futuremrswalls

Have any of you considered fake flowers? There is a wonderful company www.wedideas.com that does some amazing flowers for much less than what the resort charges. You can also bring them back home with you, unlike the real bouquet. They look real and everyone that saw them couldn't believe they were fake. Many Sandals brides have used them.

We left our rings, cash, cards and passports in the safe the entire time. So did our guests and no one was missing anything. In fact, when my parents switched rooms, they didn't even realize they had left their cash in the safe and the housekeeper brought it to them the next morning when she cleaned the room. None of it was missing. PLEASE do not bring your rings on the excursions. The horror stories I've heard.

We would not change a thing we did. The thing I liked about Ocho Rios is that it was so large. We were able to have private time when we wanted and be with the group easily also. The only bad thing is the distance from the airport. It does take about two hours to get there. The good thing about that though is so many of the sites etc of Jamaica are just outside of Ocho Rios so it didn't take all day to do excursions. We are going to Royal Caribbean this year for our honeymoon. It is much more intimate of a resort (per brides and TA's on the facebook site). FYI, many of the resorts have the stay at one, play at the others (St Lucia, Montego bay) so your guests could stay at any of the resorts and travel between them for free. We just wanted everyone at one resort.

SGOR is very large and there is a lot to do both at the resort and close by. Whitehouse in contrast, is very small and per both Sandals site and other brides reports, is more just for laying around. I don't mind laying around, but I didn't want to do that for 9 days. My guests would have gotten bored too. On another note, my aunt who has Multiple Sclerosis, and my mom and dad who both have severe knee issues were all able to get around at SGOR. Yes there were a lot of stairs, but the only place you had to use them was to get to a couple of the restaurants on the Riviera side.

You can do a beach ceremony. I will warn you that the beach is very small, and the spot they do ceremonies is not private. It is actually directly in front of the water sports site. We did see a few ceremonies though at this time and it seemed that they tried to hold the boats coming in and out during the weddings.

We went through a really neat site. I'm posting the link to their beaches themed weddings. We chose the underwater reef and glued sanddollars to them. Everybody loved them! We also ordered matching stamps and thank you cards. http://designsbylenila.com/beachWeddingInvitations.html

My husband and I just were married at Sandals Grande Ocho Rios on December 1, 2010. It was an incredible experience. We were married at the Reef Terrace Gazebo which had the best of both worlds, Jamaicas gardens and the ocean. Don't overstress yourself about planning. They really do take care of everything for you. We did the beautiful beginnings theme and it turned out gorgeous. We did not however go with the photographers on site and brought our own with us from back home. If you have not considered this, I would highly recommend it. We saw a couple other brides books later in the trip and they all looked the same, very few picutres, and were quite expensive. I will warn you that the food that we had at the 30 minute cocktail reception was horrible. I've heard the dinner itself is wonderful, but we had a large group (19 people) and just went to one of the restaurants. Normally they do not accomondate large parties, but with a majority of us having butlers it was much easier. It was a gorgeous resort and they are currently doing a lot of renovations to improve. I hope you have a wonderful time. And remember, relax!!!! Kim

Forgot to mention to go to theknot.com and look at the ideas they have under green weddings and then you can narrow it to purple/green. They have some great pictures!

Gorgeous! They remind me exactly of the reason we have chose to do a destination wedding!

I'm a fan of darker/brighter purples than lighter like lavender. I think either sage or lime would work well, but a lot of people don't look good in lime green so it depends on your bridesmaids.

I swear someone mentioned the duty free at the airport has mini bottles of appleton.

Quote: Originally Posted by nikkimadril These are very cute...unfortunately the heel is too high for me. *sigh* What do you ladies think of this? I want something really unique like this but maybe more obviously BLUE instead of lots of blue/green stuff. LOVE THESE!

I'm a nurse and know that most (or maybe none) of the girls are actually going to make the trip in December for our wedding but I will be inviting all of them. This won't be seperate invitations though, I'm bringing one invitation in and my manager is hanging it in our breakroom. The girls are throwing me a shower so I wanted to let them know they are all welcome.

Quote: Originally Posted by DiamondGirl Hi futuremrswalls, When it comes to weddings, people will always get offended. Regardless what you do, people just won't be content. I say, don't over obsess about it. It's your wedding and do as you please. You have plenty to worry about. I'm just saying.... Um maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but I'm not sure where I'm obsessed about anything in my post. I think I answered a question that someone else asked. And I am doing what we want. There are people getting offended, but basically, we don't care. This is our day.

We were going to do bubbles. I just love bubbles

I say regardless you should give a gift.

I had actually read on a destination etiquette page that you only send invites to people that are possibles or definites. With postage and the invitations that we chose, invitations are coming to a little over $10 a piece. That adds up really quick. There are a couple people that we are still sending them too regardless, even though they said they are not coming, all family. When we have the AHR everyone will get an invite. I think the link was on theknot.com but it's really been so long ago, I can't remember.

Wow that's a rough one. But really, she's known for a long time that this was coming. You are under no obligation to pay for her. Sadly my best guy friend and my fiancees best guy friend are unable to afford it too. Yes it's sad for us, but that's part of a destination wedding.

I wouldn't worry about it, but if you are, see if you can set up a private rehearsal dinner the night before, maybe at a local restaurant and cover the tab for that. Doing some kind of activity would also be great. Maybe set up a private snorkeling trip or something just for your group.

We are pretty much in the same boat. We ended up registering at Sandals that way if someone would want to purchase something, they can have that registry. For the at home reception I'm not sure if we are going to register anywhere or not. We're thinking of just stating that we are not registered anywhere and that their presence is present enough. If they would like to bring something then, that's up to them.

Thanks for the review! We can't wait until December!

We are including many of the things that were mentioned above as well as disposable underwater cameras, candles for each room and bug spray. I do like the idea of blue mountain coffee and we will have to look into that. We got great hibiscus tote bags at oriental trading company for our welcome bags. They were only $9.99 for a dozen of them!

We started by choosing a country, Jamaica. This was based on it being relatively cheaper than some of the other islands. It is also much cheaper to fly to than places like St. Lucia and the Virgin Islands. Then we decided on Resort company. We ended up choosing Sandals. We wanted an adult only resort. Although they do advertise as a couples only resort, they do allow singles. they can either bunk together in the same room or pay the entire room price and sleep seperate. We do have guests doing this. Then we had to decide on the spot. We chose Sandals Grande Ocho Rios for several reasons. It was cheaper to get a butler here than in Montego Bay and Negril and we definitely wanted that. Also, the wedding locations are incredible! It is also a very large resort so all our guests can stay there and we don't have to worry about running into them a lot during our honeymoon. Montego Bay is also right next to the airport. We did not want to listen to the sounds of planes all day during our trip. Although Negril is known for their gorgeous beaches, the resort is much smaller and quite expensive. A lot of the site-seeing areas are also in Ocho Rios so they won't eat up an entire day like if we were in Mo Bay or Negril. I have been very happy with Sandals as of so far. They have made this such a stress free event.

We are getting married there in December also, on our eighth anniversary!

The reception depends on how many guests you have staying at the resort. If you have ten or more rooms booked, the 30 minute reception plus the rehearsal dinner are free. The private reception for 3 hours is $75 dollars per person if there are less than ten rooms booked and $60 per person if ten or more rooms booked. If you have a facebook page, I highly recommend going to sandals weddingmoon page. There is a lady named Jody Barbato on there who has organized my entire group and she's been fabulous. Also, since they are paid by Sandals, you don't pay any extra.