Vancouver Bride

We carried it on with us and told Customs it was fake sand and labeled it as fake in Spanish and English (even though it was half real and half fake). We had a "forever frame" that had a plate in it to keep from spilling. I'm not sure what to do with the bottles except hold it upright the entire flight. I'd stash a bag of beach sand in your checked bag (still labked as fake) in case you have to re-do it at home.

We had 25 guests and had them sign a matted picture frame (<$10 mat at Michaels) in permanent marker pens of our wedding colours. The mat was about a 2 inch border around an 8 X 10 photo. Tips -Good for 20-25 guests max, or get a larger frame, or multiple frames -Make sure you don't buy a mat that is bigger than your suitcase or plan on carrying it on -Mask off what part of the mat is hidden with painters tape (or the signatures will be hidden by the frame). -Leave the frame at home and travel with just the matting to save space

Trash the Dress in La Romana Dominican Republic at Alto de Chavon It was SO much fun! I donated my dress to a women's charity at Dreams Resort. They dryclean it for free and give it to a local bride!

I have been looking forward to writing this post since I read all 60+pages over a year ago! Now it's finally my turn to return the favour! This is just my advice based on our experience and every wedding is different. Hopefully this helps--feel free to PM me if you have specific questions because I'm not on BDW as often after the wedding. ~Vancouver Bride Resort:Dream La Romana, Dominican Republic Dates: October 27-3 November 2012 Wedding time: 29th October, 3-4pm (6pm sunset) Guests: 25 Welcome Dinner: El Patio Wedding: Private Beach Gazebo Cocktail Hour:Seaside grill Deck Reception: Seaside grill What I would do again Marry my husband at Dreams La Romana with our closest friends and family and party for a week on the beach! So much more fun than your average single day wedding! It really felt like the families were joined J Write our own vows. You are only allowed to write your own vows at Dreams if it’s a symbolic wedding as far as I know. We wrote them about 2 months ahead and kept them a surprise until the wedding day. Combine the Welcome Dinner and Rehearsal Dinner and have them the night after people arrive. People were tired and want to unpack. The Resort wouldn’t take a reservation so we were forced either sit at several tables for free or pay. Pay the extra fee for a private welcome/rehearsal dinner. It was totally worth the extra cost because our two families got to know each other before the wedding. It was also my Mom’s birthday so it was a 3-in-1 party! Do a Trash The Dress off-resort. It also gave us some more variety in our photos and was SO much fun! We spent about 5 hours at Alto De Chavon (had to pay an unexpected fee of ~$100 to go inside in a wedding dress but totally worth it!). We trashed the dress in an old huge fountain and it was SO much fun!! The pictures are amazing. Fly in our own Photographer and get digital copyright. For the price of a Dreams resort photographer for 10 hrs we got wonderful pictures of the welcome/rehearsal dinner, the ceremony (11+ hrs), trash the dress, and random pics around the resort. It also helped having her do our engagement pics so that we were comfortable around her and knew we would like her photography style. Definitely negotiate to get all of your digital negatives/digital copyright in addition to edited versions of your favourites. In the end we got about 1000 photos from the week on a CD with full copyright. It’s much easier to email pics to family and less expensive to print them. Not have a big cake. We had the single tier cake that came with the Wedding Love Package. They upgraded us for free to a two tier cake. We still couldn’t eat it all and shared it with other guests at the buffet because it wouldn’t fit in our fridge. First Meet Photographs before the ceremony! This was my favourite part of the wedding day. It was private and so much more intimate than seeing each other at the ceremony. PLUS my makeup and hair were perfect and neither of us had sweat much. Do a bridal makeup trial at Sephora then buy my makeup and have my bridesmaid do it at the wedding. They didn’t seem to have the right colours of lipstick and foundation and I wanted my makeup with me all day to touch up and to look good for the rehearsal and other dinners. I spent