Let me start of by saying that I spent probably 3 months carefully choosing the venue for our wedding. We finally chose the Hyatt Regency Aruba since it was one of the most beautiful and reputable resorts in all of the Caribbean. Turned out that in our case, we didn’t get their usual great service.

There were some major problems where the Hyatt dropped the ball really badly. It is supposed to be the best resort on the island but our wedding honestly got maybe 1.5 stars if that. I truly hope that this does not happen to anyone else, but I did everything in my power to make sure things ran smoothly and with DWs, we rely on the wedding planners and their vendors to deliver what is promised and in this case, they did not. Not even close.

Location: Hyatt Regency Aruba Resort & Casino
Date: May 30, 2010
Guests: 38 adults, 4 kids, 2 newlyweds :)

Neither I nor my husband has been to Aruba prior to the wedding so planning was tricky considering that we didn’t have a visit. But I did not have enough vacation time to take for a trip down and I honestly don’t think that it would have changed the outcome.

Aruba:

I personally loved Aruba and everything it had to offer. We stayed on Palm Beach which is stunningly beautiful. May is their low-season but there was a huge music festival the weekend of our wedding headlining Mary J. Blige and Toni Braxton so the island and the resort were pretty busy. Aruba is very Americanized so don’t be shocked by seeing McD’s and Pizza Huts. The restaurants are generally very good although prices are not cheap. We were able to find affordable breakfasts/lunches and for dinner we splurged a bit. Smokey Joe’s BBQ Ribs is amazing and we also really enjoyed Aqua Grill in Palm Beach for a nicer dinner. Another huge positive for Aruba is their super-clean water. It is 2nd in the world’s cleanest water so you can drink straight from the tap and not worry about getting sick unlike w/ DR or Mexico. It was very hot so it was very nice to be able to just refill the water bottle from the tap and put it in the fridge.

Flight:

We had a flight from DC to Aruba with a 2 hour layover at Charlotte, NC. We could have had a shorter layover but I was a little worried that the flight out of DC would be delayed so for peace of mind, we had 2 hours to kill. We flew US Airways which charges for luggage. We ended up paying $60 for 4 checked-in luggage bags which if you ask me, is a rip off. Who travels internationally without luggage?!?!?!?! We lucked out and had an empty seat next to us on the flight to Aruba so I took a little nap and put my feet up (my back was killing me since I pulled one of the suitcases while packing). Customs was super easy, literally took 10 minutes to get our luggage and be out getting into a taxi.

Check In:

Upon arrival to the Hyatt, we were very impressed with how gorgeous the resort is. Elegant, clean, with wonderful service at the front desk and everywhere else. Our wedding was on Sunday but we arrived on Tuesday to allow us to meet with the wedding planner, photographer, videographer, rabbi, DJ, etc.

Room:

We booked a standard room and the Hyatt gives a 5-night upgrade to a suite if you have a wedding at their resort. We were staying 12 nights so it would have been annoying to move rooms but luckily, since it was low-season, we were upgraded to an ocean front suite which was amazing. It wasn’t truly a suite since it was still 1 room, but it was a bit larger than the regular rooms so that was very nice considering I had a lot of bags and a lot of stuff to do. The beds were very comfortable and the balcony view was stunning (regular rooms do not have a full balcony, just a walk-out with no room for chairs so it was awesome to have a full balcony overlooking the beach and the Caribbean sea). The sea is this amazing turquoise color which made me smile every day. And the palm trees ? We had champagne and strawberries delivered to our room in the evening but the champagne was Brut which made my stomach extremely upset and I was in crazy pain for a couple of hours from it. I mention it because it comes into play later yet again! Fridges were provided for free which came in very handy for us.

