Calgary Brides!

Welcome MayanLily!

What kind of problems are you having?

I have not tried Romantic Planet but I know we had trouble with travel agents. We went to four different companies and the lowest "group rate" they could get for our hotel was $2006 per person. We decided to book on line through expedia.com and let our guests find their own online deals. We ended up paying $ 1300 per person. I haven't really noticed any disadvantages not using a travel company so far.

 

Are you other Calgary brides using a travel company?

I get emails from them still from last year's wedding show, and I did contact them when I was looking for a TA still. I contacted them about an email I got from them showing a really good price at the resort we wanted, and they had not idea what I was talking about, which I thought was totally weird as I phoned the number and person listed in the email. I left about 3 messages for ANYONE to phone me back over a week span, and never heard from them.
That was just my experience, so who knows. I know they are quite popular, but you need to go with your gut for sure.

Does anyone know of stores in the city that have a large selection of tungsten men's bands? Have already scoured the malls, as well as J.Vair Anderson downtown.

We also did not use a travel agent and it seems to have worked out fine for the most part. I guess it all depends if you luck out with someone who is willing to work for you.

 

As for the tungsten bands, we ordered Fi's fromTungsten World and absolutely love it! They were really good to work with and their rates were quite good. AND - no issues with paying customs or duty taxes like other orders from the US. There is a thread here that you can read other reviews on as well at: BDW tungsten wedding bands. Let me know if you need more info about them!

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My stepmom is our TA. She's with a small agency called V the Vacation Store. I didn't find that we got any exceptional deals using a travel agency but it is great to have one person that looks after your guests deposits and payments and to work with the airline and hotel on your behalf. That's the benefit of a travel agent.

I had a meeting back in November with Romantic Planet and specifically told them that half of our guests would be coming from Calgary and half from Regina (where I'm from). They found a package deal for us with Signature and we were told we needed to put down deposits for everyone we "thought" would be coming. That's a hard thing to know since we hadn't even sent out the save the dates yet. We came up with the number 20 so put down $3000 to save everyone a spot. Now we find out the Signature package doesn't accomadate our Regina guests. We were told our Regina ppl will have to pay $350-400 more to come. Now of course, our Regina ppl are booking on their own which totally sucks for us because we lose our deposits. GRRRRRRR... wish I knew then what I know now.

 

Sorry for venting but this destination planning turns out to be alot less laidback than I thought. Wish I'd gone to Vegas! LOL

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I also found it easier to coordinate everything through our TA. We were also able to get group incentives this way. Our original price was kind of pricey (although not too bad anyways), but it was also worked in to our contract that if prices went down online, we got the new price- which it did. We ended up having to re-book the whole thing anyways LAST WEEK, as Transat changed our flights out of all three of our gateways (Cgy, Toronto, Montreal). Out TA was able to get us out of our contract with no penalties and book through WestJet instead...for $500 less than our original price in an upgraded room. Anyways, there are a few people who have booked separatley, but it worked out cheaper for them only because they had points for their flights. I know that I definitely could not have done what we did without my TA, but am sure many others have great experiences without. MayanLily- that sounds brutal about the deposits and totally unacceptableto me! I would fight for that for sure.

 

Meghan- I am a loal subscriber to the Tungsten wedding bands thread that I saw you writing on!There are two rings on there we are debating on, but one we like the inlay but want it a matte finish instead of polished, and I don't know if they will do that custom and still be able to send it back if it doesn't work or fit. I will need to call and find out, but we were hoping to find something in the city so we can see if it is too shiny or not for FI. Do you happen to know if they will customize a bit? Thanks for all the info. you provided on that thread. It was your posts that made me check it out in the first place!

This is EXACTLY the experience I had, although with a different company. If I'm going to refer my guests to a travel co-ordinator, they really should be organized and at least timely with responses.
To be fair, the TA I was trying to work with was not located in Calgary. Does that make a difference?