sweetluna

Hi Hutchets, Yes, the flowers you see me holding are included in the free package. I really like them too. I knew they wouldn't make the trip home so throughout the rest of the time I was there I pulled out some flowers each day and put them in my hair with bobby-pins. So I got to use them more than once.

That came with the free package. I brought the cake topper though and had delegated the decorating job to a friend that wasn't in the wedding party. They brought out the cake with the flowers on it (I had actually asked them to put ribbon and had given that to the WC but it never happened for some reason) but my friend took care of making sure the topper was put on the cake for pictures. Also, just a note, the cake won't come out until just about the time it is to be served. This is because they don't want the icing to melt. Yes, I was pleasantly surprised about the white chairs and punch because I was told they were both an extra cost too. But, the WC told me it was part of the free package, so I thought that was great.

Thank you! Yes, I booked my app't before I went down. They highly suggest it and they get quite busy! You don't want to wait until you get there because they may not be available the day of your wedding. Be prepared to put down a 50% deposit. For the most part I let the scenery be our decorations. The resort is soo gorgeous that it is really all you need. I did bring stuff for the centerpieces on the dinner table. You can buy stuff when you get down there but it is much cheaper to just bring your own. A note of caution though about decorations. The WC will not take responsiblity for decorating they will only help. So, be sure to designate someone from your group who will be in charge of working with the WC to make sure the decorations are the way you want it. Your wedding party (you or your bridesmaids) will be too busy to worry about that so have someone in the wings who you trust. OR you could pay a local florist to do your decorating but expect it to be costly. I hope that helps.

I don't think Tina is there anymore. I just got married on Nov 12 and dealt with Keisha and Michael. They were both so easy to work with and they made sure everything was great. Sorry to hear that you had so many troubles. I really hope the RIU does something for you & your husband.

Hey Everyone, We got married on Nov 12, 2010 and it was AWESOME!!! First, if you are considering this resort, you won't be disappointed. We had several guests arrive to the resort a couple of days before and they were emailing us telling how great everything is there and they were having a great time. For the rest of the week all of our guests were telling us how they were thankful we picked such a wonderful resort. We had 24 guests between the ages of 2 - 65. Everyone had an amazing time! The resort is big but we never had problems finding people when we needed to. My family came from across the country so it was nice to meet up with my dad and sister every morning for breakfast. (my husband and I live in New Brunswick, my dad & g/f live in Ontario, and my sister & brother-in-law live in Alberta so having everyone in one location was so much fun!) The resort staff is amazing. We had some very minor issues but we talked to front desk and it was always resolved right away. No problem! Just a quick tip that we learned - bring luggage locks because you might not have a safe key right away. To get a safe key the trick is to go to the front desk around the time people are checking out (usually early morning). The food is decent and there is a ton of choices. The meal we had for our wedding was OUTSTANDING!!! I didn't bother standing in line for the specialty restaurants - it wasn't how I wanted to spend my vacation - BUT our guests chose to stand in line and asked if we wanted to have dinner with them so they reserved a place for us - super cool! So I did get to try Sir Richard and the chinese restaurants. Sir Richard is good - a little "uppity" for my liking but it was nice. I didn't like the chinese one at all. I'm not a huge seafood fan and that's mostly what they had. St. Anne's buffet was the best because you didn't have to make reservations and I met up with our guests so we never had to eat alone if we didn't want to. Ok, so the part you're probably wondering about, the wedding. I dealt with Keisha, the wedding coordinator - never seen or heard from anyone named Tony/Antonette - but I did sometimes deal with Keisha's assistant, Michael. Both were fabulous to deal with! I didn't go with anything fancy. We had a few decorations, we wrote our ceremony, and we were going with the free flowers because I had my bridesmaids flowers made at home. (one bridesmaid is allergic to flowers so we made them fake) I had one of my guests assigned to help with the decorating of the reception table and ensure that the programs were placed on the chairs at the ceremony. The wedding coordinators will let you store your stuff in their office but you have to assign one of your guests to help with the set up, they don't do it all. Please don't expect to be able to do it yourself, there is just too much going on that it is better to ask one of your guests to take charge of that and just let him/her know what you want. Your person can help Keisha to make sure it is exactly how you want it. The spa is filled with wonderful, professional, friendly staff who really want to make you feel special on your day. (or any day for that matter) I had them to my nails, hair and makeup and I was SOO impressed with all their work. I tend to go to higher end spa here at home so I found some of their methods were a little dated but the results were soo very good. We were supposed to get married at the garden gazebo but it rained so they moved us to Mammee Bay instead. It was great, actually better then I had planned. Our wedding was scheduled for 2pm so I was worried about our guests sitting under direct sunlight. This was a much better location/option. Just a note: in some of the threads here it mentions that the brown plastic chairs is what you get in the free package but I found out the white fold up chairs are also included in the free package if you want to use them instead. Also, after the ceremony they serve rum punch to all of your guests for free. (regular punch for the kids) We hired the steel drum band to play at the ceremony and it was the BEST money we spent. We didn't have any specific songs in mind so we asked them to play traditional carribean music, I told them I wanted something really authenitic. There are not enough adjectives in the english language to truely describe how great they were. We had people from all over the resort come check them out as they played (although they were also very respectful to keep their distance since it was our wedding) Our guests are still talking about how awesome the steel drums were. We hired the resort photographer. He did a good job but we did have our neice shadow him and take a lot of the same pictures. I'm a little disappointed that it will take 12 weeks to get the high res/photoshoped pictures back but from what I understand that is pretty common with a lot of the photographers. Basically, it was a great day. Even though we went with very simple wedding, our guests had a great time and said it was one of the best weddings they had been to. We let the scenery be our main decoration.

