Since we were married on Royal Caribbean’s Wonder of the Seas I’ve had a lot of questions about the logistics, how it went and if I would recommend it. I’ve decided to do this in a 3 part series as each section will cover different aspects of it.

In Part 1 I will cover the proposal and then the reasons of why we chose to get married on the Wonder of The Seas, the largest cruise ship in the world at the time (October 29, 2023). Instead of our original plan of having it at the Vezer Vineyard in Suisun Valley, California. As well as all of the craziness we dealt with leading up to our romantic nuptials. Part 2 I will go over the logistics of getting married on a cruise ship and the pros and cons, plus will include our never before seen wedding photos. Part 3 will entail the honeymoon cruise, the ports we stopped at and the excursions we went on featuring travel tips, do’s and don’ts and funny stories during our adventures. You can subscribe here so you don’t miss a thing!

As some of you know, we were engaged in February 2021 during a trip to Las Vegas. Circa invited us to stay for free in exchange for photos and to honestly review their property. Which I will do in another post at another time (better late than never!) we had a great time and I highly recommend. Lorenzo took me out in an Escalade limo for an incredible dining experience at Lakeside at the Wynn.

We had an amazing table right next to the water where the epic dinner show was and he popped the question. If you’re wondering if he received a lot of flack for proposing on Valentine’s Day weekend in Las Vegas from friends, you’d be correct. But it was romantic no less. We were going to Costa Rica the next month and originally he planned to propose there, but he was worried about something happening to the ring en route so decided to do it this way instead.

We had a table of ladies behind us who had taken pics and filmed it for us, which I didn’t know at the time, I actually had no idea this was going to happen at all. We had only been dating officially for 8 months. It was a complete surprise. The ladies bought our dinner and I follow one of them on Instagram still to this day. She got engaged shortly after we did and just had her first baby and named him Lorenzo!

Afterward we went to back to Circa and they whisked us up to their rooftop bar, which is gorgeous and we celebrated with champagne. My ring is from Neil Lane, which is so apropos since I always joked that our entire dating life has reminding me of The Bachelor. Due to such extravagant dates like helicopter rides to Catalina, Corvette rides through Napa Valley, wine tastings, sunset horseback rides through the Hollywood hills, etc. So that’s the backstory to how this whole thing started, in case you haven’t been following us on social media.

Now to the wedding portion….

Lorenzo is a spokesperson for a beautiful winery in the Suisun Valley (right outside Napa) that is known for its petite sirah. Frank Vezer is the owner and he’s very passionate about making wines. I love wine and it’s truly the best I’ve had, I’m not just saying that because Lorenzo is their ambassador. He graciously and generously offered us his beautiful property to host our wedding as well as covering our catering and wine. His properties are absolutely gorgeous!

We had planned on having it at Lizzy’s Ranch which sits on top of a beautiful hillside and overlooks the whole vineyard. It has breathtaking views!

However, due to this area being an hour and a half from Sacramento or San Francisco (major airport hubs for guests to fly into) and relying on vendors from those areas, it was going to be a difficult event to pull off. All of the wedding cake vendors I contacted in surrounding areas were booked a year or two out, same with photographers and event companies to help us decorate. We had already put our wedding off by 2.5 years while I dealt with a tumultuous custody battle. We were ready to finally get married and wanted something easy.

We already had the Royal Caribbean cruise booked for end of October. It actually was a reunion cruise with his friends and class mates from his naval academy boarding school, Admiral Farragut Academy. Which was great, because they could attend since they’re already on the boat. My only concern was that I really wanted my family to be able to attend our wedding. I wasn’t sure how that would work due to the fact it’s on a cruise ship leaving for the Caribbean.

We contacted Royal Caribbean’s wedding department and they said we can have a wedding on embarkation day and family can attend, but they already had one wedding booked for that day and they only allow one per day. Luckily, since Lorenzo is a celebrity they made an exception and we were able to be wed in The Wonderland restaurant, which they typically don’t do weddings at. I am a big fan of Alice in Wonderland! Actually, our first Halloween we had together I went as Alice and Lorenzo went as the Mad Hatter. So it was perfect!

We had an incredible travel agent, Muffett Grubb who I can’t recommend enough, that helped us coordinate shuttles from the airport to the hotel. Plus shuttles from the hotel to the cruise for everyone. She was an angel and made my life easier!

All of it was going so well, my best friend and maid of honor, Kaley made me my dream bouquet. She used to make wooden flower arrangements and is so good at them. We had a girl’s day and went to Michael’s to get some filler flowers to brighten it. She wanted me to have a bouquet I could cherish forever. It was also great because Royal Caribbean doesn’t allow real flowers due to traveling to other countries, they are very strict about the type of plants you can bring, which I definitely understand.

Everyone says planning a wedding is stressful and they are not wrong! However, life could never prepare me for what was about to happen. I was feeling great about how easy it was to plan this wedding. I found a wedding dress at a bridal shop in Los Angeles online, fell in love, went to the shop to try it on and bought it same day. It was my dream dress, I felt like if I had asked a designer to custom make a dress for me this would be it. Lorenzo’s requests were that it was strapless and showed some leg. This one was strapless, had a slit up the side, beautiful hand sewn flowers and so much glitter! I felt like a queen in it. Downside, was that my mom wasn’t there, Kaley and my friends weren’t there to do the whole dress shopping thing, but I didn’t want to pass up this dress and life was getting hectic, so I needed something easy.

