Schweizerische Bodensee-Schifffahrt

The wedding brochure for Schweizerische Bodensee-Schifffahrt doesn't describe a room. It describes two schedules. The first: guests board in Romanshorn at 13:45, the ship casts off at 14:00, the captain cuts the engines at 14:15 wherever the lake runs deepest, the ceremony and an aperitif fill the next stretch of water, and everyone is back at the dock by 17:00. The second, for a couple who only want the reception afloat: board at 17:30, depart at 18:00, dinner at anchor from 19:00, cruising resumes at 22:00, back in Romanshorn by 23:00, then moored at the dock with the party still running until 01:00. Neither program leaves a door for a guest to slip out early, and neither waits for one who arrives late. The venue is a vessel with a fixed capacity, a captain who answers to the timetable rather than the guest list, and a route that starts and ends at the same handful of towns regardless of how the day is going.

The captain performs a wedding that isn't a marriage

The brochure's own name for the first program is "Die Trauung auf dem See," the marriage on the lake, and it means roughly what it says. "Unser Kapitän traut Sie in einzigartiger Atmosphäre auf dem Schiff Ihrer Wahl bei einer individuellen Zeremonie," the brochure states: our captain marries you in a unique atmosphere aboard the ship of your choice, in an individual ceremony. Before the day itself, the couple meets the captain in person so he can plan the wording with them; the brochure calls the ceremony "individuell gestaltet," individually designed, rather than a fixed script. On the day, after a quarter-hour cruise, about 15 minutes, the captain stops the engines, "wenn möglich an der tiefsten oder breitesten Stelle des Bodensees," if possible at the deepest or widest point of Lake Constance, and performs the ceremony over roughly 30 minutes in what the brochure calls a calm atmosphere, with an aperitif or dinner available aboard immediately after.

What the brochure states just as plainly, in a section headed "Preis & Zivilstand," price and marital status, is this: "Die Trauung durch unseren Kapitän ist kostenpflichtig und ist zivilrechtlich nicht bindend," the captain's ceremony carries a fee and is not legally binding. The company's own FAQ page repeats the point almost word for word: "Wir bieten Trauungen durch unseren Kapitän an. Es handelt sich um eine freie Trauung und ist zivilrechtlich nicht bindend," an independent ceremony, not legally binding. Switzerland reserves the legally binding half of a wedding for a civil registry office, and nothing here changes that; the operator says so about its own product without being asked. A couple who wants the paperwork to count needs a separate appointment with a Zivilstandsamt, on land, either side of the day on the water.

Nine ships, unless you read a different page

The fleet page opens by saying "Die Flotte der schweizerischen Bodenseeschifffahrt AG besteht aus 8 Schiffen," the fleet consists of 8 ships, then lists nine, each with its own capacity, indoor seating and home port: MF Romanshorn (560), MS St. Gallen (650), MS Säntis (180), MF Euregia (700), MS Zürich (500), MS Thurgau (500), MS Rhynegg (300), MS Rhyspitz (150) and MS Alte Rhy (60). The FAQ page, elsewhere on the same site, puts the number lower still: "Unsere Flotte umfasst sieben Schiffe," our fleet comprises seven ships, "von der MS Alte Rhy, unserem kleinsten Schiff, bis zur MS St. Gallen, unserem frisch renovierten Flaggschiff," from the MS Alte Rhy, our smallest ship, to the MS St. Gallen, our freshly renovated flagship. Three pages, three counts, none of them matching. The only one with enough detail to check against itself is the itemised list, so nine is the number used here.

The wedding enquiry form on the site offers all nine as options in a dropdown, the two car ferries, MF Romanshorn and MF Euregia, sitting alongside the seven passenger ships. But the dedicated wedding brochure only prices and schedules three of them, MS St. Gallen, MS Säntis and MS Alte Rhy. The other six, ferries included, have no published wedding program: choosing one of them means requesting a custom quote rather than picking a printed price off a page.

The same ship, two different headcounts

For the three vessels the brochure actually prices, the wedding-specific headcount runs well under the ship's own general capacity. MS St. Gallen carries a certified capacity of 650, only 182 of them indoor seats, but the brochure recommends it for "bis zu 100 Personen" (up to 100 guests) on the ceremony program and "bis zu 180 Personen" (up to 180) once the day is a straight reception. MS Säntis, rated for 180 in general, drops to 70 for the ceremony program and 80 for the reception one. MS Alte Rhy, the smallest at a general capacity of 60, is recommended for 30 guests at a ceremony and 36 at a reception.

Two of those three reception numbers line up closely with the ship's own indoor seat count on the fleet page: MS Alte Rhy's 36 matches its 36 indoor seats exactly, and MS St. Gallen's 180 sits just two under its 182. MS Säntis breaks the pattern, recommended for 80 at a reception against 114 indoor seats, the most conservative of the three relative to its own numbers.

