Jamaicabride409

Our wedding was on a Thursday but because Monday was a Holiday we did not get it until Tuesday, they knew that we were there for 2 weeks or I am sure they would have had it to us for the next day. You get to view it before as well to make sure everything is ok!

Quote: Originally Posted by kitty_kat_uk Hey Kari I put my photo's on using facebook. Right at the bottom when you have the album and thumbnails showing it does say to share this album use this link. BUT your album must be set so everyone can see not set for friends only!! Hope that works or helps! Great review by the way. We watched your ceremony from our balcony, after our breakfast in bed, it looked lovely! Claire Hi Claire, We watched your wedding as well and yours was beautiful!!

Quote: Originally Posted by sunstarsmoon Great review, you have me thinking I may want to change my time. I have the 4pm time slot, I am not sure I want to be in the shade. HMMMM something to think about. Can't wait to see your pictures. Hi, There was a bit of sun to the left of the gazebo if you are facing the water, I did notice one wedding where their wedding was at 4pm and they used the arch but they positioned it to the left of the gazebo and there was some late afternoon sun. But right in front of the gazebo and to the right of it is shade. Hope this helps!

Our Trip April 4th-April18th, 09 Getting to Resort: 19 of us left Halifax at 6:30pm and arrived into Montego Bay at 9pmish on Saturday evening on Air Transat using Sun quest Vacations, I have nothing bad to say about Air Transat or Sun quest, we were in regular class on our way down and Club class on the way home, and obviously we enjoyed Club Class more so. The flight was smooth, they did not have a spot for me to hang my dress but they did provide me with an overhead bin that was just for my dress so other people’s bags were not laying on top of the dress which I thought was nice. Customs at the Montego Bay airport was long and very hot but they moved us along as quickly as they could and we were loaded onto our bus and off to the resort in no time. The bus drive to Ocho Rios was less then an hour and a half and we arrived at the resort before 12am. Checking in: Was quick, they know exactly what they are doing at reception, we had our room keys, bracelets and bags to our room in less then 30 minutes. For the first part of the week stayed in room 1150 in the Jr. Suite side of the resort, the room was nice and clean and I love the dark wood that they use in the rooms. The majority of our group was staying on the Jr. Suite side or the resort and they all put us on the same floor which was easy for getting to and from each others rooms. Our view was amazing, we had a larger balcony and it viewed the ocean. In regards to the rooms they were a little musty but we brought a scented air wick and the must smell went away after that. When you open the balcony doors the air conditioning does turn off but if you bring a small magnet and put it on the sensor of the door you can trick the air conditioner and it will stay on!! For all of you couples who decide to stay in a Jr. Suite and you purchase the free wedding package definitely talk to reception about upgrading your room on your wedding night! If you look at the Riu website under weddings it does not say that you are entitled to a free room upgrade if you go with the Free Wedding package but we asked reception and they said that because we are staying on the Jr. Suite side we will be getting a room upgrade if one is available and we did!! The room was 1060 in the same building and it was oceanfront facing the beach gazebo…this room was amazing!! The stand up shower is bigger then my entire bathroom at home!! And the bath tub was bigger then the shower! When you are upgraded you stay in this room until you leave, so in our case we had this room for 10 days because we stayed for 2 weeks. Definitely take the time to enquire on this you will not regret it!! Ok enough about the rooms! Reception: We had no issues with reception, staff was easy to talk to and always smiled and wanted to know if we were having a good trip and that everything was ok, we even received a few phone calls to our room from reception to check on our stay. Resort: The resort itself is amazing, it is large, well kept there are always people out cleaning and picking up garbage because travelers for some reason do not know how to use a garbage can!!! I cannot say enough about the cleaning staff of the rooms, the waiters and maintenance staff they work their butts off! The one thing I did find about this resort is that the bars are all crammed together, there are three main bars to the left of the lobby and at night when the entertainment is on it is jam packed full of people and getting to a bar to get a drink is not always easy. With a resort that large they definitely should have spaced out the bars. Restaurants/Food: We tried every restaurant that they had on the resort, if you are staying on the Jr. Suite side you will be able to go to 2 extra restaurants. The one thing about these specialty