Hi
I am from the UK ,and I was thinking about a
Castaway Cay wedding too but as fate conspired,... I am actually doing something slightly different, which could be an alternative to consider.
Its a second marriage for me, and there is just my fiance and my 2 kids in our wedding party. We wanted a quiet, simple wedding...just us 4, on the island. We had already booked a Western cruise with Disney, so it seemed like a perfect way to get married.
First thing you should know is they only do 1 wedding on Castaway Cay, and only 2 weddings on the ship, per cruise - so my first point is, you need to book well in advance !!
As soon as I was able (exactly 1 year out, and the minute the phone lines opened) I was on that phone to book
- well, you can imagine my disappointment when I was told, that by an unusual twist of fate, I could not have my C.C .wedding as a couple who were supposed to be married there
this year, were refused boarding the ship, due to food poisoning that they were alleging was the fault of a Disney hotel,..... and they had already been offered the exact same spot that we wanted for next year, as an alternative date.
So, reluctantly, and with a heavy heart, we agreed to be put down provisionally, to be married on board the ship - hoping of course that perhaps this other couple might pull out...because the truth was, this was not really what I had set my heart on.
Well, this gave me a little breathing space, because we could not confirm our booking for another few months after this... until Disney had released their new price list for 2008. So I looked into things a little further ...and the more I thought about it, the more issues I was having about being married in a side room before sailing... and then paying an awful lot of money for a 'marriage' that well, wasn't really a marriage, but a blessing.
Then by chance a person on this board (on our cruise meet thread) mentioned they were having a vow renewal for their parents, on Grand Cayman - one of our cruise stops, at this place, Grand Old House ;
http://www.grandoldhouse.com/
Well, I took one look and I was completely in love with it
So now we are getting married whilst on our
Disney cruise, on an island after all ...and getting married for 'real' at the same time ! We are having a week in Orlando first, enjoying all that WDW offers, and two days after we return to port to chill, in a nice hotel, before we return to the UK.
Now one thing I have got to mention before anyone else jumps in ...Grand Cayman is a tendering port - meaning the ship cannot draw into a dock, you are ferried off by tender boat and therefore
this stop is NOT GUARENTEED ! If there is bad weather, or rough sea, they will miss it !
If you go for this option, its probably only going to suit someone with a very small wedding party ,who is going to be relaxed about the possibility of not making their wedding day, on a specific day !
You need a back up plan !!!
Ours is simple - if we miss the port we fly out there a couple months later to do it all then (the restaurant & photographer are all very accommodating about 'postponing' the wedding if this happens !).
This is just an idea for you, because unless someone on this board had mentioned it to me, I would have never thought of it as an alternative to a Castaway Cay wedding.
I have to say though, if you go ahead and book a cruise ship wedding through Disney, I am sure you would not be disappointed - they take such great care of you ...in the end, as I said, fate conspired against it, and then I gradually concluded it was not for us afterall.
Hope this is of some benefit to someone any how
(we are still hesitating with a wedding in Sunset point).
...if you are in the situation of very few guests and can be relaxed about the potentially missing the port thing...then its definitely a worth that risk in my view....plus we saved a fair few $$s too and got more than the standard package offered by Disney...infact we have been able to tailor our 'package wedding' at GOH exactly as we wanted it.
