MEve

St.Lucia's Brides to be Date Name Resort Location (Home) April 16 2011 Monica Mai Ladera North Carolina June 2011 Julee Villa Capri Vancouver, BC July 11 2011 LilyRose Jade Mountain Vancouver, BC July 15 2011 Wilsonj2 Sandals Grande Atlanta, GA July 20 2011 JessM Anse Chastanet Toronto, ON November 12 2011 MrsWilliams1111 Almond Morgan Bay Philadelphia, PA April 04 2012 MEve Sandals Halcyon Toronto, ON April (maybe feb?) 2012 JessMarie Stonefield Estate Seattle,WA April 2012 Crystalg3 Anse Chastanet Burlington, VT June 7 2012 Amanda Windjammer Landing

For the shoes, I bought two pairs of SoleMates, so I won't have to worry about wrecking my shoes on wonky pavement or sinking in the grass during the photos. They are hard to find in Canada that's for sure!

Oh, somebody mentioned Jimmy Choo...I also splurge on the shoes. I love shoes, so I went all the way. I wanted Louboutin (I am a sucker for the red sole), but then found these shoes with a silver sparkle sole! Even better! My shoes are the reason why one of our wedding color is pewter. Now let's see if I can manage to attach a picture...

Hi all! Well, I had lots of reading to do! Oh LilyRose, how amazing this little chart! As you can see, I filled in the blanks for my section! We just officialized our date this morning actually, along with the Where. Sandals Halcyon, April 4, 2012! I took your advice on the full moon cycle, the full moon will be on the 6th. And Easter that year will be the 8th, but since St.Lucia is not really that big into Roman Catholic, it's not a big deal. We will be paying the $500 for the Beautiful Beginnings theme with the express licence (we arrive on Monday, wedding on Wednesday), but I am having the magenta orchids replaced with white ones. I will be adding accents of pewter and teal from things I'll be making myself with ribbons, feathers and bling. I can't wait for the reviews of Monica Mai and wilsonj2! We want to go to Ladera for our honeymoon. I saw some videos on YouTube of people filming their rooms and giving a video-tour. It's seems amazing! I'm just really afraid of big spiders...

Oh, LilyRose, there is also a nice villa called Gros Piton for sale just by Jade Mountain. In case you can't leave paradise, you can make it your fiance's new world office! :-) http://realestate.escapeartist.com/P-2013800/ Ah, if I ever win the lottery, I buy it and you are all invited! (Sigh)

LilyRose: it seems I haven't been "active on the forums" enough to have a signature yet. JessMarie: I know what you mean about the AHR. You know, I realized that I am way more involved in the wedding stuff, but that's only because my work schedule is super open. So I just happen to have way more time for all the web research than him. But not for the DIY stuff. That crafty thing will be divided equally. We will be doing our own invitations for the wedding, but also our own invitations for the AHR. Now we are talking about around 60 invitations...by hand. Well, we do have a printer, but someone has to write on the envelopes, or type in on the computer for labels. Plus, we'll probably make the favors ourselves...by hand. So that's another 60 DIY stuff. Now my fiance does not have any addresses for anyone. Partly because he never needed anyone's address, and partly because he switch his cell often, and doesn't re-typed everything. So that means he'll have the make calls, write addresses down, etc. Then cut little pieces of paper, stamp them with the nice Michaels stamps and ink, bla bla bla. I'm am very much convinced, considering the patience level of most guys, that his list will be drastically trimed down after the 10th invitation, without me having to look like the bad guy Speaking of me having lots of research time...I found that a lot of people have time-shares in St.Lucia, some in villas, or condos, some even at Windjammer Landings! And it does happen that they can't go for their weeks, so they try to rent them out! So you can now get the last week of May and 1st of June 2011 for $600 at Windjammer! Also, I found that Villa Capri is up for sale. It was still up for sale as of December 2010. Can't remember which one of you is getting married there and when, but I would check that out. http://realestate.escapeartist.com/P-2015316/

Hi everybody! Monica Mai: you'll have to tell how you liked Ladera and Stonefield. They are both very high on my list of potential honeymoon spots, as we are getting married in Castries. LilyRose: thanks for the info on the wedding meal surcharge. We'll be on an AI also and really didn't think about that! Especially that Jonathan's latest argument for inviting more people is that they are paying their own stays. On top of which we want to also splurge our St.Lucia guests with a special activity. Sailboat sounds really nice. Hey, how did you do to have your signature and wedding info at the bottom of your posts? I keep forgetting where everyone is getting married and when, that's quite practical :-) Can't remember who was mentioning about shipping favors/gifts bags ahead of time...depending on how much you have, you might want to try to have some of your guests bring some with them. As usually people have less things going somewhere than they do coming back home, with all the souvenirs and stuff. Perhaps we are a bit weird, but we'll ask each guest to buy a specific liquor (esp. champagne and perhaps some liquor not included in the all-inclusive drink menu) at the airport duty-free to bring into St.Lucia. We will then pay them back. That way we can celebrate in our hotel room with our guests. Sort of a party that we are throwing abroad :-)