Resort:

The resort is medium size so it wasn’t huge. It was awesome to bump into family/friends everywhere we went and if we needed to find something (no cell phones!), it was easy to just call their room or find them on the beach/by the pool. The pools are the Hyatt are gorgeous, with plenty of chairs/umbrellas around. I imagine that if the hotel is full, it might get crowded but for us, it was perfect. One of the pools had a swim-up bar where the food was actually pretty good. The resort had the most amazing landscaping with gorgeous flowers everywhere and these pretty little walkways made of stone. There were iguanas and lizards running around which was super awesome, parrots in cages, as well as coi fish and black swans in the “lake”. The resort is super clean and staff is really amazing at keeping things friendly and nice for the guests.

Bars:

There are two bars on the grounds which were nice as well as a juice bar for those yummy smoothies that are perfect on a hot day. The drinks are pricey ($10) and even smoothies are pricey ($8.50) but we are not big drinkers so it was fine.

Casino:

I'm not big on casinos but this one was very cold and smokey. My FI loves casinos so he went a couple of times with the guys. It's pretty large and there seemed to be activity there in the evenings. But brrrr, it was cold in there!!!!

Restaurants:

We did not want an all-inclusive resort although most in Aruba are not. We wanted to be able to get our own food whenever/wherever we wanted. The food at the Hyatt was somewhat disappointing, granted that this is one of the areas that they are famous for. Everyone raved about their restaurants. Ruinas del Mar is GORGEOUS but the food was way oversalted and not very good. I will review the other restaurant, the Palms, later since we had our Welcome Dinner there. Also, there is a café at the resort which serves coffee and iced coffee and snacks. It is pretty overpriced ($4.00 pastries, $6.00 water) but it was very popular with our guests for their coffee needs (even though there is a coffee machine in the room, they loved the iced coffee from there and their pastries were amazing).

The Beach:

The beaches in front of the resorts are not huge but since it wasn’t high season, it was fine. The water is amazing and I absolutely loved Palm Beach. There is a long trail that goes all along the beach so you can easily walk over to other resorts and visit their restaurants/shops. We found a nice breakfast place at the Radisson (Gilligan’s) where we went for breakfast a few times. Many times when we came to the beach there were a lot of palapas already occupied with towels on them but nobody there for hours so it was evident that people just reserved their spot and then left. We never did that since I am not a morning person and never had a problem getting a place, of course not in first row but it was fine. The sand is gorgeous and Palm Beach waters are very calm so it was nice to swim and not get beat up by the waves and our nieces/nephews could play in the water and not worry about being knocked over or scared of the big waves. Palm Beach faces the sunset so every evening was like a painting outside. Simply gorgeous. My favorite thing to do was to swim for hours and then keep swimming while the sun was setting and even after. WARNING: Aruba is 18 degrees south of the equator so the sun is STRONG. It is very easy to get sunburnt so be very careful with lots of sunblock and hats and light flowy shirts with sleeves if you are out during the afternoon.

Power Outlets:

It was awesome that Aruba electrical system is the same as American so no need for converters or any other devices. Everyone's electronic devices worked, no problems!!!!

Power Outage:

There was a power outage twice while we were in Aruba. We were told that it is very rare that it happens but it did. Aruba is much more advanced than many other islands so it was some problem at the power plant. There was no power at the resort for 4 hours but it was fine. They gave everyone glow sticks to walk around with.  It happened on the evening when we were meeting up with everyone for our Friday night drinks get-together to kick-off all the wedding activities.  There was supposed to be a band with live music which of course didn't happen with no power or bar even open.  We wandered around with all of our guests for a while and then some came with us to another resort where there was power.  I was also in the middle of a massage when the power went out so they closed the spa and rescheduled my appointment without a charge.

Favors:

Palmera Rum

I used Palmera Rum (native to Aruba) to order miniature 2 oz. bottles of rum as our wedding favors. They had many various flavors but we picked coconut, YUM. I worked with Ethan at Palmera who was extremely helpful and very responsive. He made us custom labels at no additional charge with our names and wedding date on them. The bottles were delivered to the Hyatt and I left the $$ at the front desk so I didn’t have to worry about picking anything up. They also threw in a few extra bottles as well as one huge bottle with our label for us as well. Very much appreciated and I would recommend them any day to anyone. It made for great favors.

