Hummingbird1123

Hello Brides to be :-) I just had my wedding at Dreams Punta Cana over Thanksgiving weekend. I must say, at the end of the day, all the stress was self-induced and ended up not being worth it. Our wedding was beautiful. When we arrived, we met our wedding planner (Deyanira). She walked us through the entire process, put in all our last minute changes, etc. She was nice, graceful and not what I expected from the prior emails exchanged. She would always take awhile to get back to me and raised the price of our outside vendors last minute. We chose the Dreams of Love package. It was ideal. We saved money by choosing to do outside vendors for our flowers and photography. BOY. That was great! Everyone is so impressed by all my wedding photos. I spend 900 dollars for 6 hours of photography and 4 copies of ALL photos (including edited) digitally. I updated my album to shutterfly, guests ordered their own prints and we chose what to order ourself after they were put up. My photographer was JorgeAllocco. He was excellent. We chose to go through Carribean Celebrations for all the flowers. We must have saved a grand. The flowers were beautiful and just perfect. They also used all the flowers from the ceremony at our reception. Ideal. We paid $800 plus &79 for them to come on the resort that day. Dreams flowers were very expensive and not worth the money. Deyanira tried to raise the price of outside vendors to $150 per person. After the agreed upon $79 per vendor. At the end of the day, we just simply said NO, we are not going to pay that. She talked to her manager and put our request through. It's all about negotiating with these destination weddings. Fortunately, it's possible. :-) Keep that in mind always. We also had a FREE "rehearsal" dinner the night before the wedding. Unbelievable. I can't believe I pulled this one off. I complained about the food and the long waits at the restaurants. If you are going with a group of 12, 8 or 15.. most likely your going to have a long wait to be seated together. I complained that we were waiting for a long time to eat everynight as a group and she said she would put us in the Mexican restaurant (big grand table used) and give us our own menu on Thanksgiving. I was so impressed. We had our own waiters, a table of 28 and great service. All for free. But we did tip. If you are paying for the preferred club, it's definitely worth it. They had better drinks and were helpful with everything. I also brought my wedding party in there, other guests and no one said a single thing or asked for their room keys. Basically, my guests used the preffered club with our room key. It's very easy to get away with. The only complaints I would say would be the food. I liked the food and knew what to order at each restaurant. We had guests that had already been there for 5 days before the wedding, so when we arrived we had all the "reviews and best choices". They do not check room keys on the beach for the preffered club either. Your guests can enjoy the large beds on the beach and the elegance of the club. Overall, I was so stressed before the wedding, I couldn't even think. I just became a Nurse and saved all the planning for last minute. DON'T DO THIS. It caused me so much stress. Oh- about the bags. We wanted our guests to have bags upon arrival for their room. It's not worth it. My mother is a quilter. She made big beach bags for the rooms. Instead of giving them at the front desk I put them on everyone's chairs during the reception. Best idea- we filled them with cheesy singlasses, boas, tiaras, clown noses, etc. Instead of doing a photo booth everyone had props and our photographer took great photos the entire night of everyone "dressed up". My guests loves this! The actual wedding favors were also included on the table. We made luggage tags. They were beautiful. If you have any questions, please email me at [email protected]. I know this time is difficult leading up to the wedding. A lot of last minute questions come up and last minute issues. Good Luck! Elizabeth