Krysta Lee Ann's Happily Ever After Planning Thread

[bride6262]

Well ladies finally it’s my turn!! I am finally a MRS!!!! I could not have done all of this without all of you!! A special shout out goes out to my Canadian girls out there!!! Thank you all for being so generous and helpful and supportive and amazing!!! Thank you for listening to me rant and rave when things went bad and for making me put things into perspective! You ladies believed no matter what that everything would work out for the best and it did!!! So thank you!!!

 

The Engagement

Justin and I meet back in April of 2004 while working at Pointe West Golf & Country Club. He was a Chef and I worked as a bartender and waitress. Our relationship started out as one of friendship which grew into something so much more. Justin and I have had quite some adventures together. We have traveled to the Dominican Republic, moved to Bermuda for 13 months, and backpacked through Europe visiting France, Monaco, Spain, Italy, Greece, Germany and Holland. We have also traveled to Mexico, Jamaica and NYC. Obviously our love of traveling and vacation has been something that we both enjoy doing and try to do as often as we can! It is because of this love that we have decided on a destination wedding. 

 

 

It was real sweet how he proposed. We went out for lunch in downtown Kingston on the waterfront to Wooden Head Gourmet Pizzeria. We shared two pizzas and had a bottle of wine. We then decided to walk around the waterfront. It was pretty busy and once we had walked the length of it Justin said that we should go walk some more. So we then drove to another area of the waterfront. I missed the entrance and was turning into what I thought was another laneway but turns out it was a walking path!! I had to take my car over a curb to park it! We continued walking and then sat down on a bench overlooking the water and were just talking when he said he had to ask me a question. So I said yea what’s up? And then he got on one knee and pulled the ring out and asked me if I would marry him!! All I could say was "are you for real?" and then of course I started to cry and then said yes!! He said was going to plan a cruise around the 1000 islands or something but he said I am like MacGyver and figure everything out so he had to try to catch me off guard! And it worked!! I am so incredibly happy!!! The ring is perfect everything was just perfect!!!

[bride6262]

The Search

 

Okay, so all we knew in the beginning was that we wanted somewhere warm with a beach!  After all we both had a love of traveling and vacations!! My family has always loved Jamaica (my sister actually got married there last year!) and since it was a country that made it easy to get married in and the marriage was considered legal in Canada. We had looked at a few different resorts around Jamaica but my gf had been married at the Riu Ocho Rios a few years ago and my FI and I had a marvelous time there. I had always had great experiences while staying at a Riu’s around the Caribbean so we figured since we had seen a wedding there and loved Riu’s we decided to alleviate some stress we would also get married at the Riu Ocho Rios!

 

Resort

The Riu Ocho Rios is a beautiful resort!!! The beach is huge!! There are two different gigantic pools, the entertainment staff is out of this world and the food is delicious!! We had a great time while there even though there were a few hiccups along the way.

 

Well we had booked as a group and some of us upgraded to ocean view. When we got there we were informed that ocean view meant only a partial view of the ocean. Well our view was of a tree....just a tree. When I complained they said that it is a partial view and if I go to the corner of my balcony and lean around the tree I could see the ocean!!! WTF!! So after asking for a supervisor and then a manager and explaining we have brought 32 ppl I finally got upgraded to an ocean front room! They didn’t seem to care at all that we were a bride and groom. They did nothing to make us feel special at all!! I later found out they automatically upgraded our photog to a Jr suite for no reason. They didn’t even ask!! WTH!

 

Other issues we encountered were that booking restaurants was impossible! I went down Sunday morning (we arrived Saturday) and the week was already booked solid unless we wanted to eat at 9 pm and no chance of a big group getting in! When we were able to convince them to book the 16 girls into a restaurant we showed up for our meal and they had moved our reservation to 8pm and decided not to tell us!!! When I asked why they would do that they said they weren’t sure if we would all show up!! It blows my mind! So I was pissed!! They didn’t seem to care at all.  The saving grace is that the buffet food is really good so eating there every night was fine.

