City Cruises - Newport Beach

something that holds such a special place in my heart. The actual wedding day went so well! However, I really want to share our experience with the planning process for future brides and grooms considering getting married here. We booked the Wild Goose more than a year before our wedding. When we first signed on, we worked with Amy, who was amazing and so attentive to detail. We originally thought she would be helping us throughout the planning process, but later we were assigned Kevin as our coordinator. Kevin was always very nice, but unfortunately, the planning process with him was extremely stressful and disorganized. We only had about THREE planning meetings for our entire wedding, all over Zoom, and every meeting felt rushed. He would reply to your emails a week after you sent them. We would answer questions and discuss details, and then at the next meeting he often wouldn’t remember what we had already talked about and would ask us the same things again. Eventually, I started sending email recaps after our meetings just so there would be a record of everything we discussed and that still didnt help.  There were also times we were given information that turned out not to be correct. Empty promises.  The biggest disappointment for me was that I really didn’t feel like I had a wedding coordinator during the planning process. I’ve never planned a wedding before!! I didn’t know what I was doing or what questions I was even supposed to be asking. I was hoping for some guidance with things like where tables should go, the flow of the reception, signature drinks, flowers, décor, setup, etc. Instead, I felt like I had to figure almost everything out myself. Flowers were especially frustrating. We decided to bring our own flowers and communicated this multiple times, but it seemed to be forgotten from meeting to meeting. Their florist would repeatedly be brought up and recommended to us, even though we had already explained that we were doing our own flowers. At the same time, it was surprisingly difficult to get a clear answer with anything. We were told multiple times that we would get to meet the day of coordinators, but that never happened.  With ALL of that being said, I definitely want to give credit where it’s due. Kevin allowed me to come in and set up a lot of my décor the day before, which I REALLY appreciated. I rented their ceremony arch and made all of the florals for it myself (with pool noodles) , and they turned out AMAZING! I’ll include a photo because I’m still proud of them lol. And most importantly, our day-of coordinators were great! I wish i got to meet them before like kevin promise. They were a huge reason everything went so smoothly once our wedding day actually arrived. I was finally able to relax, enjoy myself, and soak everything in. The Wild Goose itself is such a unique and beautiful place to have a wedding, and I love that so much is included like the boat, food, cake, DJ, etc. but if you’re considering the Wild Goose because it’s “all-inclusive” and you’re expecting that to mean you’ll also receive a lot of guidance throughout the planning process, I would just keep this in mind. Based on my experience, I would personally ask about having a different coordinator or be prepared to do a lot of the planning and organization yourself.