about $250 for all of my make up at Sephora and it was totally worth it. Makeup Forever HD and a really good primer will make your makeup last 10+ hrs even in the heat. Have a microphone at the wedding ceremony. My planner said we didn’t need it for 15 people (10 in wedding party+15 guests), but I had read on BDW to get one. I’m so happy we did or we wouldn’t have been able to hear our vows in the video! Get married legally before the symbolic wedding in our own living room. It was family only and simple. It took lots of the stress out of the day was logistically easier. You have to pay extra fees and get documents translated to spanish if it's a legal wedding in the DR--extra time and $$. Cut the decorations and flower budget to pay for the unexpected reception venue fee ($300). Nobody noticed the decorations at the gazebo because you could see the ocean behind us! Video. Professional video was way out of our bedget, but we stillw anted something to watch. We borrowed a video camera, tripod, and wireless mic from a friend at home. We negotiated to have Jenny the wedding planner at Dreams hold the camera during the ceremony and it turned out great! My husband and I drank some but not that much at the rehearsal dinner or wedding night. I was buzzed and happy but no hangover and I remember every little detail! Do my mani-pedi at home. The Spa didn’t have a very wide range of colour and were much more expensive. I did a shellac mani/pedi that lasted 3 weeks at home.I don't know when I would have had time to do it a the resort before the wedding anyhow. Don’t forget to eat on your wedding day.Pick one BM and one GM to be in charge of ordering roomservice so that the wedding party and photographers don’t forget to EAT! I got this tip on BDW and it totally saved us from getting hungry and cranky! Build a 30-45 minute buffer in your timeline. People will be late, Bridemaids will need to touch up makeup, things will not go 100% perfect and you will want just a few more pictures of your wedding party…..it never hurts to have a buffer time. We did and definitely used it. What I wouldn’t do again Worry about pleasing guests who couldn’t come or wasting time responding to guests who were coming but kept emailing me about hurricane Sandy. In the end you will have an amazing time with the people that DO decide to be there. There was nothing I could do about the weather so I don’t know why they emailed me except to stress me out. I spent too much time answering emails about the resort and weather and should have just forwarded the email to our wedding planner or travel agent to deal with. Forget to add an international data and text plan to my Iphone before traveling. I used my phone to text my planner and look up just a few things in the Dominican and racked up a $400 cell phone bill!!! The roaming rates there are HUGE! I negotiated it down to $150 but still….leave your phone in the safe or buy a plan ahead of time! Let go and let your planner and travel agent handle your guests. Just forward any questions from your guests to your planner/travel agent and move on. I’m type A organized so I struggled with this part, but wish I would have let go more.I somehow felt I should help our guest because they were paying to come to our wedding, but answering all those emails took so much time and stress. Don’t ask the resort to steam your dress. I forgot earlier and asked the resort the morning of the wedding to please steam it. Well there was a language barrier and they said they would CLEAN it. So I cancelled the pickup completely (my dress was chiffon so wrinkles don’t show). When I cam back from getting our hair done on the wedding day—my dress disappeared 3 hrs before the wedding!!! They had picked up my dress to clean it even after I had cancelled it L This is where my wedding planner was useful—she found it and brought it back asap while I calmed down. Spend so much time and money on the OOT bags. My mother-in-law offered to help pay for them and organize them, but in the end only a few items were really used (insulated mugs,key holders, beach totes). It’s a significant amount of money even for just 25 people. I wasted too much time researching these in retrospect. Try to wear fake eyelashes. I bought the individual fake eyelashes at Sephora. They didn’t work at all in the Dominican heat which was totally unexpected. The glue dries in the 5-10 seconds it takes you