I was working full time, plus my kids were out of school all summer long. So trying to dress shop before an October wedding seemed like a nightmare. I was in Southern California and my family and friends were in the Pacific Northwest. There just wasn’t time. Everything seemed to be going well, the wedding details were in place, Lorenzo and I had chosen our cake, our songs, etc.

Fast forward to September, we are a month before the wedding and in the middle of moving from Southern California back to my hometown in Idaho. I am packing all day and night, coordinating with our ship’s wedding planners, finalizing the last of the details. I have people contacting me nonstop about which airport to fly into, where to stay, etc. I put everything on our wedding website but of course, not everyone reads every detail. Which I totally get, but it was a lot! I was coordinating with my hair and makeup artist a few times a week to finalize my wedding look and her travel. Moving is stressful enough but planning a wedding at the same time was intense! 0/10 do not recommend doing that!

September 1st rolls around and it’s go time to prepare for our final days in our place, coordinate with our movers and wedding planners. I’m stressed, not sleeping, barely eating. It’s all a lot! My boys and I are also getting ready for another school year and my youngest was about to celebrate his 11th birthday on the 3rd, Labor Day weekend. When my world came crashing down, my best friend, my maid of honor, my entire world passed away unexpectedly. A few days prior we were planning my Barbie themed bachelorette party to happen after I moved back. Everything seemed so normal besides the chaos of my move. Ever since I’ve known her, we talk every day, all day. The 2nd was the last day I heard from her. She was having a bad day, told me she’d tell me about it later. I was so consumed in my own life I didn’t think to even check back in.

The next day was my son’s birthday, it was the very first birthday in his whole life we didn’t spend together, which was so hard on me. I was missing my bestie, I still hadn’t heard from her and my morning texts went unanswered which wasn’t like her. I was feeling so down not having my baby, that I endured 24.5 hours of unmedicated labor with and not hearing from my bestie. Lorenzo wanted to cheer me up and asked what my perfect day was. I told him a “Team K Day”, Kaley and I worked together doing freelancing marketing for various companies and when we lived in the same town, we’d work in her bed, watch shitty reality TV shows, have Lay’s Salt and Vinegar chips (her son still calls them Auntie Kenna chips) and make a veggie tray with Walton’s 0 calorie ranch (gotta make up for those chip calories somehow) and put Frank’s Red Hot sauce in there to add a little zest. We recreated that and Lorenzo fell in love with Love is Blind.

The next day, I found out she had passed away. Maybe something in me knew that I needed that day. Subconsciously I knew something was wrong. Or maybe her telling me in someway from the beyond. I don’t know. The rest of September I was numb. Sobbing while I packed up my life in Southern California, dreading coming back to the PNW without her here. Most days I still am numb, the bond we had was other worldly. Like we were twins in a past life, she was my everything, filling parts of my soul that no one else could, not even Lorenzo. It’s been the worst thing I’ve ever been through and I’ve been through A LOT! But those are also stories for another day, things I shove way deep down so I can make it day to day without being in shambles.

Back to the wedding and moving saga…

We had to be out of our place and do final inspections by September 25th. I was told ahead of time by the wedding planner that everyone who wasn’t setting sail on our wedding day (90% of the people basically) would need an email address and full legal name to give to them. No problem, I had a form on our website that made that easy. Not even a week before I have to be out of our home, stress levels were so insane, I was told I would need to provide not only an email address per guest, but a driver’s license or passport number per guest. We had to email or text every single person and then put it all in an Excel spreadsheet. Meanwhile I’m being drowned by grief every day of my life, selling all of our furniture, packing up our entire life and coordinating our final wedding details. I look back and have no idea how I did it all, but I did!

I finished our final inspection. I packed a carry on bag of things I needed to last a week until our movers showed up the following weeding. I flew from Santa Ana, California to Sacramento to accompany Lorenzo at the annual Vezer galas for the winery he’s a spokesperson at that I had mentioned earlier. The galas are nightly for 2-3 nights and reoccur every weekend. They’re beautiful events for their Diamond Club members where we meet and greet fans. He sings, does a Q&A with Frank, April Nelson sings beautiful songs and they do auctions on fantastic prizes, they’re so fun, But it’s also a lot when you’re an introvert that just lost their best friend, in the middle of a move and getting ready for your wedding.

From there I flew to Idaho, I was excited to meet the movers and get all of our belongings. Except, they weren’t coming. They actually delayed the delivery for 2.5 weeks! Luckily the house we moved into was fully furnished so we weren’t sleeping on the floor. However, all I had was a tiny carry-on bag filled with dresses, heels and very impractical clothing that I had to make work for almost 3 weeks. I was panicking not knowing if my clothing would arrive for our honeymoon. All of my swimsuits and casual dresses were on Skylines Moving Company trucks (they lost one of our boxes and charged us $10,000+ more than we were quoted). Our things arrived a week before our wedding so luckily I had my clothes! But I also had 1 week to unpack our home before our wedding and honeymoon. I didn’t want to come back to a million boxes! Luckily most was unpacked and we could finally breathe knowing our wedding would be soon, everything had finally been done with that, we just had to show up. Then we could be whisked away on a honeymoon and actually enjoy ourselves!

So stay tuned for Part 2….