starrysim

Hello lovely brides-to-be! My wedding was about 3 months ago, but I'm still lurking a bit around here and trying to help out as much as possible. So I'd be happy to answer any questions about the resort (We stayed at the Beach for the wedding and Grand for our honeymoon) and our vendors (Marcia Roberts, Rashel Edwards, Tai Flora). I'm also from Toronto, so let me comment on the prices, as I see there has been some discussion. I followed prices for about a year before our wedding, and if you book about 6 months ahead, the Beach is usually about 1600-1800, Suites is 1800-2000, and Grand is just way too expensive :-p. I would actually recommend booking 3-4 months before the wedding, and getting a group rate. I know how stressful it is, and hard to wait that long, but IME they don't sell out that quickly, and you get the best rate. When we were looking at 6 months before, it was $1700 for the Beach even with group quote. We finally booked the Beach for about $1400 for a group of 20 about 4 months before. Less than a month later, it dropped dramatically to $1200, and our travel agent managed to get us an adjustment (we threatened to forfeit our $200 deposits and just re-book at the new lower rates). Anyway, the point is, that last minute prices will go as low as $1100-1200 for Beach and $1300 for Suites. I don't recommend waiting last minute, but waiting until 3-4 months before and shopping around for the best group rate then is the best way to go IMO. In fact, tell your guests NOT to wait until last minute - for us, it sold out about 3 weeks before, and some people who were waiting lost out, they were NOT happy. Bottom line, book between 2-4 months ahead of time to get the best rate. If you want more peace of mind, then book a year ahead. lol

Thanks for the lead, will check them out!! I've been looking around online, and Blurb seems to be my best option right now. I did contact Shoppers, and they don't seem to want to do anything about the craptastic quality. Apparently they use Fuji, and they said they would have to talk to them. It doesn't sound like they care at all about the quality and customer satisfaction.

The link isn't working for me I'd love to see your pics, who was your photographer?

Did anyone order Thank You or Note Cards from Vistaprint, with your photos on them? I'm not happy with the cards I ordered from elsewhere, I wonder if the quality of VistaPrint is any better. Specifically, how did the photo look, and what type of paper did you select? I would really really appreciate if anyone could share their experience.

My wedding was 2 months ago, and I still haven't sent thank you's I ordered from Shoppers Drug Mart because I liked their online design program, but the quality is soooo bad! I ordered photo books from there too, and again the quality is very bad. I'm afraid to order from anywhere else without some assurance of high quality products. Any recommendations for me? I don't care if it's online or in store, but I want the products to look good. And a nice, flexible, online editor is definitely a plus. Most of the online editors I've tried really aren't any good or flexible enough for what I want to do

Quote: Originally Posted by clonedtwice I have a question for past brides who didn't have a private reception. I have a group of 24 and we are having dinner at the Steakhouse on the Beach resort. Our dinner will start at 7pm and we have requested a bonfire after. What time should we start the bonfire? How long will it take for everyone to enjoy the dinner. Any suggestions? Thanks. Non-private dinners are 1.5 hours, so 7 - 8:30 pm. I would plan to start the bonfire at 9, since the bonfire spot is directly in front of the Steakhouse. Try to make sure that your guests don't leave in between If you think they might, then just have the bonfire start at 8:30 or 8:45. Yes, it was Tai Flora. My bouquet was upgraded though, I paid an extra $50 to have the stargazer lilies. A ripoff, but oh well They also weren't top quality - some of the orchids looked a little sad and wilted, and some of the stems weren't secured in the foam center, so I kept losing the same few stems. Eventually I just let them go and made sure to keep the empty side of the bouquet against me. lol We had the steel pans band at the ceremony. It was so nice, it really added to the island feel. We didn't request anything specific for them to play, except Canon in D for my walk down the isle, and Bob Marley's One Love when we walked back down the isle. Otherwise, they just did whatever they wanted. Honestly, I barely noticed, there's just so much going on and so much excitement, it's so hard to take it all in. FWIW, they did stop playing RIGHT at the one hour mark. We forgot to tip them. oops. That may have helped.

