Having your wedding on a Disney Cruise seems like a perfect fairy tale setting, and for us it really was! Since we met on the Disney Magic, are from two different countries (meaning our families were going to have to travel no matter where we had our wedding) and we absolutely love Disney Cruise Line, we knew it was the perfect choice for us! Several of you have asked us about what it was like planning a wedding on a Disney Cruise. We wanted to make a post explaining more about how it works!
How to Book your Disney Cruise Wedding
In order to book your wedding package, you have to first book your cruise reservation. All your guests do not have to have a room booked yet – only the bride and groom. The wedding package will be added to your reservation, so it will show up on your cruise confirmation. The price added here is the ‘base’ package price (you don’t have to pay this right away – it just gets added to your reservation so you pay it at the same time you pay for the actual cruise). Any extras you add will be paid separately at a later time.
The cancellation/change policy for the wedding package is exactly the same as it is for the cruise itself. That means it’s fully changeable and any payments made are fully refundable up until the final payment is due. Once you’ve made your final payment, that’s when cancellation policies would start to kick in. Make sure you check your confirmation for the details in case DCL changes their policy!
For more information about Disney Fairytale Weddings, you can visit their website!
Your Planning Guide
Once you have booked your wedding, your Wedding Services Manager will reach out to you by email. At this time, she’ll send you the Disney Cruise Line Ceremony Planning Guide and the Elements and Enhancements Document. This will include all of the planning options for you to look through, including the flowers, music and cake choices. This will need to be submitted 2 months before your cruise, so depending on when you book will determine how much time you have to make your decisions. When we got our planning guide, we had almost 13 months until we needed to send it back!
Your Wedding Services Manager
Your Wedding Services Manager will reach out to you initially with the planning guide and will be available to answer any questions you have along the way. There are only a couple of coordinators so you may have the same one as us – ours was Faith. Once you are onboard the ship, you will have an onboard coordinator who will be different from your shoreside contact. It can be a bit weird knowing that you can’t talk to or even know the name of your onboard coordinator until you arrive at the port. It’s best to be flexible and go with the flow for a DCL wedding, so just trust that everything will go smoothly once you meet with them on the first day and go over all the details.Our coordinator onboard was Ines and she was great!
Planning your Disney Cruise Wedding from Afar
Anyone who has planned a destination wedding can probably agree that it’s always going to be more difficult to plan a wedding from far away. It would be so much easier to choose your cake flavors if you could actually taste the cake. To pick the flowers if you could actually see them. To get to talk to the musician and officiant beforehand. If you are the type of bride who wants to know every detail in advance, go over everything and be 100% confident in how everything will play out, then a destination wedding with DCL may not be for you.
There were a lot of things that we weren’t sure what was happening. We just had to trust that everything would work out! For example: as I was waiting with my parents to depart for the ceremony, I realized that while my bouquet had been delivered to my room early that morning, I had no idea where my dad’s boutonniere and my mom’s corsage were and how we were supposed to get them! Everything worked out as it was supposed to (Ines brought them when she escorted us off the ship). If you are the type to get stressed over these little details, then it may not be for you.
Final Details Before the Cruise
When you submit your planning guide 60 days before the cruise, your coordinator will go through everything. Then, she’ll prepare your final confirmation for you. After a few days, Faith sent us our confirmation and invoice to review. The invoice will be for any extras: additional guests, added florals, cake upgrades, etc.. After having her make a couple of small adjustments, we were ready to confirm everything and pay the final invoice. This was due 30 days prior to the cruise. Once this was done, we really felt like most of the details were taken care of and we could focus on getting excited for the cruise!
Our Advice
Be Flexible and Easygoing
Our wedding day was absolutely perfect, and everything we dreamed it would be. However, there were some things that didn’t go exactly according to our plan.
We spent hours (literally, hours) making our song selections when we submitted them on our planning guide. We put a ton of thought into which song should be played for each part of the ceremony. When we got onboard, our coordinator, Ines went over the song selection and confirmed the choices. Then at the ceremony, the pianist played the songs at the wrong time! Our prelude song was played as the bridal party walked down the aisle, then our bridal party processional song was played while I walked down the aisle. The song I was supposed to walk down the aisle to, I’m not sure I ever heard. This wasn’t a big deal to us, but it was definitely something we noticed. Especially since we had spent so much time deciding what songs to play!
We had also requested some customization on our cake which we had confirmed with both Faith and Ines. When we arrived at the reception we had the classic cake without our customization. Not a big deal – the cake looked fantastic anyway – but just something we noticed since we had confirmed it with both of them. As long as you are flexible and don’t sweat the little things, everything will be amazing! But if you would be upset if things like this happened to you, or if they had to move your ceremony location or change some of your details, then this may not work for you!
Let Disney Take Care of Everything
My best advice is just to let DCL take care of everything. Try your best to relax and enjoy your cruise, knowing they will handle the details. This was hard for me because I really like to know what’s going on at all times. If I could do it over again I would try to be less stressed about the flowers, who’s meeting who when and where everyone needs to be! Just focus on your fiance(e) and your wedding, and enjoy your special day!
I hope this helps you in knowing what to expect when planning your Disney Cruise wedding. Let us know if you have any questions, we would love to talk more about our DCL wedding!
All photos by Mikkel Paige Photography. If you are thinking of a Disney Cruise wedding we HIGHLY recommend her!
