AThrough out the planning process I was very un easy. Lets start with saying I am a control freak (not that this is a good characteristic but I'm going to be honest!) while I was coming up with 5million questions an obsessively emailing the coordinater, photographer, and dj I felt as though it was very hard to get a response, everything was added fees, and I was very limited on what I was aloud to do. :mad: i wanted my entire ceremony, and reception set up in the sand as a relaxed bonfire with drinks, great food, and dancing. And of course many romantic details to go along with this...after finding out all of the cost involved I was looking well over $13,000 to have the 30of our guests my self and my husband on the beach. After months of going back and fourth on this topic I came to the realization that this was just un-affordable for us. :( when we arrived to our resort we were greeted at check in with lively kind, friendly people this set the tone after a long flight of VACATION!! Our group was given rum punch, and very promp check in. As a matter of fact we made a request to have all of our rooms close to each other in the same building and floor. My husband and I were already booked for an ocean front suite. Some of our guests were offered upgrades to ocean view to accommodate our request to move everyone together. What a welcome!!! All of our bags were moved aside while they took care of our rooms and wheeling our belongs up they sent us to get some lunch and relax. After lunch was over we were set to go to our rooms. The front desk took care of making sure everything was ready and we were quickly in our room. Within a few hours I had the opportunity to meet our wedding planner Nakeshia. Lets just say with all of the emails I sent her I don't think she was thrilled to meet me lol. She was very sweet and short. At this point I was still a little uneasy about the way the design aspect of the wedding would turn out, but I promised myself I was not going to allow any details of the wedding to keep me from enjoying my time in Jamaica. Nakeshia was very busy the day we arrived with multiple weddings taking place. She scheduled our meeting for the following day (two days before the wedding). Our dj arrived at the resort within three hours of us arriving. We were not thrilled with the reviews or pricing of the resort dj after much research we hired JA wedding dj's. this by far was my best decision Kevan Stewart was AMAZING. Not only was he an incredible dj, but he was my go to through out the entire process of planning I would recommend him again and again!! He gave me advice, suggestions, assistance with other vendors, reliable, prompt, professional...I could go in and on raving about him! :D after sitting down with Kevan, might I add My husband and I were at this point running on fumes with no sleep for at least 24 hours. He worked through the entire music select offered more great advice. Made sure everything was set up with our photographer, start times so on and so fourth...amazing!!! The next day we sat down with Nakeisha I told her we were not going to be able to afford the original beach BBQ we had planned out and were going to go with the free steak house dinner for our reception. I gave her two suite cases full of decorations, and center pieces. She spoke with her boss and made magic happen...I was not thrilled with the wedding gazebo where our wedding was scheduled to take place because it was so open to the public, and the area for seating seemed so narrow. She took us out to the private beach setting we originally planned on spending thousands of extra dollars to have our wedding at. She made arrangements to have both our ceremony and reception on the private beach. To this day I am so incredibly thankful for the magic she pulled to meet us in the middle and help us have our dream wedding!!!!!! I told her of the arrangements for our outside vendors and yes fees are involved with outside vendors but for what I wanted it was well worth it! My florist was equally amazing I wanted a mixture of the most expensive bouquet I could have possible asked for with a mixture of orchids,tulips, and peonies ( these are considered imports in JA) omg talk about perfect she made the flowers exactly to what I had imagined and the pricing was so much less expensive. I literally was afraid I was getting scammed when I had her quotes compared to all of the other florists in JA. When the day of the wedding came, I had my hair done at the salon. They did a great job and pricing was ok but I think if I were to do it over again I would have done my hair myself, and paid to have my pedicure re-done. The sand and sun will do a number on your polish!! As we were getting ready to leave our room to go to the ceremony it started to rain :( Nakeshia and Geoffrey eased my mind and my lovely brides maids toasted a drink!! The rain shower quickly passed and we went down to the ceremony sight..... Nakeshia if you ever read this you did awesome work setting everything up!!!! The ceremony was perfect we even had a rainbow to bless our day. After the ceremony ended we made special arrangements for our cocktail hour to have fresh fruit and Jamaican punch in coconuts to set the tone. While everyone was enjoying and taking pictures. The staff of riu brought all of my visions to reality. The reception sight was so perfect. Both Nakeshia and Kevan also surprised me with extras that I had mentioned to them in conversations that I was hoping to add and could not afford. (Thank you Kevan for the uplighting ;)) during dinner we had a steal drum band also part of kevan's dj team! The pictures that Geoffrey took really captured the event and speak for themselves. It was the most memorable and amazing time. I highly recommend the riu Montego Bay for your wedding we had such a fun time. I hope this helps anyone considering booking or takes the edge of the unknown for the over planners like myself. Pleas feel free to ask me any questions, and take a look at the 600+ pictures on my Facebook page!! Valerie kaiser is my married name if you send me a friend request with a message so I know you are from this sight you can look at all of my photos from the wedding! Happy planning ladies!!!! The vendors Riu Montego Bay private beach reception JA wedding dj Kevan Stewart Geoffrey berry photography Florist floral fantasies Jamaica Nakeisha white wedding planner