Any Gran Bahia Principe Runaway Bay Brides out there?

[kerrij]

Hi! I'm getting married at the GBP in just over 4 months! i can't wait!

i did quite a few searches on GBP and all the posts are old and have kind of died, so I'm wondering if there are any GBP Brides who still visit this site, or any brides to be of GBP that visit this site?

I'd really love to see some pics! but the one thread i saw with the link, i can't open the link maybe cause i'm still a Noob?

[juliaks]

Hey Kerri. It looks like we'll be getting married there as well. I'm just waiting to hear back from the wedding planner, to find out if March 14th is available. I'm from Calgary too. Small world.

[kerrij]

Quote:

Originally Posted by juliaks Hey Kerri. It looks like we'll be getting married there as well. I'm just waiting to hear back from the wedding planner, to find out if March 14th is available. I'm from Calgary too. Small world.

Wow my first Calgarian on this site! So have you found out yet if your date is avail? Beverly is awesome to deal with. usually gets back to you in a day or two. We'll be at the hotel until the 12th and then we are going to Negril for our 2nd week. So exciting eh! less than 4 months away sista!

[juliaks]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kerrij Wow my first Calgarian on this site! So have you found out yet if your date is avail? Beverly is awesome to deal with. usually gets back to you in a day or two. We'll be at the hotel until the 12th and then we are going to Negril for our 2nd week. So exciting eh! less than 4 months away sista!

I've found out that my date is available. We're getting married on March 14! Surprisingly I haven't been dealing with Beverly directly. She stopped responding to my emails, so she has been dealing with my travel agent. It's pretty strange, I was told that the 14th wasn't available, but when my travel agent emailed her, it suddenly was. Oh well, I don't care, I got what I wanted anyway. We're staying the full two weeks at the Bahia, I hope we don't get too bored! I finally found my dress the other day, that's another thing I can stop worrying about! Is your wedding all planned and done? We just started planning ours back when I first messaged you...

[kerrij]

Ya Julia, that is awesome you got your day! so what days are you going? we are March 5-12 and then going to negril 12-19. we haven't booked our hotel for the 2nd week yet, waiting for rates to go down a little more i think.

Beverly has been fantastic to deal with directly, except sometimes she won't eamil me for a couple weeks, like right now, i've been waiting for a few days, but i know she'll get back to me. it's weird you deal through your TA. what travel company did you use?

i used selloffvacations actually!

the actual wedding i'm not doing much planning, i don't want to stress the day of. working on finding a photographer right now and planning the 2 events that we are having for the guests so they get to kow each other. it's gonna be fun! but ya the day of, just going to be simple. wedding in the gazebo at 3:30 dinner from 6:30-8:30 then from 9-11 we are renting the gazebo and beach area with a DJ for only $500! cheap! dancing barefoot in the sand is what i wanted!

how's yoru planning going?

[reidtobe]

Hey Ladies!

 

I too am from Calgary and am getting married at the Gran Bahia Principe Jamaica in April 2010. It's nice to see I have some other Bride to Be's out there staying at the same resort.

 

I am dealing with Beverly. Do you know if we have to get our own photographer/videographer or if they provide them? Have you made any spa appts for your wedding day for hair or makeup? Also wondering on any other small details I should be arranging prior to my arrival - ex: flowers, cake, music, location etc. or if that is all discussed upon arrival. Beverly answers questions but does not really advise me on any other things I may or should be organizing!!

 

Thanks in advance for any support you can give. Hope all the planning is going well.

[kerrij]

Hey reidtobe! Another calgary girl! love it!

They have a photographer at the hotel you can hire but i didn't like their packages. Beverly will send you their price list and then you can check out their website also. i did lots of searching around at local photographers on the island but ended up hiring someone from Nelson, my sis in laws friend and i just have to pay for her trip! so it's only going to cost me that much!

 

I just emailed the spa this week to make our appts. they said we should make them now, so you prob should too!