Quote: Originally Posted by Jamaica2012 Starrysim~ Are you happy with how they turned out even though they weren't taken by Marcia? Anything you would have done differently as far as the photography? I have signed with Marcia so just curious. Thanks Jenni I guess overall I'm satisfied because we did get lots of pictures that I do love. However, some things I was disappointed with: - the lighting was really bad in a lot of pictures, like harsh shadows obscuring people's faces. I think they needed one of those big pro flashes with the umbrella and stuff, but I can see how that wouldn't be very portable all over the resort and the beach. Not sure if other photographers do a better job with the lighting. - they weren't very responsive to our ideas for locations to take pics, and they seemed rushed near the end. Even though it was supposed to be unlimited time, and we still wanted to take pics by the lifeguard towers and stuff, they just called it quits. - they weren't always useful for posing suggestions. A lot of the times they just told us to do something. Some of their pose suggestions turned out really bad (and I could tell ahead of time that they would be). Also, way too many shots from below - I absolutely hate that perspective - you know, double chins, up the nose, etc. I didn't get it. Unfortunately they also chose one of the worst pics for the front of our DVD case. Along the same lines, they missed some great shots. - some pics provided in B&W only, no colour version on the CD. I emailed to ask for originals of a few of these, but nothing yet. That said, I don't want to discourage anyone from working with them. They were on time, professional and curteous, and we got our pictures and video in less than a month. For being the most reasonably-priced Jamaican photographers, I think the value is there. There are lots of very good pics, as you can tell from my post a few pages back.

Sorry, I meant "shots of the ceremony". Also, I got less than 10 pics that were taken by Marcia, and over 900 total.

Quote: Originally Posted by noreenp79 Starrysim, So....I booked Marcia and while your pictures look amazing, I'm concerned about the fact that she might not photograph my pictures and I feel like I selected her because of the photos I saw that she's taken...so I guess my question is....did you get a discount because her assistant did the photography?? Thanks! Noreen No, there wasn't really any discussion of why she wasn't taking pics. It seemed to me that she was training him or letting him get experience, but that's just my guess. I did find it a bit strange, because the way she words it in her correspondence is that you get her plus a shadow shooter - I assumed that was so that they could get shots of the reception from different angles, but that wasn't the case. So I'm not sure...

Quote: Originally Posted by Sjay Starrysim, If this is just a sample, I can only imagine what the rest of the photos look like! So beautiful! I will have to look into Marcia, err, her assistant. Thanks for sharing! Well, these ARE my favourite ones There are many more that are nice, and many that are just terrible, but I guess that's always how it goes. Not their fault I'm so unphotogenic and can't pose I would email them again, if it's so close to your wedding date. Before my wedding I was assuming they were getting my emails, but it turned out they missed two relatively important emails from me the week before I left. So check with them again if it's something important. I know what that's like, scrounging around for snippets of guests' pictures We got our pics just less than a month after the wedding, so yours will be here soon enough. Be sure to post when they arrive, hopefully I'll still be hanging around the boards then.

Oh, forgot one of my faves. Like I said, so hard to pick!

I got my pics from Marcia Roberts last week. It's tough to choose my favourites, but I wanted to share a few. For what it's worth, Marcia didn't actually take the pics, her assistant did. She was there the whole time, but wasn't really photographing for some reason. Make-up by Rashel Edwards, and hair by her assistant. Flowers by Tai Flora (upgraded bouquet). Please don't quote this post, or if you quote it then delete the pics - I would hate to spam this thread with my pics over and over, as fabulous as they may be

Quote: Originally Posted by pmwoodard1978 Starrysim, The video was good but I don't feel that they captured much of the talking from when we were getting ready. Supposedly my husband did something funny for me that he wanted on the video but instead they got it as video and put music over it so you can't hear what he's saying. My father also composes music, which I used for the processional and recessional and I was hoping to hear it as I walked up and down the aisle but I forgot to mention it to Marcia Roberts so she used clips of us in the edited video with other music so you can't hear his music on the video. Paula Yeah, I guess it's hard to tell them what you want when you don't really know what's going on with the video. We really wanted to capture the sound of the steel pans band as I walked down the isle and after the ceremony, but I'm not sure if she will use that, or just put other music over it. I hope there's sound for the vows at least. My package is now en route to me, so it's too late to change anything now.