I'm definately doing assigned seating. We're doing one long table and I want to make sure our wedding party gets to sit around us. Plus, we have people coming who don't get along so I don't want to take any chances of an awkward moment if seating gets taken up and these guest have to sit near each other. That would be too much tension. So, what I did was create tags for the favors and made sure each tag had a person's name on it. So my favors also work as my name tags for the seating arrangement.

Does anyone have an updated song list for the Steel Drum band? I noticed there were some links to other forum discussions but the links are broken.

Thank you, Justustwo and Blacksred. I appreciate the replies! Maybe it won't be a good idea to bring the laptop if they are that small.

Hey past brides, does anyone know the size of the room safe? Is there enough room for a standard sized laptop?? I want to bring my laptop but I've read about thefts happening from the rooms so I want to make sure I can lock it up when I'm not using it. Thanks!!

This is the web site: http://photoshopjamaica.com/ and his email: [email protected] He's been great to deal with. My wedding is in a month and I'm set with my app't with him.

There is so much information on this forum to answer your question. Do some searches and I'm sure you'll find all the information you could possibly need plus some. Specifically, search OOT bags and you'll get a TON of information on gift bags. There is even a forum on here that is dedicated to that topic.

I haven't got married yet but I can assure you that it is legal in Canada. The lawyer who notorized our documents confirmed it would be and in fact, his sister got married in Jamaica too. It was one of my conditions before getting married there and my TA also confirmed that marriages in Jamaica are legal in Canada. Congratulations and happy planning!

Octbride, I'm so sorry to hear about the passing of your FI's grandfather AND your mother's diagnosis. I can understand why you are so upset and sad now. Of course looking at the weather forecast is not helping. The weather changes so quickly and I'm sure you'll have at least a couple of good days and if not, well you'll have a lot of time to spend with your friends and family and have some great stories to share when you get back. Most importantly, focus now on the special moment you will be sharing not only with your FI but with your friends and family. This is a life changing event and folks want to share it with you - that's exciting. Focus on the little details - other than the weather - and have your mom help. Are there any little DIY projects you can work on together? Can you talk about the ceremony script? Anything that keeps the focus on why you are all going in the first place. Â I know it's easy to say these things from where I sit but I want you to know that I am wishing you the happiest, most blessed time being surrounded by the people who love and cherish you & your FI the most.

Thanks! I paid $25 for the mould and $6 a piece. I ordered 22 of them so it was really, really reasonable. They were so good to work with. The other pewter place here was going to charge me $13 a piece and wouldn't do it for less than an order of 50.. soooo Rustic Pewter got my business instead and they were amazing to work with. Â You can email them at [email protected]. It is a couple who work together and their names at Floyd and Cindy.

