JayKay

I love love love your engagement ring!! I love yellow diamonds!

Those are both great stories!!! Congrats!

I was married January 13, 2012 (yes it was Friday the 13th!) Gran Bahia Principe Jamaica Runaway Bay, Jamaica

Thats a beautiful bouquet!!

That will look great for TTD!

Congrats!! You look stunning and so very happy!!

I know this is awhile away from your last post, but did you ever get your photos! I would love to see them.

Welcome! I would say that below $2000 is not unrealistic for Mexico over the New Years, but it might be limited to certain resorts. According to our travel agent Christmas and New Years are the most expensive time to travel to destinations. If you are set on your dates then you may be expecting to pay $2000 and above. Happy wedding planning!

Welcome!! Congrats on deciding on a destination wedding. There are lots of brides that get married between August and October, which is hurricane season. The one thing I suggest if going this time is to get insurance incase of a hurricane. That way you wont loose out on all your money. And also remember that August will be much hotter then October. I was married in Jamaica and really loved it. We basically considered most carribean destinations but chose Jamaica for a few reasons. First, you only need to be there 2 days to legally get married there (which we wanted to do, rather then get married at home first) and also because its an English speaking country we didnt have to pay to have our documents translated into Spanish (like we would have had to for Mexico or Dominican). We really wanted to get married in St, Lucia but it was out of our price range and needed something a bit more affordable for our guests. We really enjoyed Jamaica and will definetly go back sometime soon. We were married at the Gran Bahia Principe in Jamaica. We loved the resort (its huge!!) and had an amazing wedding. We chose this resort partly because they offered a free wedding package and have a beautiful gazebo by the ocean. We did use a travel agent to help with the planning. I was in contact with the wedding coordinators at the resort planning the wedding portion and the travel agent was there to deal with all the travel things. I don't know if going through a professional is more expensive or not, but its definetly worth it so you dont have to try to do all that travel planning on top of wedding planning. Good luck with your wedding planning!!

As soon as we chose a resort and booked a wedding date with the resort we sent out our STDs. We made them pretty general rather then specific. We only put the month (January 2012) and the resort as we didnt have the flight schedule at that time and knew the date might change (which it did). As to bridesmaids, I asked my three girls to be bridesmaids about the same time invites went out. Only one was able to make it (due to pregnancies for the others) but at least they knew they were a part of the wedding when they were invited.

Welcome!! That resort looks beautiful!! Happy wedding planning!

Welcome! Happy wedding planning!

Welcome! Happy wedding planning!!

Everything looks great!! You look amazing in your dress!

Your hair flower is stunning!! Great thread!

Great thread!!!

They look great!!!

For us we didn't really tip many people. We tipped our photographer and our wedding coordinators from the resort (we gave them small gifts rather then money).

We had a large number of guests never RSVP, probably close to 60%. I would have appreciated if they would have said no or yes, because then I was left contacting all of them to find out if they were coming or not. In the end most were no, but there were a few who were yes and we didnt know that they were coming until about a week before the wedding.

My dad wore tan pants with a purple shirt. He chose the purple shirt because of the color of dress my mom was wearing and because both of them walked me down the aisle they had to kind of match somewhat. Hope that helps.

I am so happy we did the finger print guestbook. I have it framed in our house and love it more and more each day!

We had all of our a la cartes pre booked by the resort. They only pre booked us that were staying in the Royal Golden rooms, and the others had to book theirs for when they got there. I really didn't like having ours pre booked because we always ate at like 6pm which was a bit to early. And we were all together as a group for all of the ones that were booked. I know the people that didnt have theirs prebooked they had a hard time even booking any ala carte once they got to the resort unless they wanted to eat at 10pm. I would say email them a few weeks in advance and ask to pre book your ala cartes.

Its coming up quick!! The one thing I wish I would have done is just relax and enjoy every minute of it. I was really stressed out about the wedding the first 4 days we were there and never really got to truly relax and enjoy myself. Just remember, your wedding will be great, dont stress about it!! Enjoy your vacation in beautiful Jamaica and the wedding events will all fall into place! And if you forget something, trust me, you will probably be the only one who will know because you are the one doing the planning, so dont stress about that.

With the bridal hairstyle and makeup you get a trial for both. I didn't use them so I don't know about how long they would take. I know it took about 2 1/2 hours on my wedding day to have my hair and makeup done at the spa.