Aruba Aloe

I didn't want to get sunblock for favors so I got a few boxes of 4 oz after-sun aloe lotion. I placed the order over email and then went and picked it up at the actual factory in Aruba. They were $5.95 each and came in boxes of 12. They made for a GREAT item since sunblock is a little more personal w/ varying spf and ingredients.

Wedding Planner(s):

When we booked the wedding back in the fall, we worked with Tita who had rave reviews about her wedding planning. I worked with her until April when all of a sudden I got an email that she was leaving the Hyatt. I freaked out since my wedding was just several weeks away but then began working with Margie who was very nice and helpful as well. I made sure to resubmit everything and confirm every single detail with Margie since I understood that mine was not the only wedding that was being transitioned to another wedding planner so I was nervous. About 2 weeks prior to the wedding, we had yet another change in the Wedding Planner so now it was Florence. She was very nice but once again, it made me very nervous and I had to resubmit everything to make sure that none of the details got lost in the transitions.

We met with the Wedding Planner on Wednesday after our arrival to Aruba to go over the wedding plans. Turned out they did not have any Hair/Makeup appointments for me which were made right on the spot. I also found out that when I asked about a “Dress Steamer” which I assumed was a person who would steam my dress but no, it was literally a hand steamer. I was terrified to ruin the dress but they said for liability reasons, they could not do it nor did they have anyone at the Hyatt who did it. My bridesmaids had to help me steam the dress and we couldn’t get the steamer to work (it was overfilled with water so we had to lift the extremely heavy steamer so spill some water out). I could not have done this without my girls and I was kind of freaking out since there was no time left by the time they brought the steamer to my room.

We also made it a point to ask the Wedding planner to not give us Brut champagne (standard) since it made my stomach upset which she agreed to and called the liquor vendor while we were in her office to arrange a semi-sweet champagne instead (of course we got Brut at the wedding). We went over a few other details and signed all the paperwork.

I asked her if she would be there all through our wedding day and she assured me that she would (he exact words were "I wouldn't miss it for the world"). She was not there most of the night and our photographer had to not only organize our group but also run and ask questions of management or make requests. My husband had to do that as well.

Meetings with Vendors:

I am a project manager so I had everything planned out and in spreadsheets (my fiancé has no attention to detail and I’m the opposite so he teased me about it the whole time but those spreadsheets made my life so much easier :))

We met with the photographer, videographer, DJ, and rabbi to discuss what we were looking for and finalize any details. I will review them separately later.

Rehearsal (Saturday afternoon):

I asked our Bridal Party to meet us at 3pm as agreed to with the Wedding Planner. At 3:10pm, she was nowhere to be found so I had to run around and find her while everyone stood around waiting. She made very little attempt to help us figure things out (I knew that they had 3 other weddings that weekend but still, it was very disappointing).

Welcome Dinner (Saturday):

Since we arrived on Tuesday, we had guests arriving mostly on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I arranged our Welcome Dinner at the Palms Restaurant on their deck. I emailed back and forth with one of the managers and they allowed us to use their regular menu and not their group menu which was very nice. I was very excited since the deck was beautiful and facing the beach.  The menu items looked great. On Saturday afternoon, I realized that the giant palapa that was right in front of the Palms deck was being decorated for a wedding! So from our tables, we would literally have a front row seat to another wedding. Nobody mentioned anything to me but when I went and asked to have our party moved inside, they agreed. I was annoyed that nobody mentioned it or even thought about how it would feel for us and our guests but it was obvious that nobody considered it at all.