to put them on your eyes and they don’t really stick well. I managed to get 3 put on the corners of each eye, but not across my entire eye. The nightclub at DLR wasn’t that busy or as much fun as I had imagined it. We went after the wedding reception to dance some more but it wasn’t a much fun as the reception. Maybe we were just all tired, but check out the nightclub before you plan on going after the wedding. What I wish I had done differently Bring a mirror and check everyone’s makeup right before the ceremony and after the ceremony before group pictures. My mom’s mascara ran down her eye and we didn’t see it until after the wedding so it was smudged in every photograph. Our photographer was able to Photoshop it out thankfully! Have the reception for 4 instead of 3 hrs. We originally paid for 3, but we got 1 hr for free (wedding day surprise). We were still dancing and people were having fun so if you can afford it—extend your reception to 4 hrs. Brush up on my Spanish or bring someone who knows it. All the staff know enough English to do their job and for basic conversation, but things get confusing when unexpected conversations or problems come up. Bring photos and clean hair to the salon trial.Bring photos of how you want your hair and do a trial. I had put Aveda sunscreen in my hair to protect my new highlights and it was too oily for my hair trial to be exactly the same as my wedding day so I freaked out a bit when she didn’t do it right. It was beautiful on the wedding day though (thanks to my BM who spoke Spanish!). See if you can have your hotel room as close to your ceremony site as possible. That way when the Bridesmaids and bride are getting ready, you can quickly run in and touch up makeup or grab forgotten items. The preferred section at Dreams is next to the Garden Gazebo and Private Beach Gazebo. The non-preferred club rooms are NOT very near those two gazebos. Undecided-Should you hire an outside wedding planner? We hired a local wedding planner for $2,800+ the cost of her travel and accomodation that we worked with about 1-1.5 years ahead of the ceremony. She few down for the entire week of the wedding. Pro: Less stress.I am a very organized person, but was doing my PhD while we planned the wedding, so I wanted a planner to help reduce stress the amount of time we spent planning. She did reduce stress at the beginning of the process and on the wedding day, but not in the middle or end. Choosing a resort and photograppher.The planner was definitely worth the cost in choosing a country and resort and photographer much faster than we could have done on our own. We couldn’t afford to visit before the wedding, so talking to someone who had been there was helpful. I think she paid for herself when she helped us narrow down a resort—and we loved Dreams La Romana in the DR!!! We also were able to narrow down the hundreds of potential photographers from her recommendations. We got a better deal on our local photographer by going through our wedding planner. Choosing a photographer: Budget. She helped us stay on budget. She told us early if certain items like OOT bags or fancy formal invites were out of our budget. We didn’t see the final budget from Dreams until about a week before the wedding which worried us, BUT I get the impression that is normal for DW? Not having to deal with Dreams directly. We never saw or spoke to the WC at Dreams until the day of the wedding. We didn’t have to wait on hold or wait for emails. Con: She was on her timeline not mine. If you are an organized person with enough time outside of your normal job, you may not need a full time planner in addition to ones Dreams provides. You will stress if she doesn’t respond as fast as you want or plan things as far ahead as you want, so it might be better to do it on your own if you are a Type A personality like me. It was hard for me to let go and trust that her timeline was fast enough. Poor response time in the middle of planning. In the START she was very fast and prompt with responses and in the END she was fast, but in the middle she disappeared, didn’t answer emails, and was unable to get the resort to waive the venue fee for the reception. We got a wedding package anyway. She originally said she would be able to negotiate and not use a package “because they aren’t a good dealâ€, but we ended up using getting the Wedding Love package anyway at her recommendation.

