More and more often, people are cruising to celebrate anniversaries. And, why not? Cruising is great! Even if you cruise regularly, or have never cruised before, celebrating an anniversary is very romantic. Its often a “special” cruise – longer, a more exotic itinerary, or in a suite instead of your regular accommodations.
I just wanted to make sure you knew that Princess Cruises offers wedding vow renewals as one of the “gifts” you can buy yourselves. Renewing your wedding vows at sea is a SUPER romantic thing to do. You can plan it together and invite family and friends along on the cruise with you (see the groups section of our website), or you can cruise just the two of you. One of you could even surprise the other one with this “gift”. Guys get BIG points for this.
Consider it for your next anniversary. You can read more about it on the Princess website - at sea Princess wedding vow renewal option.
Below is some information from one of my friends who actually did the renewal.
"The Special Services staff on board the Star Princess was first class. They don’t do a lot of these packages (yet anyway) but they are right on top of things. Wanting to have everything all planned and organized I was pleased when we received a letter along with our robes on the first day explaining the whole program.
To give you a better idea of how it all works, let me go through each element one by one.
The ceremony, presided over by the ships Captain:
In our case, on the Star Princess, we were fortunate enough to have Commodore Cesare Ditel do the ceremony. (Commodore is an honorary title usually given to the Captain with the most seniority in the fleet. He does not really plot out war games.) It was a private ceremony although on Princess’ web site it says it may be a group event I suppose so if there are a lot of them on a given sailing that they can get them done. Ours happened to fall on the night of the first formal night and Commodores Cocktail Party and I think they plan it that way so couples will already be in formal wear.
We agreed to be apart of another couples ceremony and they to ours, mainly because we were scheduled one after the other. That was even more special and we felt privileged to be a part of it. Later in the week we received the actual printed script of the vows read by the Commodore along with a letter instructing us to go to the photo desk to pick out our choice of the photos taken after the ceremony.
Here are the vows we took:
Good Afternoon Everybody: First of all on behalf of Chris and Lisa, I would like to welcome you to the Hearts and Minds Chapel.
Today we are gathered here for a very special reason:
To provide an opportunity for Jon and Lisa, to renew an everlasting commitment- your original marriage vows.
The diary of your lives contains many important dates and moments and among the most prominent is the day when you joined together in matrimony and made those eternal and binding promises to one another.
So at this time, please face one another and join hands:
Chris, please repeat after me:
Now Lisa, please repeat after me:
Now together, Chris & Lisa, please repeat after me:
All of us here onboard the Star Princess are witnesses to the renewal of your vows and your commitment to each other. May you find strength in the love that binds you together today, and continue your lives in perfect peace and harmony. So, once again, may those immortal words be stated. I now pronounce you man and wife!
Chris, you may kiss Lisa!"
Our thanks to Chris and Lisa for sharing this and their photo with us!