When we all arrived for dinner, the tables were set up for our group and everyone placed their orders. It was very smokey in the restaurant from their grill and it constantly smelled like something was burning but at that point we couldn’t really do much. The food started arriving but some tables got their food really fast while others were still waiting for their first course when others were ordering dessert. It made for a very unorganized event and it was difficult to even have people give speeches since some were eating and others were not.. Just very poor organization from my perspective. The food was surprisingly bad as well. It was supposed to be a great restaurant so I was surprised at how most of the dishes tasted. When I walked around to sit with various guests, I saw that some barely touched their meals. It was pretty embarrassing and I encouraged everyone to order something else instead but people didn’t want to (we were covering the dinner so I wanted them to get a good meal). We still enjoyed the time with our friends and family and the families/friends got to meet those that they have not met before but I would not recommend that restaurant for anything other than brunch.

Spa:

Since the power went out while I was getting a massage and a wrap, I made an appointment for the next day. The first time I had a lady masseuse who literally just rubbed oil on my body rather than any sort of a massage. My friend told me that she had a guy masseuse so the next time, I asked for a guy and had Dean who was amazing. I’ve had a million massages in my life and his was honestly one of the best ever. The wrap was ok, too short if you ask me (it said 60 min but in reality it was about 20, then shower, then lotion). The spa is clean and quiet with nice sized lockers and nice-smelling lotions. But Dean was amazing!!!

Wedding Hair:

There were 2 people doing our hair who spoke very little English so it was almost impossible to communicate with them. Our photographer had to translate to describe what the girls wanted. Everything came out beautifully done though and my 9 year old niece was super excited to get her hair done with all the older girls :)

Make-up:

Same problem, barely any English and again, the photographer had to translate. They did a fabulous job but I didn’t even know their names since we could not communicate with us and didn’t even know our names either.

Flowers:

The Wedding Planner and I went back and forth with various quotes for flowers with pictures including the flowers for the chuppah. When the flowers were delivered, I was shocked that my bouquet had wilted white roses with literally brown edges all around!!!! For $120, my bouquet was pretty small and for $85, my bridesmaids bouquets were TINY!!! They also forgot the flowers for the Moms so we had to ask for a replacement for the wilted flowers which were brought later. I could not believe my eyes!!! This is a 5-star resort and they are giving browned old flowers for the wedding and are charging good money for it! Of course there was going to be an even bigger problem later on which I did not expect at all.

Photographer:

The Hyatt doesn’t have a photographer on staff so we could hire whoever we wanted. They provided some recommendations but we decided to hire Diane Keijzer. I spoke to her on the phone a couple of times prior to the wedding and she was very friendly and flexible. One of my non-negotiable requests was that I wanted a CD with all the digital images on them with no copyright. Lots of photographers refused to do that and we would have to order prints from them as well as our family and friends. Diane had no problem and even offered to come to our Welcome Dinner to take some pictures and then take us around the island after the wedding to take some more pictures at no additional price. She also gave me lots of advice on Aruba as I had questions about what to bring/buy. Since our Wedding Planner was nowhere to be found most of the day, Diane had to pick up the ball and run the show so we were so grateful for her positive attitude, upbeat nature and willingness to help. We would have been in serious trouble without her. For $1,700 we got a boatload of pictures from the Welcome Dinner, Wedding, and Island Tour. She also paid the taxi driver to take us around the island which was scheduled for 2 hours and turned into 4. It was a tour of the island and a photo session all in one!

Videographer:

Once again, the Hyatt didn’t have one so we had to make our own arrangements which was totally fine with us. We hired George Jacobs to record our wedding. We spoke on the phone once in a Aruba but there wasn’t really a need to meet face-to-face. He showed up on time and did not intrude into the ceremony or reception. He also had an assistant with him so the final video had more than one angle which was nice. He was professional and nice and the final video is very good (ends kind of abruptly but what can ya do?). We got 4 DVDs, about 1 hour of total film, for $1,000.

