Christmas on board is not one job. It is a decorated boat, a dressed table on the 24th and the 25th, and then a second and entirely separate evening on the 31st, all happening thousands of miles from anywhere that sells what you need. In the Med you could fix a gap in a morning. In Gustavia or at anchor in the Maldives you cannot.
Everything below is about doing the thinking in October so that December is just execution.
What Christmas on board actually needs
Four separate things, and they have different lead times.
The decoration itself, meaning the tree, the garlands and the swags, which goes up early and has to survive several weeks. The table for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. New Year, which is its own order with its own look. And through all of it, the ordinary weekly flowers that still have to appear in the cabins and the lobby while everybody is busy with the rest.
Ask the owner's office in October which of these they expect, and ask specifically whether there are traditions attached. Families have a way of expecting the thing they had last year without ever having said it out loud.
What can be flown, and what to ask about early
Cut flowers, plants and foliage all travel, and so do the dry goods: floral foam, containers, vases, tools and sundries. That covers garlands and swags built on board, table arrangements, and the plants that carry the interior through the weeks when nobody has time to fuss with water.
A real tree is the question to ask early rather than to assume. Conifer is plant material like everything else, which means it has to be named on the import permit and covered by the certificate, and that is a conversation to have in October when the permit is being drawn up, not a thing to discover on 10 December. Ask us in the autumn and we will tell you honestly what is possible for your island and what is not.
The same applies to anything you are imagining on the garlands. Name it in the autumn and it goes on the species list. A thing left off the list in October needs its own application later, and that is where the December problems come from.
When do you order for Christmas?
Count backwards twice.
First the permit, which is the only part of the chain with a real wait in it. In the Caribbean it takes 5 to 7 working days, and in the Maldives, the Seychelles and Phuket it is 1 to 2 weeks. It has to be granted before anything is bought, and it is planned once for the season, after which it covers later orders on the same species list. October, in other words.
Then the orders themselves. Once the permit is on file an order runs at about three days from your message to the passerelle: 48 hours before the flowers are bought at the Dutch auction, then one to two days in the air, nine hours to Sint Maarten, twenty to the Maldives, fifteen to Phuket. Shipping is Monday to Friday, because the flight and the export paperwork both need a working day.
In 2026, Christmas Day falls on a Friday and New Year's Eve on a Thursday. Both are working days, which helps. The days either side of them are not, so the arithmetic matters more than usual. The full timing picture is here.
Two orders, not one
The order that gets forgotten is New Year, because nobody is thinking about the 31st on the 23rd, and by the time anybody is, the boat is full of guests and the chief stewardess has no hands free.
Put both dates in now. The Christmas table is bought in the week before, and the New Year order goes in while the first one is still standing. They look different anyway: Christmas wants depth and warmth, New Year wants something cleaner and more dramatic, and buying them together usually produces a compromise that suits neither.
Filling the box
Shipments start at 100 kg volumetric, which means the space the boxes take rather than what they weigh. Flowers are light and bulky, so this is easier to reach than it sounds, and Christmas is the easiest order of the year to fill properly: the foliage for the garlands, the containers, the foam, the candles' holders and the tools all travel in the same consignment and all count towards it.
It is also free carriage for the things you would otherwise be dragging out from the Riviera in a crew bag.
If the boat is in the Indian Ocean or Asia
The shape is the same and the clock is longer. The Maldives, the Seychelles and Phuket all want a permit and want 1 to 2 weeks for it, so an October application is not early, it is on time. Twenty hours in the air to the Maldives and the Seychelles, fifteen to Phuket, and the same Monday to Friday rule.
What grows locally is worth using where it is good, and it is good in all three. What will not be there is the European Christmas palette, and that is the part that has to be flown. The winter ports and what each needs are set out here.
If the boat is in the Caribbean
St Barths and Sint Maarten are the busiest version of this, because the New Year fleet fills Gustavia and the island's own supply is finished well before the 31st. That one has its own piece: why St Barths is booked in October.
The next step
Send Maxime a message on WhatsApp with the boat, where you expect to be over Christmas and New Year, and whether a tree is part of the brief. We will come back with a species list to approve and get the permit moving this month, so December is only about what goes on the table.