 

I find with Beverly you just have to ask detailed questions to get the answers you are needing. Flowers i'm pretty sure we deal with once we are there, cake as well. DJ i hired already with her for our dance at the gazebo. Location i am pretty sure we booked when we booked our time slot.

 

Can I ask what kind of rate you guys got for your group? i know each week is a differnet price. Our original online price was $2400 and our best group rate we could get for a direct flight was with Sunquest for $2016 (incld tax) but now Nolitours has come out with a online rate of $1650! so we complained and Sunquest dropped ours by $275! yay. did you guys get a good group rate deal?

[reidtobe]

Hello

 

Thanks for all your info. It has been very helpful. Our group rate was with Signature Vacations at $2087.00 originally and has now gone down $300.00 recently.

 

I guess now I will wait for Beverly to email me back regarding photography etc. I was given forms to fill out that included me to choose my flowers and cake and I thought we just went over that once we arrived. It was a bit unclear. Have you sent in your documents for your marriage license? Did you decide on your wedding package?

 

Thanks again for your reply.

[kerrij]

Oh that makes me feel good knowing you guys are paying pretty much what we are paying too!

 

Ya i got that form too and i've been slowly filling it out, but same here, i thought we covered that all of that once we got there. if you get it clarified please let me know i haven't heard from Beverly in a couple weeks. she goes on spurts where she's sooo good and gets back to you right away for like a month or two and then she'll quit and will take 2-3 weeks to hear back from her...not sure if she goes on holidays or something or what! lol

 

I have a list of questions for her and that is one of my questions...when do we have to have our docs in for our license...i read yesterday on a website that most resorts need it 30-60 days prior, but her comments on the form say that we just have to fax it before we arrive at the resort, doesn't give a timeline. but my FI had to order his birth cert, so as soon as we get it in a couple weeks then i'll fax a copy of both.

 

I needed up goign with the Free Package. i studied the Free one and Blissful and the Blissful was going to cost like $1000 more for silly things i didn't care about, like transportation to the wedding site (which Beverly told me was $10 if we wanted it) and extra photos and stuff. but the minister fees are $400...so for our group of 50 it'll cost us $1250 for the free package instead of $2150 for Blissful (including the extra pp costs)

we are also renting the gazebo/dj for $500 to have our dance! yay! but we have to pay for a bar which is $20/pp for the 2 hrs. but worth it to us. we don't want to loose our guests when they walk to the bar, get distracted and don't come back. lol

 

how about you, did you choose a package or any extras yet?

[juliaks]

We are doing March 12 - 26. We are just going to stay at the same hotel I think for the two weeks. We will have our daughter with us (she will be ten months by then) so we wouldn't be able to do any adult resorts. I'm not sure what other ones that are out there that are comparable in price and rating, so I figured we'd just stay the whole two weeks there.

 

We booked with Transat, so we didn't end up with a free wedding. We picked the Blissful package. It kind of sucks though because I think we are going to have a lot less people than we originally thought, so half the package is going to waste (it includes up to 26 people). Our cost for one week through Transat was $1837 I think? Somewhere around there. Friends of ours booked the same trip for their wedding (we are getting married at the same time) a month before us, and paid $2200 I believe. Signature dropped their price too though.

 

We ended up hiring Misha Earle to be our photography. It was expensive, but her photos are beautiful, and she has been awesome to deal with so far. We are doing a full day shoot, along with a TTD session two days later. 2700 I believe. Cheaper than flying out our own photographer!

 

How did you guys book your spa appointments? I'm still not dealing with Beverly directly, which is a strange situation. How about cakes and flowers? Chair ties? etc? I was wondering about decorations for the site, because I don't know if I should bring my own or not. I'm doing green/purple, and I'm wondering if they will have anything I can use...

 

That dj/dance thing you are doing Kerri, sounds awesome. I'm jealous. So far we only have ten people booked, so something like that would just be pointless for us

 

We should all get together and brainstorm and chat!