Packing for Cruise

I recently went on a 7 days Caribbean cruise. My husband said try to fit everything in a carry on luggage so that we would not have to waste time to wait for our luggage to be unloaded when we arrived Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  I was thinking how it was possible to fit 2 formal evenings, 5 evening plus daytime clothing in this little luggage?

I know I have to bring 2 formal outfits for formal evenings.  That alone already set the theme color of the clothes I will be wearing - Black! Don't all formal attires always come in black? Then I knew for sure I would have to bring my glittering shoes for those dresses. Of course, I had to have a formal evening bag as well.

Now I had to start coordinate my clothes around these formal evening dresses.  I tried to incorporate the separates from the formal evening outfits. Here is what I packed for the trip.  These include the clothes I wore on the airplane on both days I traveled to and from the airport.

 

 1  Black formal dress with bolero

1 Black Shell with long skirt

1 Casual Sweater

1 Black Blazer

2 pairs of dress slacks, 1 pair of blue jeans

2 Long sleeved blouses

2 Short sleeved blouses

2 Dressy blouses

3 Short skirts and 1 white short sleeved sweater

Jewelry for both day and evening

1 pair of formal evening shoes

1 pair of dressy shoes

1 Formal evening purse

1 Evening purse

Toiletries (not shown)

8 days of Undies (not shown)
1 tote bag (not shown)
2 Ziploc bags
2 Trash bags

I always wore the more bulky clothes and a pair of comfy shoes with socks on the days of my flights, so that I could free up some room in the luggage and still kept myself warm in the airplane. I carried a big carryall bag for sightseeing.  The tote bag was just in case I had too many souvenirs to bring home. The ziploc bags were in case I wanted to pack for something that would spill in the luggage later on. The trash bags were for dirty laundries. Those did not take up any room.

I knew the temperature in Florida would be humid and warm, but it was still cold here in the San Francisco area.  So I wore layers of clothing before we arrived in Florida.  From past vacations,  I have learned to bring a structure jacket which has room to fit a sweater underneath in case the weather suddenly changes.  I remembered when I went to New Orlean, the weather was really warm at that time. I only brought some clothes that were light weight and a thin brown blazer because I was going to a convention.  But the weather suddenly changed to windy and cold one night while we were going to dinner at  the French Quarter.  Fortunately I had brought a brown sweater with me to wear in the airplane.  The most important thing was I still looked presentable in a jacket and was still able to attend some evening functions.

There's a dress code that flip flops are not allowed in any dining rooms and theatre.  For the two formal evenings, I wore the glittering shoes ( I called them my glass slippers) and the satin black purse. I was able to change into different outfits for the rest of 5 evenings for dinner with the black slacks and black skirt. I wore the black shoes and used the small black purse every night. I had enough blouses to rotate and wear during the daytime for sightseeing or for while we were at sea.  The white short sleeves was light weight enough to wear or stuff in my bag during the daytime.

Most of my clothes were planed to go with black color.  I feel like it was too dark of a color to bring to a fun trip.  I threw in a red and white striped sailor top for nautical looks. I also had a black and white floral prints scarf, but I did not need to use it.  I purposely packed skirts to go with all my tops so I could rotate some of them for dinner.  I had 3 sets of jewelry, one for formal evening, one for dinner and another set for daytime.  I often over packed my luggage since I was always afraid I would get too hot or too cold that I don't have the right clothes to wear.  This time I felt good that I packed adequately, so I like to keep a record of what I did for future reference!