mopher

Wow...Kishalee I love that you have had so many wedding there. I got married there in February and loved it, but am blown away by how much you guys loved it.

I got married at the ror on Feb. 20th and I just recieved my marriage certificate this week. It is nice to have the real certificate...the "million dollar cheque" as the minister put it just didn't feel right as documentation..lol.

We flew skyservice and they were great. They hung the dress and tux in the cockpit for us. it is so humid in Jamaica that I am sure it won't be hard for the wrinkles to come out if you end up with any.

Depending on the size of your group I would try and get a microphone. When we got married there was another very small wedding off to the side of the restaurant that decided to make the supper also the dance and were playing music very loudly and the other entertainent and outside noise made hearing speeches next to impossible. The best set up at the restaurant is the T shape, but with a large group this made speeches even harder to hear for the people at the end of the table. A caution about the T shape - We could only fit 4 across on the top of the t. It would be possible to do 6, but no more than that I wouldn't think

We rented the steel band for an hour for the ceremony. Although I think they ended up playing a bit longer. Chandlyn will ask you what you would like them to play for your wedding march - she gave me the option of traditional( that is what I chose) and some other song. However I am sure if you had another song in mind they may be able to do it. The other songs they played were good. Out of all the upgrades this really was my favorite and I think all of the guests enjoyed it while they waited for the wedding to start and for the rum punch after the wedding. If you get them to play a cd they have a little stereo that they set up which didn't look all that professional with cords strung accross the beach and set up either on the sand or on a chair.

The wedding DVD is through the photoshop. You pay the photoshop and they bring in a guy to do it. It costs 300.00 for 45 minutes. You can get it for longer, but I think that is long enough. The disco with the lights on was really good. It wasn't really bright - it was the way you would expect a wedding dance hall to be. It is somewhat tacky inside (the ways have speckled carpet on them) but it is really good. Out of all the dance options I liked either the beach( seagrape when rented) or the disco. I would not try and mix you wedding dance with the beach party as you can't be sure which day they are going to have it and there are too many people and it is dark and most people would have to sit on beach lounge chairs. Sorry for all the rambling. Hope that helps. The DJ was good. I would bring some music especially if you want some music for older guests.

Honestly the wedding was better than I could have ever imagined. To answer a couple of your questions 1)There was no problem using fake flower petals – they didn’t really blow away in the wind and were easily cleaned up by rolling up the aisle runner. ( the hotel took care of it) 2)We brought an outside photographer. Michael tried to get us to pay him, but I remained strong and said I had no contract with him. I also asked him not to take pictures. The hotel does provide him with a list of all weddings , their locations and the number of guests so there is no hiding from him. Be strong and do not pay him. 3)We did get a dvd made. They did a really good job on it. I gave them 2 songs to put on and they filled it with other nice songs. A note of caution – they put a microphone on the groom. Be careful what you say because it may end up on the dvd. The minister tells everyone to come up and congratulate you after the wedding and that part of the dvd has no background sound so that you can hear all the congratulations. After the wedding the dvd guy takes you and makes you do a bunch of different poses while he tapes. Try your best not to look at the camera. I kept looking back into the camera and it made it look even more posed than it was. 4)We had the wedding at the beach gazebo however the other gazebo is really nice. I was just set on having it on the beach. Also the other gazebo is quite far from the suite wing of the hotel as is the plantation restaurant. 5)They gave me a three tier wedding cake and I did not pay extra. It was okay, if cake is really important to you upgrade it, but it was perfectly fine. I had asked for them not put fruit on the cake as I had seen in some of the pictures instead they put some flowers on it. I would bring your own cake decorations and give them to her – i am sure you can find something nice at a craft store even if it is just seashells 6)Oh and another thing I would have done is brought a nice pen for signing the wedding documents – the pen they have is just plain 7)The wedding document lists you as a spinster if you have never been married. I guess this is common, but it made me laugh lots while signing it. On a side note I bought the just married flip flops to wear the next day and they gave me blisters and didn’t even leave the marks in the sand. 9)I asked about the room upgrade when we checked in – which was on a Friday and they didn’t have anything till the Monday. I got Chandlyn to check too, I thought it would put extra pressure on them. Let me know if you guys have any other questions while it is fresh in my head.

Everything was perfect!!! I will post pictures as soon as my photographer sends them to me which should be in a couple days. We had the wedding at 2 with the steel band playing. That was my favourite upgrade. I brought some fake Gerber daises with me and got them to make my bouquet with roses and gerber daisies. I think it was 144 for the bouquet. We didn’t get the chair covers as I could not justify the cost, but if you have extra money in your budget I would recommend it. I paid the 45 dollars for the aisle runner and brought fake flower petals from home. We had our supper at the mammee bay. A couple of my guests decorated a table for signing our photo mat and our reception table. We had 40 guests and they made the table in a giant T shape. I think it would be hard to do many different table arrangements at either the upstairs of the plantation or mammee bay. The resort had candles for the table at no extra cost. We did not pay for more champagne as I thought the wine would be enough. When they brought the free champagne my brother paid the waiter 20 dollars to go and get 7 more bottles of champagne. It was very difficult to hear the speeches at the restaurant. I would advise doing them elsewhere or getting a microphone brought in. I had planned supper to take 2 hours, but it was closer to 3 hours by the time everyone ate and had dessert. We rented the disco, I was sceptical about it after being there the nights before but was really surprised. They turn the lights on when you have it rented and it actually feels like you are at a wedding dance. I saw many weddings when we were there that had their dances in the restaurant and to be honest ( no offence to anyone that did this) it looked awkward...like you were dancing in a restaurant cause in fact that is what you are doing. There was a reggae show the wedding night and they actually came and got my husband and myself and brought us on stage to dance as they played for us...my wedding dance went from 40 people watching to 1500 in a matter of seconds! We had our room upgraded a couple days after being there. The junior suites are nice and I almost didn’t take the upgrade because I thought it wouldn’t be worth moving all of our stuff...boy was I wrong...amazing. The upgraded room is almost as big as the first floor of my house. We had a party in our room the night before the wedding which worked really well. We tipped a waiter to bring more drinks up. It was much cheaper than doing a reception and more personable. Chandlyn was very good about making supper reservations for us for all of the other nights. The meeting with her was very quick mostly because this site had answered all the questions I had. The riu was amazing. All of my guests were happy about everything. The only thing that caused some minor annoyance was that the key cards often didn’t work and you would have to walk back and get new ones. For the size of the resort it is laid out quite well and we had no problems finding members of our group. If anyone has questions let me know and I will do my best to answer.

Did whoever put up your flowers have troubles? Are they strict with what you use to hand things?...and yes you looked wonderful!

We are having our supper at mammee bay and also rented out the disco so I will take lots of pics and post on one of the sharing sites

I am leaving in 5 days to Jamaica. I of course will do a full write up of everything when I return. If any one has specific questions or wants pictures/videos of anything taken let me know before I leave so I can make a point of finding out.

So I found the answer to my own question: - your wedding dress does not count as your carry on luggage. You can bring it on the plane however most of their planes do not have a spot fot it so it will have to go in the overhead bin

Are we allowed to bring our wedding dresses on board. Do we need to do anything prior to arriving to the airport. Did anyone experiance any problems or have other suggestions for transfering the dress

I want the letter to my parents to be very sweet and thank them for all that they have done throughout my life...but I am at a loss for words. I know that would appreciate a kind note much more than any gift I could possibly get them.

Does anyone have the thank you letters that they sent or are going to send? I am wanting to write a nice thank you letter to my parents and my brain is fried from wedding planning.