restaurants is that you have to make reservations and that is done between 8:00am and 4:00pm on the same day you want to eat there. People line up starting at 7:30pm and they move the line pretty quick. The food was pretty good, last trip we were on was to Dominican Republic and the food did not compare to Jamaica. For the first week that we were there we had 19 people with us and we had no trouble making a reservation at each restaurant to seat 19, you just have to be in line first thing in the morning. They always accommodated us whether it was in the buffet restaurant or the specialty restaurants. Every night at the buffet restaurant was a different theme it felt like; the Jamaican theme was the best. I loved how they cut up fruit right in front of you; they made omelets right in front of you and pasta stations as well. There was always enough food and you could always find something to eat. We are not used to eating 3 meals daily in reality so it felt like we were always eating!! Entertainment and night life: The entertainment was great, most nights we would watch the show between 9pm and 10:30pm they work really hard to put on a good show and it was pretty good. In regards to the night life we did find that there was not as much to do as we thought a big resort would have. Other then the nightly entertainment, a Saturday night beach party and a disco there really was not much else to do; we are not huge drinkers so getting drunk nightly was not in the cards for us. I have been to some resorts where they had bowling lanes and casinos and I found the Riu lacked that sort of stuff. Don’t get me wrong we had fun, but a few nights especially the second week we found it repetitive and just wanted something else to do! Beach/Pools: We didn’t use the pools at all as we are beach bums and love the ocean, there were always lots of chairs free at the beach where as we definitely noticed the pool was always packed and there were no chairs available. The ocean was warm but not too warm that you didn’t find it refreshing. They raked the beach everyday and there were always workers around during the picking up garbage and cups people left behind, again come on people use a garbage its on the way to your room….there is one thing that might get on your nerves while on the beach and swimming and it is the vendors and jet skiers, they are always around offering to sell you this and that and will ask you 4-5 times daily, just say no and they will leave you alone. On to the Wedding: This will be long because I have so much to cover: Let’s just start out by saying WOW we had an amazing wedding!!! Because we arrived on Saturday night we were scheduled to meet with Chandlyn at 9:00am on Monday morning, she was a little late but we are in Jamaica right!! The meeting was less then 30 minutes, we had not done much communicating before we arrived to Jamaica, we reserved our Mammee bay wedding dinner and I think I e-mailed her about flowers at one point so I thought the meeting would be long!. She had our file ready to go and a check sheet, we booked the Free Wedding Package because we were not using the on site photographer or the on site spa so it made more sense to us to go with the Free package. We choose the beach gazebo at 11:00am, in my mind I knew going to Jamaica that I wanted to use the arch on the beach but after looking at the beach gazebo it is so beautiful, it is nicely situated between two palm trees and it looked a lot nicer then the arch itself. In the end we were glad that we choose the 11:00am time slot, I noticed that the 4pm time slot had no sun on the gazebo because the sun was behind the building at that point. We upgraded our chairs from the brown chairs to white folding chairs, these chairs cost $5/chair and ladies if you are thinking about upgrading your chairs to add the white chair covers and sashes I wouldn’t do it, the folding white chairs are nice and you can bring your own sashes or use the resorts for $2.50 extra/chair =$7.50/chair, which is way cheaper then $12.00/chair for the chair covers and sashes. We went with the basic gazebo decoration, which includes white linen fabric and birds of paradise flowers on the gazebo, it was perfect and honestly the ceremony is so quick you hardly have time to notice any other decorations on the gazebo. The flowers were amazing, the free flowers options that they have are not the greatest but Chandlyn asked me what I wanted and they met and exceeded my expectations. I took a look at one of the free flower options and said what else can I do and before she brought out the book of upgraded bouquet’s she asked me what I would like instead and I told her that I want all tropical flowers, ginger, orchids, birds of paradise, lilies and a few roses, the colors I said I wanted were pinks, purples, oranges, whites. I did not pay for an upgrade on my bouquet but I did purchase 3 more bouquets for my bridesmaids, they cost $35.00 each of a smaller version of my bouquet. We also added 4 extra boutonnières and a pin corsage for John’s mother which was all orchids and the total cost on all