missing in baggage claims. To avoid this situation, I carried my main outfits and jewelry in a coat bag to place it in cabin although it was heavy. That assured me that no matter what happens, I would have my main event outfits and jewelry with me and the show won’t stop. I would never rely on converter belts as baggage gets lost often and once a baggage is checked in, it is quite possible that your baggage may arrive on a different flight. Be safe than sorry.

I also did a rundown in my mind on how would I look as a bride and promised myself to behave as a bride as it is very easy to get into event manager hat on your own wedding day. I promised myself to give no directions to my plan executors on my wedding cruise and to trust them that they will handle everything smoothly.

 

10) Extended celebrations back home in USA

 I had few extended celebrations of Haldi Mehendi with my friends in USA & Canada before I was leaving for my cruise wedding. I organized my unique looks for my Haldi Mehendi party back home. Below are few glimpses:

Advantages of a Cruise Wedding

 Advantage of a cruise wedding is that you can have a shorter guest list as fewer guests will spend their own money on flights etc to travel for your destination wedding. This indicates that mostly people who are closer to you and wouldn’t afford to miss your wedding would be there and that is what you care about. Another advantage is that cruise has 24×7 food that has a wide variety of cuisines which means that you don’t need to figure out catering for your entire wedding. If a guest feels hungry anytime, they are free to go on any of the restaurants available on ship serving food which is inclusive of the cruise package.

Disadvantages of a Cruise Wedding

Disadvantage of a cruise wedding is that cost of booking approx. 100 guests could be more expensive that what you would end up paying for inviting 700 guests in conventional wedding. But the headache of managing 700 guests is far beyond. In conventional wedding, you will have to figure out catering menu for each of your event as well as if it is destination wedding then you need caterers to take care of breakfast, lunch and dinner. So you end up figuring out at least 9 types of meals.

Success Story

The cruise wedding went better than I had imagined. From the decoration to program planning, everything went top notch. I was able to do my henna in Singapore itself, a day before we boarded the cruise due to which my henna stayed intact for entire cruise trip. The hair and makeup team did an amazing job dolling me up and the video photo team captured the best memories. The most important part was that my parents enjoyed the most unlike other weddings where bride’s parents are stressed out. I fulfilled my promise to my parents that in my wedding, they will have to do nothing and that they will enjoy as guests. The other guests had a mesmerizing experience as they not only enjoyed the fabulous wedding ceremonies while ship was sailing but enjoyed their vacation on islands every time the ship docked at different destinations.  Overall, the cruise wedding was super hit and I would highly recommend every couple to consider destination cruise wedding as a part of their wedding plan.

Compilation of My Looks

Enjoy this wedding teaser of mine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB4t6d3VCuc

Full video will be released soon on my website www.drockz.com and my youtube channel @drockztv. If you need my help planning your wedding, contact me on my website link above.

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