Correction--So I found an email from our wedding planner (we had our own plus DLR planner) about the DJ. We paid for 4 hrs-1 hr ceremony and 3 hrs reception DJ and speakers and mic. We didn't use the photography ($400 value) and a few other things in the wedding love package so we negotiated to get other items "free". "8) I negotiated the DJ service since we are not using all the items in the Wedding Love package. It would normally by $950 for the 4 hours, but they are doing $350 for all 4 hours. "

We paid for 3 hours of the reception but they have us the 4th hour DJ and resurant for free!!! I didn't expect people to dance as much because it was 25 people but in the end everyone danced and drank till the end! If it's in your budget I'd go for 4 hrs but if not just move to the dance club.You can also decide to add an extra hour of reception the night of the wedding based on how things are going for an extra cost per hour (I don't remember the exact amount sorry).

Hello APNK We took photos before and after the ceremony and didn't have any trouble at all with the lighting near sunset. We had a 1 hr gap between our ceremony end and the cocktail hour so that we could do lots of family portraits (we used this as a chance for every family to get updated family photos). We had the ceremony 3 full hours before sunset, so you should check the sunset time for your wedding day and work backwards. Also talk to your photographer--he or she will have lots of experience and know when lighting will be ideal. Timeline for 3pm wedding and 6pm sunset in October 8am Bride and Groom wake up and breakfast 9am-12-Bridal Party Hair Appointments (4 BM, 1 Bride, 2 stylists) 11:30-12:30 Photos of Grooms Party 12:30-1:30 Photos of Bride and Bridal Party getting dressed 1:30-2:15 Bride and Groom First Meet and B&G photos 2:15-2:45 Buffer time (yes we needed it--took extra photos and touched up makeup, minor trouble with AV equipment but still started on time!) 2:45 Entire wedding party at beach gazebo 3:00-3:30 Wedding ceremony (symbolic) 3:30-4:30 Photos of all guests and family (different combinations) 4:30-5:30 Wedding party photos, more Bride and Groom photos 5:00-6:00 Cocktail Hour on Seaside Grill Deck 6:00pm Sunset--a few more Bride and groom photos at sunset 6:00+ Reception at SSG Here are a few photos to show you the lighting The one below is the cocktail hour right after 6:00pm sunset Below is the ceremony at 3:00pm This is just at sunset a couple minutes before 6pm

Hi We used "I'm Yours" for me walking down the aisle too! We also used "Lucky" by Colbie Calait and Jason Mraz for the Bridesmaids and "I Do" by Colbie Calait. Check out Vitamin String Quartet for "filler" music. They do classical versions of pop and rock songs that are young and fun but still ok for background music filling in gaps.

I did a trial run at Sephora in Canada and bought all my makeup for ~$250. One of my bridesmaids was at the Sephora trial and then did a practice run and then the real makeup the day of the wedding. I used Makeup Forever HD primer and foundation and primer and a mix of eyeshadows(Nars and Urban Decay). Definetly use a face and eye specific primer and your makeup will last all day---I put mine on at ~9am for a 3pm wedding outside and it lasted until midnight+. The individual fake eye lashes I bought at Sephora wouldn't work in the Dominican heat because the glue dried in the 5-10 seconds before you could put it on your eye. I got a few to stick on the outer corners, but not the full eye. It looked ok in the end, but something to keep in mind. The salon was under construction when we were there in October 2012 so the hair and makeup were in a converted hotel room. Even if you hire a makeup artist outside DLR, I'd bring your own primer and foundation to make sure the colours match you perfectly. I'd recommend doing your makeup yourself if you have a BM you trust and can practice with. If you buy the right products, they should last the night and then you have makeup to look great the rest of the week and at the rehearsal dinner!

We mixed sand from the beach with coloured sand. The resort won't care but tell Customs that it is fake sand or they may take it. Also it helps to bring a small funnel to filter and pour the beach sand into the bottles.

Would it be possible to do your sand ceremony at the reception on the table next to the cake before or after cake cutting? That way your ceremony is shorter and you still have professional photos of the ceremony while your photographer is there and you are in your wedding clothes.

Yes-David's Bridal is a reasonable price and has a variety of dresses. It can be helpful if your bridal party lives in different cities or countries. Beware David's exchange and return policy is very limited strict and they won't take any exchanges unless they made a mistake (not even for store credit). Canadian brides--a new David's Bridal opened in Langley BC so we don't have to go to Burlington anymore!