We just returned from 12 days at Dreams Punta Cana during which we had our wedding and honeymoon. I wish I could say it was a wonderful experience without any problems but that just isn't the case. My new husband and I arrived at Dreams on Oct. 31st and were staying in a Preferred Club Honeymoon Suite. We stayed in building 8 on the 3rd floor. The first thing I noticed was how far of a walk it is from the main lobby to the buildings & the Preferred Club. I then soon found out that there are no elevators in any of the guest buildings. There are 2 elevators in the main lobby but they are like hot boxes w/no air conditioning. The guest building hallways & stairwells reminded me of a cheap seaside motel. They were poorly lit, some were missing light fixtures & had holes in the walls. Dead bugs & spiderwebs also were all over the walls & ceiling. Since the hallways and stairwells are all open air this also does not keep out the rain. During the time we were there it rained several days & very heavily. The rain caused water to pool at the top of the landings of the stairs & run down the stairs. As all of the floors in the resort are tiled, this was extremely hazardous. Numerous times my husband had to catch me from almost tumbling down the stairs due to the slick surface.

Our honeymoon suite was very nice and large. We had no problem with any musty smell & the A.C. worked great. However, we did have some tiny ant type bugs on our sinks every morning that we had to get rid of. Also, our jacuzzi on the balcony did not work the first week we were there. We told the concierge about it the first day & she said she would send someone right up. We never saw any maitenance person & kept trying the jacuzzi daily to no avail. We asked about having someone look at it several times after with no result. Finally about 6 days into our trip my husband figured out the problem (the seal to the drain plunger was broken) and fixed it himself (by putting a glass upside down over the drain to keep the water in the jacuzzi). A couple of days the housekeeping staff did not clean our room. I wouldn't have really been too upset about this except that the one day was my wedding day & I had the photographer & videographer coming to the room to take pictures. So during my getting ready for the wedding I had to play maid as well & clean the room myself so that it was presentable in the pictures. Other than these couple of things my husband and I did not personally experience any problems w/our room.

I wish I could say the same for our guests. We had 11 guests total and all of them had problems. Our guests stayed in buildings 7, 9, 2, & 1. I will run down the list of problems from least to worst.

  *My brother in law had his room cleaned 1 day out of the 5 he stayed there and he too had the same problem w/the drain in his tub/shower that we experienced w/the jacuzzi. He was in building 2.

  *My mother in law & father in law tried ordering room service a couple of times & it never arrived, they were also in building 2. Oh and my mother in law's watch was smashed by one of the housekeeping staff. Since it was an inexpensive watch she did not complain but I definitely tried to have her tell someone.

  *Family friends of mine were given a room in building 7 which smelled of mildew horribly & had barely working AC. They made the best of it & opted not to change rooms. I went to their room & honestly if it was my room I would not have been able to stand it. They were troopers!

  *My sister in law & her husband were given a room in building 9 when they arrived. The AC was not working well in their room but they were going to make do w/it, that was until it rained heavily the next day causing a waterfall down the wall in their room. This was the day of the wedding & they needed to have their room changed. Obviously they needed to be moved as early in the day as possible since they had to get ready for the wedding. When they first called the lobby they were told no problem & given a new room number immediately. They were then told to come to the lobby to get the new key. They packed up all of their stuff again & went to the lobby only to be told that the new room wasn't ready yet & may not be ready until after 3:00 pm. They told the concierge this was impossible as they had to be ready for a wedding at 5:00 pm. The concierge seemed unconcerned & quite honestly like they were put out to have to help with the situation at all. Luckily the room was ready by 2:00 pm so they were able to have enought time to get ready. The second room they were given was in building 2 & they had no problems w/the 2nd room.