[bride6262]

Travel Agent

Well now this is a touchy subject..... At first I looked around and found Joan from marlin travel in Kingston. I felt that she would do a great job as she was the manager and her daughter had been married in a destination wedding a year before.... boy was I wrong! She seemed very personable to me but I later heard from others that she was rude, easily confused, messed up multiple payments (over charging ppl $500, charging some people 3x, putting peoples credit card #s under other ppls names, calling ppl by the wrong name and being rude when people tried to contact her!!) needless to say she has been a great cause of stress!! Had I known it would be that big of a headache I would not have gone with a TA and would have done it by myself. We are still fighting for things to be right. Ughhhhhhhh

 

We chose to go thru sunwing. Now for those of you ladies on the cdn bride forum you probably have heard me complain already so I apologize! We had booked with sunwing and were happy for them to tell us there was a onetime price drop included in our package (this is what convinced a lot of ppl to book ahead of time) but when I kept bringing it up to my TA she kept telling me to wait till closer. Well closer came and the price drop $150!!! So I automatically contacted my TA who contacted sunwing who then said we were not eligible because it had to be more than 60 days from departure! WTH!!!! So my TA tells me this and just pushes it off. I was peeved!!! So I said no that isn’t acceptable. So through lots of arguing and demanding something be done sunwing gave us all $50 back per person and prearranged seating. It’s not much but it’s something.

[bride6262]

Colors

Well being that I have a love of Tiffany’s and that we were getting married in the tropics a really nice blue was what we were looking for. After discovering David’s bridal we settled on Malibu blue! The colour was perfect for Jamaica and my girls got so many compliments at the resort!! The dresses we decided to go with were actually the same ones we used for my sister’s wedding the year before (but hers were in a dark purple). We chose them because they are super cute and easy to wear again!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wedding Website

 I used the knot.com for the wedding website. I loved it but found a lot of ppl never looked at it or used it to keep themselves updated. Oh well, I had fun making it!

 

 

 

 

 

The Photographer

So we had a local Kingston photog do our engagement pics and we loved them! He had planned to do our DW but unfortunately became very sick and with 3 months to go until the wedding he had to cancel on us! So I was frantic!! I contacted everyone and of course those I wanted we booked or waaay over price. That is when I came across Jill Wilhelm from Windsor ON. All I can say is O.M.G!!! She was amazing!! Her pricing was fabulous and she made us feel instantly comfortable! I would recommend her to everyone!!!!! I can’t wait to see our pictures!!!

[bride6262]

The DW Invites

I was torn between save the dates and formal invitations....when do I send what out and is there a point to formal invites if everyone is already booked??!! So I decided to forgo the save the dates and go for the formal invites right off the bat. So I loved the look of the boarding pass invites so I stole a little bit from this bride and a little bit from that bride and voila! I could not have come up with this on my own so thank you to all the DW ladies who helped me out!! I am the least artsy one out of my family and my mom was scared when I told her I was doing these myself but when she received it she LOVED them and no one could believe I did it all by myself!!

[bride6262]

Bridal party – will you be my BM?

I wanted to do something special for my BMs so I did up this postcard on vista print and hit up the lindt store and wrapped up a chocolate bar for them and wrote “a little something to sweeten the dealâ€.

 

i dont know why this pic wont load properly but you get the idea.... i used the lg postcard from vista print to make these:

 

[bride6262]

The Dress

I had been looking on the David’s bridal website and found a dress on there I just fell in love with. When I went to try on dresses in Toronto they of course only had it in a size 6 (which I am not) so I tried on all kinds of dresses and didn’t feel anything for any of them. They all looked nice but none were the one. My sisters attempted to squeeze my big butt into the size 6....man oh man... that was a mess! Hahaha we ended up in hysterics in the dressing room with everyone wondering what the heck was going on inside. So needless to say I was not prepared to buy a dress without being able to try that one on. So a week later I called and then had gotten a size 16 in....of course too big but at least I could get into it....so my gf and I road tripped for an hour to get there and try it on.... I knew I would love it and I did!! Although it was waaay too big I could tell it would be perfect. I didn’t end up ordering from the TO store (their customer service sucked!) but instead went to Port Huron while home visiting family in Sarnia and saved over $100! Also because I bought my dress there my sisters saved $20 on their dresses!!

[bride6262]

The Accessories

So I wanted to keep it simple for jewelry as I don’t normally wear any!

[bride6262]

The Groom’s Look

 We had gone on the search for an outfit in March but there wasn’t much out there for tan suits. We went into the store Stars and he fell in love with this great Sean John Tan suit....which was on sale for $200!!! He just wore black sandals he had already purchased and the same white dress shirt the gm’s had purchased.

[bride6262]

The Bridal Party Outfits

The girls wore a short above the knee dress with pockets in Malibu blue. I purchased starfish earrings and necklaces for all of them to wear as well. I had also made barefoot jewelry for the girls to wear during the ceremony as we were all going barefoot. We decided to forego the flowers and save the money. Instead the girls carried a sun parasol which they all loved and work perfectly for the shower weather in Jamaica!