I’m so happy and excited to be writing this review. From the moment we stepped into the airport everything was perfect and went very smoothly.

Our trip was booked through Darlene Dundas of Stonetown Travel, St.Mary’s, Ontario. Best.Decision.Ever! She was incredible from day one and handled pretty much everything for us until closer to the wedding when we started dealing directly with the coordinator. HIGHLY recommend her.

We booked out trips with Airtransat and I’m SO impressed with them. We got priority check in at the airport, extra baggage allowance and unlimited champagne on the plane. They treated us like royalty!

Once I got assigned a wedding coordinator, Nekeisha everything was awesome. She was great at responding the same day to my emails and SO professional. If you have a choice, you should request Nekeisha, she will go above and beyond for you.

RESORT:

I honestly don’t understand some of the negative reviews, we all LOVED it! All 63 of us. Upon arrival we were greeted with rum punch right away while the staff dealt with our luggage. We were instantly upgraded to the BEST honeymoon suite ever! It opened up to the beach where the ceremony would be held. Literally, I had to walk 10 meters max to the ceremony spot on the day of the wedding. Could not have been any better!!! I actually cried when we got to our room. Huge with an outdoor shower, perfect area for getting ready day of the wedding! Any brides getting married at the beach location REQUEST THIS ROOM!!! Room 3022.  It made the wedding day so much more relaxed. As we were getting ready, sipping on champagne, I could watch the entire group making their way down to the beach and my groom walking out. What a cool moment seeing my future husband making his way down to the ceremony. Most of our guests had room upgrades if they asked for it, there were no complaints about the rooms at all except my Grandmother had to be moved to a ground floor room. No big deal. It is quite a big resort, so be prepared to do some walking. I could see how this would be a problem for some people but I enjoyed it. Walked off some of the 4000 calories we ate each day ;) My Grandma had to have a wheel chair to get around but she didn’t mind.

Restaurants and Food:

All of our guests LOVED the a la cartes and buffets. Of course after a week the buffet can get a little old and repetitive but overall I thought the food was AMAZING. The Jamaican, Poseidon and Indian seemed to be the group favourites. Oh the seafood, oooh the shrimp, we could not get enough. We had our rehearsal dinner for 30 people at the Poseidon. It was really nice. Usually with a large group there you have to have a set menu but they let us use the regular menu for the night and that was great. It happened to be my brother’s birthday so they were bringing tons of group shots and brought him a piece of cake and got the whole group to sing to him. Very cool.

The Jerk hut on the beach is to die for. SO good. This was my favourite meal the entire week. Most of our group ate there every day for lunch.

Beaches and Pools:

Pools were amazing. We had a group of younger “partiers” and they did not leave the infinity main pool the entire week. They were always set up in the middle of the pool by the swim up bar. SO MUCH FUN! The adult pool and beach was my favourite. It was right across from our villa and we stopped here every day to fill up our tumblers. (we gave each guest a to go drink tumbler, $5 from superstore, highly recommend these. All of our guests LOVED them and that was one way our group could tell we were all in the same group) Beaches: I’ve read mixed reviews but personally our group loved them. Our room was right on las brias beach, it’s not a very popular beach so it’s perfect if you want to relax with not many people around. It’s great for pictures too. Sunset cove beach was a group favourite. Very kid friendly. My best friend is a marine biologist and she took groups out snorkeling on all the different beaches and she was impressed with what she saw.

Bars:

At night we always met up at the infinity bar for live music and fun. We had a blast here every night. It can be very lively or mellow, depending on your mood. Some nights they have Jamaican music or dancing. We would then head to the disco and then to the sports bar, every night lol Great party resort.

Staff: What are some of these negative reviews talking about?? You’re in Jamaica Mon’!! These people move slow, it’s their lifestyle! Embrace it and relax! After being at the resort I’m BLOWN away by every staff member there. I wore some stuff that said I was the bride and every 2 seconds they were coming up to me and congratulating me and giving us blessings! They love the guests there. We were surrounded by amazing staff the entire week. The bartenders are incredible! So fun. Tip them a $20 the first time and they will be racing drinks out to you’re the rest of the week.

CEREMONY AND DAY OF WEDDING:

Dream.Come.True! Wow, I’m still on cloud 9. I brought my own hair stylist, photographer and make up artist so we started getting ready around 11:30am for our 4pm ceremony on the beach. Some of my bridesmaids went to the spa to get ready and loved it. We ordered the Day of wedding tea party and it was perfect. Coffee, tea, champagne and cupcakes. Helped calm our nerves and the cupcakes were delicious. Nekeisha sent over all the flowers around 2pm. The steel drum band arrived and started playing around 3:15pm. They were awesome, I highly recommend them. We watched a wedding the next day at the beach with an ipod set up and it totally didn’t have the same feel. Our guests are still taking about how awesome it was. Everything was perfectly on time. Nekeisha was there through everything making sure it was all set up the way she wanted and she coordinated well with our minister, who we brought to perform the ceremony. The weather was overcast (exactly what I wanted because its better for pictures) and it started raining just as we were finishing up with our champagne toast. Luckily it only rained for probably 30 minutes but boy did it make for some AMAZING photos after. The guest really enjoyed the champagne toasts after the ceremony. I can’t begin to express how beautiful the beach location is! I loved loved it! I will add some photos.

We had the reception at the Blue Lagoon and again, it was incredible. Just a beautiful location. The meal was great, we chose option 4. I would have loved to pick a more Jamaican option but I thought this was more of a people pleaser. My family is big on meat and potatoes. My only complaint about the reception is how quickly it went by. We were having so much fun and all of a sudden the Dj told it was the last song. But because money talks in Jamaica, we tipped the staff for a few extra songs. We had an ipod set up but they had someone controlling it all for us! I’ve read reviews of it being noisy in the blue lagoon because of the reggae band in the infinity bar upstairs and luckily that wasn’t an issue for us BUT because of some of our tables being closer to the Italian restaurant side, it was a bit harder to hear the speeches for the people sitting near the back.

When I read a negative review of this resort, some of the complaints and or comments are things that would really not bother me all that much. Like people running out of booze in their room, or someone not liking the buffet…really? No resort will every please everyone, but this one came pretty damn close for my group. I think you need to roll with the punches when you do a destination wedding. Ya it rained on my wedding day, sucks we didn’t have enough time for all the pictures we wanted but we made up for it the next day with trash the dress. The staff can be on “Jamaican time” but just take it all in. The resort is beautiful, staff are super friendly and if you go into the experience with an open mind and you will have an amazing time.

I will post more professional pictures soon or you can keep checking with stephaniecouture.ca for my photographer’s photos she will be adding for her website soon. For now you can check out the album I made on my profile.