Hello fellow brides! I'm so excited! We finally got our custom favours in and they are beautiful so I just had to share. These are Pewter Starfish ornaments custom made by a company here in New Brunswick. I just gave them a picture of what I wanted and they made it come to life. The company name is Rustic Pewter. They were AMAZING to deal with! Â Anyhow, here they are! Â

I'm getting married on Nov. 12th. We sent out the save the dates last Sept to give family & friend lots of notice. The date for the deposit down was supposed to be the 1st of Feb so we could get a group rate. Unfortunately, like your guests, a bunch of people didn't even RSVP and we lost our group rate. I got very upset and explained to those who didn't RSVP how it affects the budgeting for a DW. (none of my guests had experienced a DW) Even after "educating" some of my guests, it didn't help. As it is, I had 2 people book just this past week and we're less than 2 months away from the wedding now. (I have 26 total coming) I will tell you that last month I had to put in my order for my custom favours and emailed the guests who were telling me "I yeah, I'll be there" but hadn't put down a deposit yet and gave them one last due date. I told them that if they didn't get back to me with their flight confirmations then I was going to consider them as not coming and therefore not planning to have favours and whatnot for them. (they were still invited to attend but couldn't expect that we would have gifts for them) I didn't want to sound mean but it wasn't fair that I couldn't budget or plan because I didn't have a confirmed guest list. Â It is very frustrating but nicely put your foot down with your guests but do what you can to be flexible too.

I had to go through my travel agent. My wedding is 2 months away and haven't had any contact. Chandlyn always got back to me within 2 weeks. This new person returned my travel agents email but not mine, how fair & right is that? I'm not impressed but whatever, at least she confirmed that she got all my legal documents. None of my questions have been answered but I'm not going to stress over that, I'll wait until I get there. The legal stuff was my biggest concern.

I went to the lawyer who did our paperwork for our mortgage. He didn't charge us at all. But we did get lots of free trip advice! he was recently in Jamaica for his sister's wedding. Â I looked around before calling our mortgage lawyer and the average was $50 for up to 6 documents per person. (if you have over 6 then it was an additional $20 per person)

whatever you do, don't make the mistake I did. I picked my resort based on the people I wanted to come and tried to accommodate their budgets, which I did only to find out they decided not to come anyway. By then my FI and other guests had already put down our deposits. We could have gone to a nicer resort with more of the things we wanted but because we set aside our "wants" for the "needs of others" we lost out. I'm not overly sad about our choice of resort, there is a lot of good feedback, but there are a few other places I would have liked to consider. Â The one rule that we did stick by was that both my FI and I had to agree to the resort. We never would have forced each other into a location where we both weren't happy.

Awesome!! Thank you!!

Can anyone tell me what is going on at the ROR with regards to wedding coordinators? I've been following this forum for quite some time and that's how I found out that Chandlyn is no longer there but now I'm reading that Antonette (Tina) is no longer there either?? Does anyone know who the wedding coordinator is now? I'm less than 3 months away from my date and I don't know who I'm supposed to be contacting. Â Thanks for any help you can provide!

well girls, here is the update: I got my FULL refund!!! WHOOHOOO... it took a few days but the bridal shop owner FINALLY decided it was best to give me my full refund. So glad that is behind me. Now I have to keep my fingers crossed that the new dress comes in on time. There is only 7 days between when the dress was expected to arrive and when we leave for the wedding.. YIKES!! But I'm going to have faith that it will all work out.

Hey girls! I'm happy to report that I got a full refund on my dress! She argued with me saying it was against company policy to give refunds but I refused to back down and eventually she decided to give me a refund. I picked up the cheque today and put the whole thing past me. Thank you for your support and advice. i really appreciate it.

I avoided the whole MOH/Bridesmaid situation by not giving my girls any titles. I've asked them both to be witnesses but I've been doing the majority of my planning with my best friend (who is one of my witnesses) and my sister is the other witness but I don't really include her on much of the planning. She is part of the wedding party and that is all that matters to her & to the family peace. At the same time, I get the help I need from my best friend who understands that, while she doesn't hold the official title, in my heart she is my MOH.

Girls, thank you so much for all your wonderful advice. I went shopping to see if I can find another dress (from a different bridal shop) and I couldn't believe my luck. I found another dress that I LOVE even more than the original I purchased. The new bridal shop understands my situation and have put a rush order on my new dress. This all happened right before the long weekend here so I have to wait until Tues to talk with the Bridal shop I bought the dress. I'm going to be asking for a full refund because they couldn't deliver the dress - yes it was the factory that closed and I can't blame the bridal shop BUT my "contract" was with the bridal shop, not the factory. If they can't give me the dress then I feel I am entitled to a full refund. I only hope I can get the owner to agree with me. I will let you know how it goes though.