HELP Grand Palladium Brides!!!!

More/New GPJ wedding pictures!!!!

 

Monica Z. Photography

 

Christopher Z Photography

 

(including my wedding day & day after slideshows!)

Petals, your pictures look great!

Petals:

Your pictures are amazing and you've said so many great things about Grand Palladium. But the majority of the reviews that I have read a not so good everyone complains about the A/C in the rooms and say that the place is in disrepair?? Did you or your guests have any issues with the air conditioning?

The AC in our room was working, as was the ceiling fan. I don't like the AC to be ice cold, so the combo of the two were fine for us. Our room was very comfortable. We were mostly just there in the room in the evenings-- spent most of our days over at Sunset Cove beach.

I mentioned that I did notice the loose pool tiles and the power did go out-- these are things that need to be fixed, but they weren't enough to ruin our trip.

That being said, everybody's expectations are different (if you go expecting the Ritz-Carlton, you will be disappointed for sure), but we've traveled to Jamaica a lot and we usually stay at very basic standard hotels, so for our group, this was a great value for the price. Almost everybody found extremely cheap rates online.

I have tofind some time to leave a review but in the meantime, anyone getting married there should relax be cause it will be AMAZING. My wedding day exceeded my dreams my a mile and we could not have been happier.

Congratulations Mrs! I love your siggy pic, btw.

Congratulations Danalauren!!!! I'm so glad to hear everything went well for you!!!! Can't wait to see pics and read your review!!!

Picture link at the end!

 

GRAND PALLADIUM LADY HAMILTON:

 

Everyone in our party loved the resort. It was a beautiful location for a wedding and wedding photos.

 

Our rooms were great, we all stayed in junior suites. Everyone agreed that the AC could be better, but we lucked out, our room had freezing AC.

Room was always cleaned early and well.

 

Decorated beautifully on the night of our wedding, rose petals everywhere, would hate to have to clean that up!

 

GROUP DINNERS:

Dinner with a big gourp is made difficult there and i can't understand why. But we did manage a welcome dinner and a Rehersal Dinner. If you speak with Guest services and plead your case they will not make you eat at 5:30 (when groups are supposed to eat) and have a set menu. Dinner was great at all the resturants we ate but my personnal faves were the Italian and Mexican. We did not make it to the Steak house because we left fo our honeymoon, but my family said it was by far the best resturant. They said the Asian was so so.

 

BEACHES/POOL:

Half the beaches were only to look at because of the coral and rocks and were beautiful, the other half were great for swimming so I don't understand all the complaints about that. We used the paddle boats and took the Catamaran out, really pretty views The pool is fine, yes the tiles are falling off but didn't bother any of us. I have no idea what this place is going to do in a few years though, it was a stupid way to build such a large pool, should have been cement. The pool is huge! There is no way that thing could ever get over crowded.

 

 

THE SPA:

My sister and I had our hair done there. They did a great job and we, but tried to charge us $300 each! We ended up paying $97 plus tip each. Do not pay the $300.

 

 

THE CEREMONY:

AMAZING. We had a beach ceremony and it was so far beyond my dreams that i get chocked up thinking about it. It poured when we were going to the spa, but luckily passed after an hour and our ceremony was pushed back a half hour so they could clean the area up.

 

Decoration, flowers, were beautiful. Our minister, Vincent Mackenzie, was great. He did an amazing job especially when he took a minute to talk about my husband's dad who had recently passed away.

We did two sets of vows, he had us do his which were beautiful and then allowed us to say our own, which I really liked.

 

We hired the steel drum band, BEST DECISION of the wedding. When my sister and I pulled up to the site I could hear them playing and it made me cry. They played here come the bride as i walked down the aisle. They continued to play after the ceremony and we danced our first song to them.

 

RECEPTION:

Our reception was held at the Blue Lagoon Restaurant. We had the fee waived because the heavy rain had moved the creole resturant down to the Blue lagoon. We didn't even notice they were there because we were so seperated from them we were both on our own seperate "wings", but I wasn't going to argue with a waived fee!

 

We ate off the Jamaican Creole Menu. Crab cakes, Seafood gumbo and the Steak and Tilapia for entrees. I heard no complaints and everyone enjoyed. My sister has Celiac (a severe allergy to glutto and wheat) and has a difficult time finding food she could eat. Jascynthia worked with us for a special menu for her, and the servers knew just who to deliver those dishes to.

 

The cake was really good! My husband who really doen't do cake ate a whole piece. It was really pretty, we gave them a cake topper and star fish and they did a great job. We offered the remainder of the cake to the staff and they were really happy about it!

 

For music we did our own little setup. My husband is a sound engineer so he took care of that. He actually took three ihomes and linked them together and we were able to place them around the reception area and use one ipod. Worked perfect! We had out second "first" dance, father/daughter dance and mother/son dance. We did a bunch of dancing before the first course came out. It was great timing.

 

Following our reception, we headed upstairs to the Infinity Bar, where a live band was playing. It was a really good time and a much better optionthe DJ. After their second set we headed to the Disco which was so much fun!

 

And of course we finished off the VERY VERY long and FUN night with cheeseburgers and the sports bar.

 

Jascynthia and her assistant Suzan may be hard to reach prior to, but I promise she will do an amazing job the day of the wedding.

 

Our day exceeded our expectations by a mile and everytime I think about it I get a smile on my face.

 

Our photographer Krinstina Hill has started posting photos on her blog. She did a great job and I can not wait to see the rest of our photos, especially the trash the dress. Here is the first set, I'll post more as they come in:

 

kristina hill photography // blog Destination Wedding - Jamaica (part one)

 

Hope this help all you GPJ bride-to-be's out!

Has anyone who got married at the Grand Palladium in Jamaica received their official marriage license in the mail? I got married on April 24th, and have still not received my license...

 

Any info would be great!

 

Thanks!

Julie

Danalauren.....

 

I'm so happy to hear that you had a great time and that everything worked out wonderfully... I really was starting to worry for a bit because of bad reviews I have read elsewhere!

 

also - your pics look great, too!