  *My mom and stepfather were initially given a room on the first floor in building 7. I had sent a message days before we arrived to the concierge advising that my mom had just been diagnosed w/shingles & to make sure their room was ready when they arrived & that it was on the first floor. When my parents arrived they were told the room was ready & I went with them at check in. When we walked in the room I was appalled. Not only did the AC not work & did it smell musty but there was also dehumidifier sitting in the middle of the floor. I don't know how long the dehumidifier had been there but it had not been emptied for some time obviously because it had overflowed & caused a huge pool of water all over the floor. The bellman saw it & said he would get housekeeping. I quickly tried to use the towels in the bathroom to clean up water on the floor. The housekeeper arrived in a few minutes. Once she saw that I had already cleaned up the water on the floor all she did was dump the remaining water in the dehumidifier & plug it back in and leave. She did not mop the floor or even give my parents new towels since I had to use the clean ones to clean up the mess on the floor. This was obviously not the kind of arrival that I was hoping my parents would receive. My parents stayed in that room for 1 night but could not stand it anymore. They requested a new room the next day & were moved to a smaller room in building 1 on the 3rd floor (even though they had originally requested a ground floor room and paid for a preferred club room). On top of the shingles that my mom was dealing with, my 70 year old stepfather hurt his back moving the luggage from one room to the next which made walking, sitting, & laying down extremely painful for him. Yet he had to climb 3 flights of stairs several times a day to get to his room. After 2 days in the room in building 1, it was day of the wedding and due to the rain the ceiling leaked right over top of their bed. Leaked would be an understatement. There was a puddle in the center of the bed. The leak started at around 11 am. My stepfather called for maintenance every hour on the hour for the next 5 hours w/no response. During this time my mother was w/me at the Spa having our hair done for the wedding & had to keep checking in w/my stepfather to see if anything was done. My mom brought her things to my room to get ready for the wedding while my stepfather stayed behind to wait for maitenance. When maitenance still hadn't arrived by 3:30 he could wait no longer as he had to get dressed & come to my room for pictures to be taken. Once he got to my room I called the concierge and explained how upset I was that on the day of my wedding my parents have to deal w/this poor service. I was told that literally 3 minutes before I called the maitenance people had called the concierge to tell them that were at the room & could not fix the leak so my parents would need to have their room changed. Due to the timing w/the wedding about to start & the dinner following my parents were unable to change their room until 9:30 pm at which time they had to pack up all of their things, lug their bags to the next room (in the same building & floor luckily) w/my stepfather's back still being a problem. They did not get to lay down until nearly midnight. They did not have any problems w/the 3rd room they were in.

