Katie McLean

Hey Ladies! I haven't been on in awhile--but I wanted to touch base with all those upcoming brides that have questions! I have a TON of information so I'd rather answer individual questions vs. giving every detail. So Maria I will start with yours, find my answers below in red 1. What are some areas on the property that we should look at to get married on? There are probably about 6-7 different places you can choose from. Two difference gazebo's (one on each side of the resort), the beach, the pier (what we chose), church and a few others...I am forgetting. DON'T fret about this--you don't choose until the day after you get there when you do a walk through with your wedding coordinator. 2. We bought the ala cart photo sesion that gives us 18 prints or CD's, but I have NO IDEA what the pictures will look like! Does anyone have any pictures that the Sandals photographer had taken? I am not of much help here; we had a family photographer come and do our photos. 3. We have Butler service-Is it worth it? And WHAT exactly do they do?? Butlers....after all of our guests left we switched rooms to the butler sweet. I have to say, we wish we hadn't...it puts you further away from the ocean and it leaves you always calling your butler for a ride back to your room. There were some pro's but we're def more of self explorers. 4.Im getting my hair done at the salon, are they good?? They are good, just make sure you go with pictures and be picky about it--they will fix and re-do as many times as they need to. 5. What are some excursion that we should try or avoid? We did the Red Locks Catamaran cruise to Dunn's Rivers Falls--- DO IT! We had about 32 of our guests go with us the morning after the wedding and most said it was the best part of the trip! 6. We bought the candlelight dinner on the beach the day we get married as our little personal reception, is it worth it? I'm not of much help here....we paid for it but never got it--i'm still a little bummed. 7. What are some resturants that we must go to? We have a free candlelight dinner at a resturant of our choice, but not sure where we should go? Valentino's!! By far our favorite! They are all good and worth trying. Since we were there for 10 days we tried about everyone... My biggest suggestion (now that I have gone through it) is DON'T WORRY! They do up to 9 weddings a day and they KNOW what they are doing! I wish now that I hadn't stressed nearly as much as I did. We had nearly 40 people and everything was PERFECT on our wedding day! Sit back and relax as much as possible! Have a few frozen bob marley's and call it good

For the reception we did the flame grilled shrimp, ceasar salad, and the mahi mahi with the fruit salsa and the pineapple dessert. All the food was AMAZING! And even though we chose a fish dish we were able to get chicken for those that did not like seafood...they were very good about making sure everyone enjoyed there meals. For the rehearsal dinner we did the chicken with the lobster mousse which was probably my favorite over the Mahi Mahi--everyone LOVED it and it came with some awesome rice! I don't think you can go wrong! If anyone wants photos of anything specific I will help you out if I have some, so just let me know. Also, if anyone has specific questions...again, I'd be happy to help!

I thought I would post some dress pictures now that my wedding has passed It's an Ella dress.

Wow---it has taken me forever to get back to you ladies with photos etc. So here there are: This is La Toya; my wedding coordinator...she's amazing! Don't mind awful face! I posted this one so you could see our location--beautiful! The process of signing documents... The long walk out... Our cake, we did the vanilla..it was real good and we actually did cake before dinner Table Set Up: We did the beautiful beginnings package and added colored napkins as well as menus. Center pieces: again we did the beautiful beginnings and I just brought those chargers (from Ikea) and the candles The Bar Set Up We paid extra for these lights, but they were a hit! Are there particular things you girls would like pictures of?

Hey Ladies! Thank you for all the congratulations!! The wedding was beyond amazing and then some!! I'm still working on getting caught up in real life...booooo. But as soon as I have a chance I will sit down and write my review and answer all of your questions and show pictures (as soon as I get them back). I'm excited to share the great experience!

We leave in 3 days and we get married in 7, i'll be happy to give a review when we get back

Phew, Since my last post I can officially say I feel ready for our wedding! I had a couple of good conversations with Deidra and we got everything ironed out and paid for. I can't believe that we're less than two months away...where does time go? We decided to go with the 3 hour reception because we realize that with 35 guests it meant alot to us to be able to spend some private time with them to celebrate. I switched up the flowers a little bit and chose to get a regular held bouquet and we order star fish boutonnieres for the guys. We're still decided on what we'll serve for meals...I don't love that everyone has to have the same meals except those who have allergies...but we'll make it work for sure. We're working on getting our playlists together now...we're renting the speaker system etc so we're just going to load up different playlist for the ceremony, cocktail hour, dinner, dancing etc. We've also started ordering some really fun things....tote bags, t-shirts and koozies for all of our guests, we've really had fun designing this stuff...luckily our crew has a great sense of humor 4/12 cannot come soon enough

Wow! It's been too long since I looked at this post and my wedding date is coming up FAST! Our wedding date is 4/12/13 and I still feel like we haven't gotten much done but i"m trying to go with what everyone says..."just trust that the resort knows what they are doing." Is it just me or is easier said than done? Deidra still has yet to be the most helpful...we need to go through her to book all spa appointments etc and she's TERRIBLE at responding. I'm hoping others have had a better experience with her. We have decided to go with the 3 hour reception so that we can have some of the formalities that we want to do. We'll be doing cake and our first dance during cocktail hour...yup dessert first, it's how we roll I'm still blurry on what to do for center pieces/decor...they want an arm and a leg for flowers there and charge you like crazy for some of their other decoration options. So my question is, do we bring our own stuff and set it up ourselves? The other thing i'm a little stressed out about is having a DJ or bringing our own music and renting the speakers etc. Does anyone have any ideas of how it works to bring your own music? Also, I'm a little concerned about coordination...is it going to be my job to make sure our guests know where to go and when? Soooo i'm probably way over stressing but I just haven't been given much info from Deidra and with 35 people coming I'd rather it not be a total disaster... any comforting words are welcome!

They are both great dresses!! I love the style I'm excited to have found a dress that has form AND good flow! What can I say, great minds think alike! I'll post pictures of me in it come December when I can get back to VT so my Mom can do my fitting! Happy Wedding Planning!

AJM, There are certainly ways around the rule...what they don't want happening is you inviting someone from the area to the resort for the day to do pictures. I am having our family photographer come on the trip as a guest and he will be taking all of our photos. I have spoken with the coordinator and this is okay to do. If the photographer is paying to stay on the resort as a guest, there isn't anything they can do about the person taking photos. Does this make sense? I hope it helps!

We recently worked with Perrywinkle's in Burlington, VT to make my custom wedding bands, and I couldn't be more excited about them. We decided to get our wedding bands in VT because it's where we were both born and raised even though we now live in Colorado. Here are pictures of the bands in the process of being made. We just got the real thing and they look amazing, we just don't have great photos of them so I thought i'd share these. My goal was to keep the unique shape of the engagement ring and to have a band I could wear if I didn't want to wear my engagement ring. Here is a poor quality photo of both of our rings,

This dress is a Ella Bridal--5530. It is so lightweight, which is a huge plus in my mind Ella Bridal has a lot of lightweight dresses, hope this helps you