flowers was $179.00. I was expecting to have to pay extra for my bouquet because I knew I did not want the free one, but I did not have to!!! My flowers were so perfect and exactly what I wanted and I had no expectations in regards to flowers at all… We did not upgrade to any live music we burnt a CD and told her which track and the correct track was playing while I was walking down the isle, we put approximately 10 songs on the cd including our wedding song to be played after the ceremony and during pictures. She asked us if we wanted champagne or rum punch and she ordered 3 bottles of champagne and it wasn’t too bad, anything we did not drink was put on our table for the dinner. All together our wedding cost us $599.99US for everything, we paid by traveler’s checks and were out the door within 20 minutes. We did inquire about having a bon fire on the beach but it was really expensive, it would have cost us $150 just to have the bonfire, $25/person for setting up chairs/tables etc and $100 to rent a bartender and we could only have it for an hour we decided not to. After we met with Chandlyn we went to the photo shop, we brought our own photographer so we did not use the photo services but from other weddings that I saw they are awesome, I know Michael seems hard to get a hold of or have questions answered but I know why now, they are always shooting weddings and the pictures I did see looked perfect! If you have him booked for your wedding he will do a great job! We did purchase the wedding DVD though it costs $330 and $30 for each extra copy that you want, you can only pay for this DVD by cash or travelers checks…..please note that! We were able to watch a few sample DVD’s to ensure we liked it before we booked them. The videographer arrived before the ceremony and worked with us during and after the ceremony to get great shots. John had a small microphone attached under his shirt so you can hear the minister and us talking so clearly on the DVD, you can even hear the wind and the water at some points. The DVD met our expectations, it was 20 minutes long, and they use the same template for each wedding. We are so glad that we purchased the DVD I have watched it 5 times since we got home. The Wedding Day: It was a little cloudy on the wedding day and windy as well, it rained only for a minute in the early morning but that is good luck right! The breeze from the wind was perfect at that time of day because it can be hot! We had hired an outside hair stylist as she was a friend of the family’s and on the wedding day we had a little bit of trouble getting her onto the resort because Chandlyn was not on site to let her in when we originally discussed, no worries we talked to the front desk and they let her in with no problem. We did not have to pay for her to have a day pass, if you ask Chandlyn nicely she will work her magic with reception. Because of the little glitch we were a little late starting hair but by 10:30am she had everyone completed. Our flowers arrived at 10:45am just in enough time to have her put my veil and flowers in mine and the girl’s hair. One other small glitch we had on the wedding day was dad noticed that they had placed the brown chairs out instead of the white folding chairs, he called Chandlyn and within 5 minutes that was fixed. Glad he took a look because I really didn’t want the brown chairs. Just before 11 am Nikki came to get us, everything was perfect, they played the song we wanted on queue and by 11:15am we were on the beach having pictures and video shots taken and that was it ceremony was over. The minister was perfect he made the ceremony so easy; because we bought the Wedding video John was wearing a small microphone and you could hear us so clearly on the video. We did not write our own vows we wanted to use the minister’s ceremony to make it special, he read a few e-mails that came into the resort from family at home and we also did the sand ceremony. We spent about an hour after the ceremony taking pictures and then by 1:00pm we were on the beach in our bathing suits. At 6:30pm we went to Mammee Bay restaurant for supper, it was perfect, they had our special napkins placed out and our favors and they also added fresh rose petals to the table and we used all of our bouquet’s as center pieces, the table looked so nice. They took our orders quickly and we were out of the restaurant by 9:00pm it was a perfect dinner. After that all 19 of us headed to our suite and we had a big room party. The big thing about our wedding is we wanted to keep it simple, we had a stress free wedding and that is exactly what we wanted, the ROR provided us with that and much more, we had an amazing wedding because of them. Having a destination wedding was the best decision we ever made. You are in a tropical place, bare foot in the sane, turquoise water behind you and marrying the man of your dreams, ladies please try not to worry about anything, you forget the little things in the end!!! I hope this review helps those who will be married at the ROR, if anyone has any question further definitely ask me.