The company's own history page muddies exactly this figure for MS Säntis. Describing the ship's 2017 refit into what it calls a "Yacht für einen Tag," a yacht for a day, the page states: "Heute ist sie das ideale Schiff für Hochzeits- und Eventfahrten bis zu 180 Personen," today it is the ideal ship for wedding and event trips of up to 180 people. That is the ship's total certified capacity, not a wedding headcount; the wedding brochure itself, the more specific and more current document, caps the same ship at 80 for a reception and 70 for a ceremony. A couple planning around the history page's figure would be planning for more than twice what the wedding brochure actually sells on that vessel.

Board on time, or the ship leaves without you

Both wedding programs list a single boarding point and a single return point, and neither leaves room for a late guest: the ceremony program casts off fifteen minutes after boarding closes, with the vows already fixed for 14:15. The FAQ describes the underlying rule for any charter: "Wir können von jedem offiziellen Hafen am Bodensee starten... Wenn es nicht der Haupthafen ist, fallen Kosten für eine Leerfahrt an," departures are possible from any official harbour on Lake Constance, and ending anywhere other than the home port adds a charge for the ship's empty return trip. The operator's own two home ports, stated plainly on its ports page, are these: "Unsere Schiffe sind in Romanshorn und Rorschach zu Hause." Every one of the three wedding-recommended ships uses one or the other, MS St. Gallen and MS Säntis from Romanshorn, MS Alte Rhy from Rorschach.

Price follows the same rigidity. A general two-hour charter from the home port runs "zwischen CHF 1'200.00 und CHF 6'000.00," between CHF 1'200 and CHF 6'000, depending on the ship. The wedding programs are priced separately and tied explicitly to their own timetable: the ceremony program on MS Alte Rhy runs CHF 1'450 sailing from Rorschach, the same program on MS St. Gallen from Romanshorn is CHF 6'875, and the longer reception program on MS St. Gallen runs to CHF 9'605 (MS Säntis: CHF 4'625 for the ceremony, CHF 6'575 for the reception; MS Alte Rhy's reception: CHF 2'230). None of the three prices is a flat day rate; each is footnoted "Schiffsmiete für den Programmvorschlag," the rental for that specific program, not the ship in general.

A ferry crosses into Germany from the same dock

Lake Constance borders three countries, and the operator's own site does address that, just not for the wedding vessels. The car ferry that shares Romanshorn's dock with the wedding fleet, MF Romanshorn, runs a scheduled crossing to Friedrichshafen, Germany, described on the site as departing "stündlich um **:22 Uhr ab Romanshorn," hourly, 22 minutes past the hour. Two customs posts serve the route, one in Romanshorn, run by the canton's own Zollstelle Thurgau, and one across the water at what the site lists as "Zollamt Friedrichshafen, Abfertigungsstelle Fähre." Neither the wedding brochure nor the FAQ makes the same claim about the MS St. Gallen, the MS Säntis or the MS Alte Rhy: none of the three wedding-recommended ships is described anywhere on the site as crossing into German or Austrian waters, only as sailing out from Romanshorn or Rorschach and back. A couple building a guest list around Friedrichshafen or Lindau can get there on the company's own ferry; the wedding itself, on the evidence the site publishes, stays on the Swiss side of the lake.

Back on land, at Restaurant Hafen

Page seven of the brochure, headed "Auf dem Land," on land, describes a combined format: the ceremony or aperitif happens afloat, then the party moves to Restaurant Hafen in Romanshorn, in what the brochure calls "eine einzigartige Verbindung aus romantischer Schifffahrt auf dem Bodensee und stilvoller Feier," a combination of a romantic cruise and a stylish celebration directly at the water's edge. The FAQ caps that room at "bis zu 50 Gästen," up to 50 guests, smaller than any of the three wedding-program ships except MS Alte Rhy. Catering for the ship and the restaurant comes from the same in-house kitchen: "Alle Speisen werden anschliessend fachgerecht in der Bordküche unserer Schiffe à la minute zubereitet," every dish finished to order in the ships' own galley. Couples choose their own florist or decorator; the brochure states plainly that "Sie sind bei der Wahl der Dekorateurin frei," they are free in their choice of decorator, including bringing in a preferred supplier rather than one assigned by the company.

What a couple is actually agreeing to

This suits a couple who wants the mechanics of the day settled in advance: a captain-led ceremony that is memorable rather than legal, and a guest list capped by whichever printed program they book rather than by the ship's full passenger certificate. It doesn't suit a couple who wants a legally binding ceremony on the water itself, since Swiss law and the operator's own material agree that isn't on offer here. It doesn't suit a couple who wants to build their own timetable, either: the two programs in the brochure are fixed points, quarter-hour boarding and all, and anything outside MS St. Gallen, MS Säntis or MS Alte Rhy means starting from a blank quote rather than a printed one. What the site leaves unsaid is just as specific as what it states: no page says whether the events team, named on the contact page as Belma Selman and Flavia Scandella, or the captain himself, runs a booking in English, and the wedding page and its brochure exist only in German.