  *The worst problem happened to our best man and maid of honor. They were in building 2. Their first full day their they had 300.00 stolen from the safe in their room. They had 1000.00 in cash, credit cards, & jewelry in the safe and when my MOH went back to the room for an afternoon nap she decided to check & make sure everything was still in the safe. When she opened the safe things looked a little disheveled so she decided to count the money at which time she found that there was only 700.00 there. It also appeared that the credit cards had been moved around so she was immediately afraid that someone had written down her credit card numbers. She came running back to the pool where we were all still at and was hysterical and understandably so. She & the best man went back to the room to call security & so that he could look over everything. He came back & told us that 300.00 was indeed missing & that they needed to go to the lobby to meet w/security. My parents, my husband, and myself all went with them to the lobby. I can not even tell you how upset the next series of events made me. The concierge & security staff were HORRIBLE. They started trying to tell my MOH & best man that maybe they just forgot where they put the other 300.00 or maybe they gave their safe code to one of their friends & one of their friends took it. I could not believe that they were trying to point fingers at someone in our wedding party. Regardless, no one but them had the safe code & no one other than hotel staff & themselves were in the room. I will say it was a bit of a scene in the lobby when I found out how they were handling the situation. I began to cry & said this is not the wedding experience I had hoped for for my guests. I explained that I had heard horrible things about the resort & the security prior to coming to the resort but had hoped they were just isolated events. They then had the director of the wedding department come out to meet with me but all that she did was take down the room numbers of our guests & tell me that everything would be fine. I still have no idea why she took down the room numbers. The security staff member that my parents spoke with told them that he had been at the resort for 3 years and never had a report of a theft. I found this hard to believe as I have read several reviews online that claimed money & other items were stolen from their room. They told our best man to come back to security the next day as it takes them 24 hours to check the safe codes & surveillance videos. When he went back the next day they told him that they could not be sure who took the money & therefore could not give them 300.00 cash back. They told him as a courtesy they would give him a 300.00 credit to use at the resort. The manager told him that my MOH would be able to use the credit toward her hair styling for the wedding & any other spa services. He confirmed this w/the manager 3 times just to make sure that the spa would accept it & the manager assured him that yes it would be able to be used at the spa. Sure enough on the day of the wedding when my MOH tried to use the voucher they gave her a problem & they had to call the manager to confirm that the voucher could be used. My MOH then also scheduled massages for her & the best man to have during their stay and confirmed w/the girl at the front desk at the spa that the voucher would be able to be used & even had her sign & initial the voucher. Wouldn't you know when they went to the spa 2 days later they were given a problem about using the voucher and again the manager had to be called. Later that same day they went to check their room balance & found that a 20.00 charge was on their room for the spa. When they asked about it & told them that the voucher they had covered all the spa services they were told that it was gratuity charge. After all that they were put through they said that you had to be kidding if they thought that they were going to give them a tip after they were out 300.00 to begin with. Had they not had 300.00 stolen they probably would not have even spent that much at the spa but did not want to waste the credit. The concierge did remove the 20.00 charge. My MOH also had to put a freeze on her credit cards just in case someone had written down her credit card numbers as well. On top of that, my father in law was speaking to another couple in the lobby a few days later & they told him that they were there for a wedding in which the bride & a couple of her guests had money stolen from their safes as well. Needless to say, after the incident w/my MOH & best man the rest of us chose to keep valuables double locked in different suitcases in our rooms because we did not trust the safes.

Another issue with the resort is that everyday we were there regardless of the weather, the power would go out at least once if not several times. I found this strange & could not understand why this kept happening. No one was able to tell us why this happened either. I do not know if the safes are battery powered or powered by the electricity in the rooms but if the power goes out & the electricity in the resort powers them it would seem that the safe may fail & anyone could get into it. That is just my theory. So my warning to anyone who goes to Dreams...DO NOT USE THE SAFE!

On to the wedding...

When we had arrived at the resort we had a note waiting in our room from our coordinator, Carolina, letting us know when to meet her to go over the details of the wedding. We met with her on the 3rd day we were there. As we were only having 11 guests we had opted not to have a private reception. We wanted to have a dinner instead with our guests at one of the a la carte restaurants. She let us know that she would make arrangements for dinner for us at the Portofino restaurant for 6:30 pm the night of our wedding & even though they generally only have tables for up to 10 she would have them get a table for 13. Since we were staying more than 7 nights in the honeymoon suite we were able to get the basic wedding package for free which included the symbolic ceremony, my bouquet, groom's bouttenaire, my hair styling for the wedding day, champagne toast for 10 people, cake for 10 people, special turn down service the night of the wedding, and breakfast in bed the next morning. I had the music that I wanted to walk down the aisle to on my Ipod which I gave to Carolina. I picked out the bouquet for myself & my MOH. I also got 2 more bout's for our best man & my stepfather. Our meeting was only about 15 minutes but Carolina was on top of everything & made me feel so at ease.