Having issues with pictures I will post once I get figured out!

Our Trip April 4th-April18th, 09 Getting to Resort: 19 of us left Halifax at 6:30pm and arrived into Montego Bay at 9pmish on Saturday evening on Air Transat using Sun quest Vacations, I have nothing bad to say about Air Transat or Sun quest, we were in regular class on our way down and Club class on the way home, and obviously we enjoyed Club Class more so. The flight was smooth, they did not have a spot for me to hang my dress but they did provide me with an overhead bin that was just for my dress so other people’s bags were not laying on top of the dress which I thought was nice. Customs at the Montego Bay airport was long and very hot but they moved us along as quickly as they could and we were loaded onto our bus and off to the resort in no time. The bus drive to Ocho Rios was less then an hour and a half and we arrived at the resort before 12am. Checking in: Was quick, they know exactly what they are doing at reception, we had our room keys, bracelets and bags to our room in less then 30 minutes. For the first part of the week stayed in room 1150 in the Jr. Suite side of the resort, the room was nice and clean and I love the dark wood that they use in the rooms. The majority of our group was staying on the Jr. Suite side or the resort and they all put us on the same floor which was easy for getting to and from each others rooms. Our view was amazing, we had a larger balcony and it viewed the ocean. In regards to the rooms they were a little musty but we brought a scented air wick and the must smell went away after that. When you open the balcony doors the air conditioning does turn off but if you bring a small magnet and put it on the sensor of the door you can trick the air conditioner and it will stay on!! For all of you couples who decide to stay in a Jr. Suite and you purchase the free wedding package definitely talk to reception about upgrading your room on your wedding night! If you look at the Riu website under weddings it does not say that you are entitled to a free room upgrade if you go with the Free Wedding package but we asked reception and they said that because we are staying on the Jr. Suite side we will be getting a room upgrade if one is available and we did!! The room was 1060 in the same building and it was oceanfront facing the beach gazebo…this room was amazing!! The stand up shower is bigger then my entire bathroom at home!! And the bath tub was bigger then the shower! When you are upgraded you stay in this room until you leave, so in our case we had this room for 10 days because we stayed for 2 weeks. Definitely take the time to enquire on this you will not regret it!! Ok enough about the rooms! Reception: We had no issues with reception, staff was easy to talk to and always smiled and wanted to know if we were having a good trip and that everything was ok, we even received a few phone calls to our room from reception to check on our stay. Resort: The resort itself is amazing, it is large, well kept there are always people out cleaning and picking up garbage because travelers for some reason do not know how to use a garbage can!!! I cannot say enough about the cleaning staff of the rooms, the waiters and maintenance staff they work their butts off! The one thing I did find about this resort is that the bars are all crammed together, there are three main bars to the left of the lobby and at night when the entertainment is on it is jam packed full of people and getting to a bar to get a drink is not always easy. With a resort that large they definitely should have spaced out the bars. Restaurants/Food: We tried every restaurant that they had on the resort, if you are staying on the Jr. Suite side you will be able to go to 2 extra restaurants. The one thing about these specialty restaurants is that you have to make reservations and that is done between 8:00am and 4:00pm on the same day you want to eat there. People line up starting at 7:30pm and they move the line pretty quick. The food was pretty good, last trip we were on was to Dominican Republic and the food did not compare to Jamaica. For the first week that we were there we had 19 people with us and we had no trouble making a reservation at each restaurant to seat 19, you just have to be in line first thing in the morning. They always accommodated us whether it was in the buffet restaurant or the specialty restaurants. Every night at the buffet restaurant was a different theme it felt like; the Jamaican theme was the best. I loved how they cut up fruit right in front of you; they made omelets right in front of you and pasta stations as well. There was always enough food and you could always find something to eat. We are not used to eating 3 meals daily in reality so it felt like we were always eating!! Entertainment and night life: The entertainment was great, most nights we would watch the show between 9pm and 10:30pm they work really hard to put on a good show and it was pretty good. In regards to the night life we did find that there was not as much to do as we thought a big resort would have. Other then the nightly entertainment, a Saturday night beach party and a disco there really was not much else to do; we are not huge drinkers so getting drunk nightly was not in the cards for us. I have been to some resorts where they had bowling lanes and casinos and I found the Riu lacked that sort of stuff. Don’t get me wrong we had fun, but a few nights especially the second week we found it repetitive and just wanted something else to do! Beach/Pools: We didn’t use the pools at all as we are beach bums and love the ocean, there were always lots of chairs free at the beach where as we definitely noticed the pool was always packed and there were no chairs available. The ocean was warm but not too warm that you didn’t find it refreshing. They raked the beach everyday and there were always workers around during the picking up garbage and cups people left behind, again come on people use a garbage its on the way to your room….there is one thing that might get on your nerves while on the beach and swimming and it is the vendors and jet skiers, they are always around offering to sell you this and that and will ask you 4-5 times daily, just say no and they will leave you alone. On to the Wedding: This will be long because I have so much to cover: Let’s just start out by saying WOW we had an amazing wedding!!! Because we arrived on Saturday night we were scheduled to meet with Chandlyn at 9:00am on Monday morning, she was a little late but we are in Jamaica right!! The meeting was less then 30 minutes, we had not done much communicating before we arrived to Jamaica, we reserved our Mammee bay wedding dinner and I think I e-mailed her about flowers at one point so I thought the meeting would be long!. She had our file ready to go and a check sheet, we booked the Free Wedding Package because we were not using the on site photographer or the on site spa so it made more sense to us to go with the Free package. We choose the beach gazebo at 11:00am, in my