DJ:

Once we notified the Hyatt that we wanted a DJ, they put us in touch with Mark Benson. I read some good reviews about him online and he was responsive to my emails so I felt comfortable. We filled out a DJ Questionnaire for the Hyatt which listed all of our bridal party names as well as the music and special songs. The special songs and announcements were done fine but about ½ hour into the reception, Mark left and we had a young guy DJ our party for the rest of the night. He was ok, honestly, nothing very special. We gave a list of about 50 songs that was on the questionnaire and he played maybe 15 of them, while adding many that we did not request. It was a bit strange because why ask us for the list of the music as well as the music itself on CD and then not play it? I understand that they can’t play it all, but to ask us for a list and then ignore it was weird. We paid $1,400 for 4 hours for the DJ. At several points during the evening, my husband had to go up to the DJ and request a change of music in tempo depending on whether we were eating or dancing. It would have been nice to have our Wedding Planner there to communicate rather than us.

The Wedding Ceremony:

The whole reason for us doing a DW was to have a beach wedding and enjoy paradise. We hired the local rabbi, Rabbi Mario Gurevich, to perform the ceremony who did a great job. I am originally from Ukraine and my now husband is from Argentina (his family lives in Argentina, hence Caribbean being the choice – my perfect excuse for a paradise wedding). The rabbi is originally Argentinean with Russian/Ukrainian heritage so it was very cool to have him officiate. He also speaks fluent Spanish so it was perfect for our ceremony because he switched from one language to another throughout the ceremony.

Five minutes before the ceremony, the rabbi came up to us in the lobby of the hotel where we were meeting him and told us that there was a huge problem. Turns out that there was no Chuppah!!!!!! The florist brought a regular arch instead of a Chuppah and nobody from the Hyatt told us about that, it had to come from the rabbi 5 minutes before show-time. We were both in absolutely shock since the Chuppah is a central piece of a Jewish ceremony. The rabbi cannot perform the ceremony without it. Once again, nobody from the Hyatt was anywhere to be found! So the rabbi went down to the beach and asked to have a cabana moved over to where the chuppah is supposed to be and put the arch w/flowers right at the entrance. It was quite ugly and we were both extremely upset since it was discussed so many times and was in all of the paperwork!!! But the show must go on.
It was very hot with NO wind at our wedding which is so unusual for Aruba. I was very glad that I brought fans for everyone, not just the ladies, as a favor because they were used by EVERYONE. The ceremony went beautifully, even with everyone dripping sweaty.

Ceremony Music:

This was another area where the Hyatt dropped the ball. I requested a keyboard player for the ceremony. 2 months before the wedding date, I asked to be put in contact with him/her to discuss music and see what they knew how to play, etc. Every week after that, I asked again and again, never getting any info other than “we are still trying to reach them”. 2 weeks before the wedding, still no word. At this point I am completely freaked out that we will have NO music at the ceremony!!! So I frantically contact the rabbi to ask him about any musicians that he might know and he puts us in touch with a wonderful woman named Catherine Provence-Hanrath, who has played at many weddings with the rabbi and luckily for us, she was available for our wedding. Shortly after, I got an email from the Hyatt keyboard player (mind you this is 10 days before the actual wedding) asking us what he could do for us. I emailed him back saying thanks but no thanks. The ceremony music was beautiful and I did not even get the chance to thank Catherine personally since we were whisked away to do pictures right away. But she was wonderful.

Reception:

