Hey Guys!!

I've been home for a couple weeks now and life has been hectic. I haven't had time to catch up on all of the thread i've missed but i have read a couple pages and i thought i'd help answer this question about the gazebo....

We rented the gazebo from 845-1045, minus the dj and the bartender. We used an ipod and THANK GOD my sister's boyfriend brought a docking station, because Chandlyn informed me once we got there that they did not have an ipod set up for us unless we used the dj. THIS WAS NOT WHAT HER EMAIL SAID TWO MONTHS EARLIER. But like i said, we luckily had a docking station with us anyways and the sound was AMAZING!  It was not windy at night and the music was definitely loud enough and sounded great. i am SO GLAD i didn't waste my money on the dj- its not worth it. But let me back up a little bit...

We ate at the Grill and the food was great. we finished dinner and got down to the gazebo and waited for the lights to turn on. And waited.And waited. after about 15 mins I went myself to the lobby to ask them to turn the lights on. Then i went back to the beach and waited some more. Someone from the hotel staff finally decided to turn the lights at almost 9:30. We were livid. 2 hours is not a lot of time as it is-especially when you're paying hundreds of dollars. Once the lights were turned on we had an awesome dance party. I assumed they would compensate us for the lost time. Since we didn't have the dj i couldn't see why we couldn't have the 45mins that we were shorted. But nope. At exactly 10:45 the lights were turned off. Thankfully, my sister's boyfriend came through for us again. He had seen how the guy had turned on the lights from the electical box behind the gazebo at the start,so Mike went back there and flipped the switch. We danced for a couple hours longer and no one even noticed :)

Before the ceremony i had been worried about not having the bartender at the gazebo. We really couldn't afford the extra cost, but i didn't really want ppl wandering off to the pool bar all night long. So the night of the ceremony (actually, while we were waiting for the gazebo lights to come on) we sweet talked the pool bar servers and they were going to let us take a couple trays of drinks down to the gazebo. One of the girls had been eye-ing up my mom's hat for the past couple days and my mom on a whim gave it to her right there. She was so excited about it that they ended up mixing up a couple huge jugs of rum punch, and another kind of punch and set us up with cups and ice and every thing. So in the end we had our own self-service bar in the gazebo after all!

All in all, our stay was incredible. The resort is beautiful and i found the rooms and the pool to be very clean. The restaurants and buffet are great. I definitely suggest having breakfast in the smaller buffet. Its never as busy as the big one. When u get your reso for the japanese restaurant ask for a Teppanyaki reservation. It was hands down our favorite. Our least favorite restaurant was the Dolce Vita. My maid of honor and i got our hair done at the salon and the girls there are awesome. Im a hair stylist myself, and they did a way better job than i could have down. My hair was beautiful.

Anyhow, thats all i can think of for now......oh! about the birth certificates- we had sent her un-notarized short form copies a couple months prior. I brought the actual documents with us to show Chandlyn ( un-notarized as well obviously) and she didn't even glance at them. Said it wasn't a big deal. So all that stress about not having the right documents was completely unnecessary. That brings me to another thought. I expected to see Chandlyn again after the wedding day, just to tie everything up. She didn't contact us again at all. We were there for 4 days after the wedding and i finally went looking for her just before we left. Good thing i did, because she wasn't even sure if she had our address to send us our marriage certificate. So, to sum things up- our stay and the wedding was amazing. I would for sure go back to the resort. There were a few small glitches which were extremely annoying at the time, but they worked themselves out.

I'll try to check this site more often if you all have any questions...And i'll see if i can load up some pictures as soon as i get them back from my photographer :)

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