mind I knew going to Jamaica that I wanted to use the arch on the beach but after looking at the beach gazebo it is so beautiful, it is nicely situated between two palm trees and it looked a lot nicer then the arch itself. In the end we were glad that we choose the 11:00am time slot, I noticed that the 4pm time slot had no sun on the gazebo because the sun was behind the building at that point. We upgraded our chairs from the brown chairs to white folding chairs, these chairs cost $5/chair and ladies if you are thinking about upgrading your chairs to add the white chair covers and sashes I wouldn’t do it, the folding white chairs are nice and you can bring your own sashes or use the resorts for $2.50 extra/chair =$7.50/chair, which is way cheaper then $12.00/chair for the chair covers and sashes. We went with the basic gazebo decoration, which includes white linen fabric and birds of paradise flowers on the gazebo, it was perfect and honestly the ceremony is so quick you hardly have time to notice any other decorations on the gazebo. The flowers were amazing, the free flowers options that they have are not the greatest but Chandlyn asked me what I wanted and they met and exceeded my expectations. I took a look at one of the free flower options and said what else can I do and before she brought out the book of upgraded bouquet’s she asked me what I would like instead and I told her that I want all tropical flowers, ginger, orchids, birds of paradise, lilies and a few roses, the colors I said I wanted were pinks, purples, oranges, whites. I did not pay for an upgrade on my bouquet but I did purchase 3 more bouquets for my bridesmaids, they cost $35.00 each of a smaller version of my bouquet. We also added 4 extra boutonnières and a pin corsage for John’s mother which was all orchids and the total cost on all flowers was $179.00. I was expecting to have to pay extra for my bouquet because I knew I did not want the free one, but I did not have to!!! My flowers were so perfect and exactly what I wanted and I had no expectations in regards to flowers at all… We did not upgrade to any live music we burnt a CD and told her which track and the correct track was playing while I was walking down the isle, we put approximately 10 songs on the cd including our wedding song to be played after the ceremony and during pictures. She asked us if we wanted champagne or rum punch and she ordered 3 bottles of champagne and it wasn’t too bad, anything we did not drink was put on our table for the dinner. All together our wedding cost us $599.99US for everything, we paid by traveler’s checks and were out the door within 20 minutes. We did inquire about having a bon fire on the beach but it was really expensive, it would have cost us $150 just to have the bonfire, $25/person for setting up chairs/tables etc and $100 to rent a bartender and we could only have it for an hour we decided not to. After we met with Chandlyn we went to the photo shop, we brought our own photographer so we did not use the photo services but from other weddings that I saw they are awesome, I know Michael seems hard to get a hold of or have questions answered but I know why now, they are always shooting weddings and the pictures I did see looked perfect! If you have him booked for your wedding he will do a great job! We did purchase the wedding DVD though it costs $330 and $30 for each extra copy that you want, you can only pay for this DVD by cash or travelers checks…..please note that! We were able to watch a few sample DVD’s to ensure we liked it before we booked them. The videographer arrived before the ceremony and worked with us during and after the ceremony to get great shots. John had a small microphone attached under his shirt so you can hear the minister and us talking so clearly on the DVD, you can even hear the wind and the water at some points. The DVD met our expectations, it was 20 minutes long, and they use the same template for each wedding. We are so glad that we purchased the DVD I have watched it 5 times since we got home. The Wedding Day: It was a little cloudy on the wedding day and windy as well, it rained only for a minute in the early morning but that is good luck right! The breeze from the wind was perfect at that time of day because it can be hot! We had hired an outside hair stylist as she was a friend of the family’s and on the wedding day we had a little bit of trouble getting her onto the resort because Chandlyn was not on site to let her in when we originally discussed, no worries we talked to the front desk and they let her in with no problem. We did not have to pay for her to have a day pass, if you ask Chandlyn nicely she will work her magic with reception. Because of the little glitch we were a little late starting hair but by 10:30am she had everyone completed. Our flowers arrived at 10:45am just in enough time to have her put my veil and flowers in mine and the girl’s hair. One other small glitch we had on the wedding day was dad noticed that they had placed the brown chairs out instead of the white folding chairs, he called Chandlyn and within 5 minutes that was fixed. Glad he took a look because I really didn’t want the brown chairs. Just before 11 am Nikki came to get us, everything was perfect, they played the song we wanted on queue and by 11:15am we were on the beach having pictures and video shots taken and that was it ceremony was over. The minister was perfect he made the ceremony so easy; because we bought the Wedding video John was wearing a small microphone and you could hear us so clearly on the video. We did not write our own vows we wanted to use the minister’s ceremony to make it special, he read a few e-mails that came into the resort from family at home and we also did the sand ceremony. We spent about an hour after the ceremony taking pictures and then by 1:00pm we were on the beach in our bathing suits. At 6:30pm we went to Mammee Bay restaurant for supper, it was perfect, they had our special napkins placed out and our favors and they also added fresh rose petals to the table and we used all of our bouquet’s as center pieces, the table looked so nice. They took our orders quickly and we were out of the restaurant by 9:00pm it was a perfect dinner. After that all 19 of us headed to our suite and we had a big room party. The big thing about our wedding is we wanted to keep it simple, we had a stress free wedding and that is exactly what we wanted, the ROR provided us with that and much more, we had an amazing wedding because of them. Having a destination wedding was the best decision we ever made. You are in a tropical place, bare foot in the sane, turquoise water behind you and marrying the man of your dreams, ladies please try not to worry about anything, you forget the little things in the end!!! I hope this review helps those who will be married at the ROR, if anyone has any question further definitely ask me. Pictures on my facebook below, I will check to see if they work and if not try to post some http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/a...3075202&ref=mf