Once we left the Ceremony, the reception (Deck) was literally 100 ft or so away but they were not ready for us. So our party stood around taking pictures for about 20 minutes before we got the green light to go in. Once again, the Wedding Planner was nowhere to be found and the photographer had to direct the crowd. We had a 5-course dinner for our reception and the food was truly amazing (from what I hear, I ate literally 2 bites the whole night). We had a cheese bar for cocktail hour, then soup, salad, intermezzo – pineapple sorbet (yummm), choice of filet mignon or seabass, and mango mousse. Service of the food/drinks was great. Remember when we specifically asked for semi-sweet instead of Brut Champagne? Of course we ended up getting Brut champagne which I did not want to even toast with so I pretended to drink it while really just dipping my lips into it. I did NOT want to have an upset stomach at my wedding. We asked for a semi-sweet and were brought 1 bottle so our guests had the wrong champagne the whole night. Nobody complained so maybe it is just my stomach that can’t handle brut. At one point during the reception, the Wedding Planner came up to me to apologize for the chuppah mistake and told me that they would not charge me for it. I literally almost exploded. There was no chuppah! And here she is telling me that we won’t be charged for it as if I’m getting some sort of a deal. I was appalled and literally asked my fiancé to talk to her because I was ready to cry or yell at her. I was upset enough with all the things going wrong already that I really just didn’t even want to think about.

Another strange thing was that we ordered a meal for the photographer and videographer since they were with us for many hours. Their tables were set up inside and not outside with the rest of the guests which felt weird, like they were not worthy to have a table next to the rest of the guests. Maybe it’s cultural or customary but we felt bad that they were “banished” somewhere to eat their meals.

The tables and centerpieces were done beautifully.

The Cake:

Our cake was gorgeous and actually tasted really good. It was quite large and my fiancé had enough smarts at the end of the night to ask them to bring the left-over cake to our room. It turned out to be 2 full layers (since we offered a separate dessert with our dinner) so we ate cake for the rest of our honeymoon and had people over in the evening for some cake (it actually got more moist and tasted better in the next days!!!).

Honeymoon:

We stayed at the Hyatt for our honeymoon and still had family/friends there and departing over the next few days. It was wonderful to see them all especially since most of our families don’t live in our city and we don’t get to see them very often at all.  We got a plate of strawberries with "Congraduations" written in chocolate, yes, misspelled, but they tasted good :)  We also got this huge bouquet from the florist and multiple phone calls from the management and florist for the flower problems and all the other issues.  But at that point it was all done so it just ruined the mood for us to hear these messages.

Negotiations with the Hyatt:

After all the mistakes that the Hyatt and its vendors made, we received apologetic phone calls from the Wedding Planner, the Florist, Management, got champagne and strawberries as well as a huge arrangement from the Florist pointing the finger at the Hyatt while the Hyatt pointed their finger to the Florist. We set up a meeting for later in the week to deal with it because honestly, we didn’t want our honeymoon ruined by all this. We still had to meet with the Wedding Planner who kept apologizing for everything that went wrong and was almost in tears. She is a nice lady but she totally dropped the ball on our wedding day. We met with the manager two or three times and he offered discounts on things but honestly, it was like they were trying to give us the bare minimum for their screw ups. My husband was outraged and told them what he thought of the whole thing and how it made us feel. They swore up and down that this was the first and the last time that this has ever happened but to us, this is our wedding day, we won’t have another…. They admitted everything that went wrong but in the end, we were told that it was bad luck which was just outrageous. Bad luck is if it rained on our wedding day, or the power went out on the island. Not when paperwork gets screwed up or the Wedding Planner is nowhere to be found. It left a really bad taste in our mouths because we had to deal with this during our honeymoon. If I were them, I would give us a free stay there to make up for it, but they did not. The manager just told us to call him if we ever needed anything from him. Basically putting us in a position to ASK him for something! My husband told me that he will call him any time and every time while I didn’t want to have anything to do with it at all. I’m a little more stubborn than my husband but luckily he has the guts to deal with confrontations such as this when I’m a little more of a softie.

So this was clearly not a perfect wedding but we still had a great time and honestly, it is all due to my now husband who did not let me get overly upset and kept the crowd excited and entertained the whole night. I am usually not a cry-baby and don’t fall apart easily but there were times during the night when I had to fight tears of disappointment (I did not mind tears of joy, those are great hehe).

All in all, Aruba is amazing and I already miss the island very much. The people are very friendly and we definitely were not ready to go back. My husband got certified in scuba but I spent most of the time with friends/family being the hostess :)