The day of the wedding was filled with dark skies & heavy down pours. Regardless, I tried not to let the rain get me down. In the end, instead of getting married in the gazebo we had to be married under the cover of the Himitsu Terrace. Carolina did a great job making the last minute change look like it was supposed to be there all along. I had not requested chair covers or sashes but she had called an hour before the wedding & asked what the wedding colors were so I told her. When I arrived I was thrilled when I saw the chair covers & carribean blue sashes that were almost an exact match to my MOH's dress. There were rose petals sprinkled down the aisle & candlelit lanterns around the chairs. She even had a sand ceremony ready for us w/blue & ivory sand. Despite the weather it looked lovely. We had opted not to have a rehearsal since we did not have a large wedding party, however, looking back I wish we had. Since the ceremony was in the lobby there was a lot of background noise due to a show going on in the theater. I was unable to hear when my song started playing so my stepfather and I started walking too soon & I was half way down the aisle when my song started. Not that big of a deal but if we would have had a rehearsal we might have had better timing. Carolina had a microphone ready to go for the ceremony but unfortunately is was not working. She tried her best to speak over the background noise from the stage show but most of our guests said they could not hear her over the noise. Then at the end of the ceremony she did not tell us what to do next & we had to wait for what seemed like forever for the recessional song to play. During this time they had handed out champagne to us & to our guests & the 4 of us were standing in front of everyone looking like deer in headlights. Somebody (I think it was our photographer) yelled to our best man to make a toast. He was completely unprepared for this because we had told him that he would make a speech at the at home reception & not in Punta Cana. He tried to think fast on his feet & started to make an impromptu toast at which time the recessional song started to play & drowned him out. It was kind of funny but still I wish we would have done the rehearsal then we may have had a better idea of how things were going to go.

Our photographer & videographer were Carribean Emotions and I can not praise them enough. They came at 1:00 pm and took pictures of everyone getting ready leading up to the ceremony, the ceremony, and pics immediately after the ceremony. Even though we were unable to get pics outside on the beach they got beautiful shots in the lobby. Michael & Pascal were wonderful. They were funny & able to make us feel comfortable in front of the camera. Michael got many original shots that I would not have thought of. He was doing another wedding at the resort the following day and told us he would bring the finished DVD video, CD of pictures, and original file format CD with him the next day. True to his word he met with me the next evening & gave us all 3 CD's both in personalized cases w/ a few sample pics on the case. Again, they were just awesome!

We had our wedding dinner at Portofino. It was excellent, the food was so good & the ambiance is perfect for a wedding. The resort gave us a bottle of wine on them which we chose to share with our guests at the dinner. Carolina again made sure that we had 1 long table that everyone could fit at and had the chair covers & sashes again. She also arranged for us to have our cake following dinner. It worked out great. We had originally thought that after dinner we would all go to the disco but everyone was pretty wiped out so we all just went to bed, LOL. When my husband and I got back to our room we found that there were rose petals leading from the door to the bed & on the bed there were towels sculpted like 2 swans kissing and another one that looked like a wedding dress. Our curtains were event tied into a bow w/rose petals on them. The next morning we had a wonderful breakfast in bed complete w/champagne. 

Looking back on everything now I do have to say that if I had it to do over again I would have a wedding at home and then go on a honeymoon w/my husband. Even though Carolina did a great job w/the wedding it was not what I had in mind when I planned a destination wedding. My dream was to be married in an island/beach setting & have pictures on the beach which I was unable to have even though I was in the Carribean. If I was going to have an indoor wedding I could have done that at home and saved all of my guests the expense & frustrations they endured to come to our wedding. I can't even tell you the guilt that I feel about the things that occurred to my guests during their stays at Dreams. When I look back at my wedding I don't want to remember all that I put my family & friends through. I was hoping for wonderful memories and to be quite honest I don't really have that.

My advice to future brides, think long & hard about having a destination wedding. If you have family & friends who enjoy traveling overseas, are active, & without physical ailments then it may be the way to go. If you have many elderly guests or people do not enjoy tropical locations, this may not be the choice for you. I truly do feel like I put everyone out to come to a wedding where the ceremony lasted about 10 minutes & wasn't even in the venue I had originally thought of. Maybe I'm being over dramatic and there were some good times but those were mainly w/my new husband. This is why I'm thinking it would have been best for the two of us to go away for a honeymoon together & have a wedding at home. 

I hope my review helps some of you future brides and I hope you all have a better experience than I did. I am just now trying to forget about the bad things that happened & try to remember the good. I am also focusing on starting my life married to my best friend.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Melissa