Claire, congrats on your wedding I was on the beach when it took place and it looked beautiful!!!!

We flew out from Jamaica just 24 hours before heading to Halifax, scary to think about it!!!

Congrats!!hope you have an amazing wedding!!

Hi All, We are home from our fabulous Jamaican wedding!!!! I have so much to write and will be posting a lengthy review with pictures shortly..stay tuned!!! Kari

Thank you everyone for your best wishes!!!! I will definitely take lots of pictures of the different reception setups, we are having the free wedding package and dinner at Mammee Bay resturant but then we are having a bon fire on the beach. Can't wait to go!!!

Hi All, Tomorrow we finally leave for Jamaica, after a long year of planning/organizing the day is soon approaching! I don't know what I would do if I did not have BDW, everyone has been so helpful during the planning process. I will post a long detailed review when I get home after the 20th! Please let me know befoe tomorrow if there is anything anyone would like more information on!!! Thanks again Kari

So I will have no problem giving Chandlyn large amounts of travellers checks right?

I really do not want to carry that much cash either, we will most likely bring travellers checks, thanks for the info!!

Hi Sarah, We fly in on April 4th later in the evening. Chandlyn just e-mailed me back saying that they accept credit card for payment. We will bring a mixture of stuff I guess, travelers checks, cash. See how that goes!!