Hello all, JessMarie, congrats on the engagement! I am also an April 2012 bride. With people having their guests change their minds at the last minute, eloping seems really appealing right now! If it's only for the 2 of you, I think you'll find very easy to get good deals. I haven't been in the chat for a while. Lot happened for us in the last month. We were originally suppose to get married in January or February 2012, but we decided to post-pone as my fiance got cancer. He is fortunately somewhat out of the woods, but we discovered that having children will likely be more complicated for us...meaning $$$. So in view of all the expenses with the wedding, April 2012 it is! We found great DIY invitation pocket folds from Cardsandpockets.com and I am now just waiting for them to have a sale to buy them. Afterall, I do have lots of time! For our AHR, I am starting to have cold feet! The reason for me to have our wedding in the Caribbean was to keep it to a very low number of people. Not that I am anti-social or anything, but by now, I've seen lots of my friends' weddings (some even got to their second one), and I just didn't want to have to deal with all that stress. Now I'm finding that the AHR alone is stressing me out! We want to have an open bar (although I find the boose is always diluted. I had 11 gin+tonic at a friend's wedding, and kid you not, I was still walking straight with my high heels at the end of the night!), but the list is long, mainly my fiance's list. Some people from his extended family he can't even remember their last names!!! Anyone having that kind of problem??? We still have ways to go, so maybe he'll be able to streamline by then :-) How do you convince your fiance to narrow down his list???

Hello everyone, Julee : I found that often, the resort/hotel where you'll have the wedding might impose their own photographer. You can chose your own, but there are fees to pay to bring in your own. Sandals is particularly stiff (of course they say you can do WHATEVER you want...you should have to pay extra for it ;-)) Kasia : I can't help, as I am in Canada, I can have all the documents done in English...my guess would be to call a notary and ask if they can do it in an official way, and if they can't, who could. Hopefully they won't charge you for asking a question over the phone :-) So I am no longer looking at a villa. The different personnalities of our guests makes it very complicated for the room sharing and meal planning. There was the National Bridal Show this weekend in Toronto, and we went. (Yes, we! My man wasn't too hard to convince). Most vendors were totally in your face, almost stripping you down to make you try a gown/tuxedo whatever it was that they were selling. Awful. BUT...we found our travel agent. So it wasn't pain for nothing. It's a company that specializes in Destination Wedding. It's called Wedding by Oceans. Something like that. We talked to what we learnt afterwards was the founder of the agency. I did a lot of research already, as we all did. And so I was asking lots of questions about specific resorts and hotels in St.Lucia, and I can tell you, there was no BS. She's been to St.Lucia and has years of experience in the travel industry and destination wedding coordination. (my gosh, I sound like I work there and trying to pitch it :-)) FYI, their facebook page is better than their website. She was praising Jade and Anse Chastanet, but she knows not everybody has that kind of budget and so is also very good recommending other venues such as villas or family-owned smaller hotels and the likes. BBSL : seriously, you are going MIA now, leaving us all hanging as to where you had your wedding and how it was!!! PLEASE!!!??? ;-) Talk soon, MEve

Julee, I'd love to hear your review of Villa Capri. After seeing the Sandals brochure for "Martha Stewart Weddings", I got a bit turned off with all their hidden costs and rigid programs. I've started to look at more private, small Inns, and Villa Capri seemed quite attractive and intimate. Did you pick fully catered, B&B or none of those? I'm curious about costs for food, because renting the villa is quite affordable...How many guests are you expecting?

google "zip lining in the st.lucia rainforest" I can't seem to be able to send the post with the weblink...sorry.

Hi all, MrsWilliams, about Bay Gardens Beach Resort/Inn/Hotel, please let us know your guests reviews. I was thinking of either going there (Resort one) and telling our guests to go there, since they have 3 hotels, with different prices, but are still well connected via hotel bus. LilyRose, what a great idea to check when the full moons are...since our date isn't set, I think that'll be my next google search! Is it me, or there isn't many reviews here on St.Lucia's resorts and hotels? I'll check trip advisor, but vacationing and getting married are 2 different types of experience...I don't doubt I can find a nice place, but I don't want to be ripped off with a crappy choice of flowers or a lousy photographer... Talk soon, MEve, from snowy Toronto, Canada.

Hi. I guess I had to be engaged and into planning a DW to join a chat! Getting married in St.Lucia in Jan. or Feb. 2012. In the process of researching potential hotels. Looking forward to find reviews about your St.Lucia weddings. Like I said, I'm new to any chat ever, so it'll take me a while to figure out how to find things, but if anyone could point me in the right direction, that'd be great. In the meantime, I'll continue reading the 300 posts on this thread! :-) Talk soon! Marie-Eve