Moon Dance Cliffs

[Mallory57]

LBCS--I can't wait to see pics/hear about your wedding!! The DJ (can't wait to hear about him too, hope he was good!) posted a couple pics on his facebook page from your wedding day...everything looks beautiful! Who did your cake, btw? I haven't found anyone reasonably priced that actually made a pretty cake...I want to go with whoever you used!! Hope your trip/honeymoon is going great, I'm sure you'll be pleased to find a list of questions to come back to :-) lol

[lbcs]

Hello ladies!

 

We are back from Jamaica and thrilled about our entire wedding weekend. I will try to give as much info as I can, but feel free to ask any questions that you may have.

 

Arrival: We were greeted with rum punch, happy faces, and Kerry was there to meet us right away which was so nice. Check in was seamless - we didn't have to do a thing - the concierge Richard was wonderful and knew everyone by name and made sure we were happy during our entire stay.

 

The grounds: WOW! The minute we walked into Moon Dance Cliffs, we were blown away. The pictures surely do not do the place justice. The villas, the rooms, the pool, everything is so gorgeous! Brides - stay in the Poinciana villa - it is very nice, has the best views and the most privacy.

 

Welcome night: You definitely want to organize a welcome party to get your weekend started. We left everything in the resort's hands and they did such a wonderful job. EVERYONE had a blast. We just had rum punch all night and they had an MC (Rachelle) who organized drinking games, dancing, great music/sound system, and the resort went well out of their way to keep us entertained.

 

Rehearsal dinner: IF you are doing your rehearsal dinner outside of the resort, I have a few recommendations. We had ours at Ivans at the Catch a Falling Star resort and the food was wonderful and it was such a cute and intimate environment. The staff bent over backwards to make sure everything was the way we had described. They even hooked up a microphone for our toasts. It was just great.

I will also say that we were able to eat at the Rockhouse and Pushcart and I think either of these would be very nice for a rehearsal dinner.

 

Wedding: Kerry is absolutely wonderful. She is very organized, will plan meetings with you in the days before the wedding to make sure she knows how you envision your day. Even the things that I brought to do myself (fans, sand frame, tulle for the chairs, wish box) - she took it all from me on day one and prepared it for me and set it out for the wedding day. I didn't have to do a thing! They even distributed all of the OOT bags for us to our guests rooms. Kerry was present for our entire stay and always available so it became very clear to us why she may take a little while to respond to emails, it is because she is there for you for every minute of your wedding weekend!!

 

Spa: Make sure Ross does your hair/make up, he is so good! I have never been so happy with my hair before and all of my bridesmaids were as well. One thing to be careful of is the time. I probably would not have had him do all of my bridesmaids and myself and mother if I knew he was going to be doing all of them himself - he needs more assistants to get that many people done on the wedding day. But he does a GREAT job.

 

DJ: We used Kevan Stewart ([email protected], JA Wedding DJ - Jamaican Dj, Jamaica Wedding Music, Weddings, Parties, Jamaica Wedding Photographer, Music Equipment Rental). I would definitely recommend him. He has a really nice sound system, it sounded awesome for the music we chose for the ceremony. Also, we paid him to stay thru 10pm and then planned to plug in our ipod after that, and he stayed until midnight and kept playing!! His music choices were perfect, he really kept everyone on the dance floor all night and made fun announcements about us and was really interactive.

 

Cake: We used Miss Myries ([email protected]) and were so happy. Not only was our cake the cutest wedding cake I have ever seen, but everyone was raving about how good it was too. We got chocolate cake with chocolate filling and vanilla rum frosting. So good! I recommend giving her a picture if you have something in mind. We did that, I found a photo on the knot website and the one she made really looked EXACTLY like it!

 

Flowers: We used Rosemarie Williams with Floral Fantasy (Floral Fantasy; Flowers for All Occasions from Negril, Jamaica, [email protected]). We went pretty simple - red and pink roses for myself and the bridesmaids. We also got table centerpieces for the reception and wrist corsages for the female family members. Everything was very reasonably priced and beautiful.

 

Photography: We brought a photographer from home and I would not recommend this. We were really looking forward to the trash the dress day and it was a big mess just because she didn't know the area at all. We were driving around in the heat trying to find places and it was a long and exhausting day. I know it would have gone smoothly if we had used someone local. The people I talked to before we decided to bring someone were Brian Nejedly and Stacy Clarke ([email protected]).

 

Videography: We used Roxroy. Not sure I can comment yet, as I did not see him very much on the wedding day and I won't have the video for a month. Let me know in a month if you are considering using him and I can tell you how the video turned out.

 

Overall Moon Dance Cliffs was an absolute dream wedding venue. The people were wonderful, the grounds were beautiful and our guests are telling us it was the best wedding they have ever seen!

 

Let me know if I can help in any other way!

 

I don't know if this will let me post pictures, but if I figure it out I will do that soon.

 

Lauren

[Meitra]

Yay Lauren!!! I'm so glad your wedding weekend was perfect! And thank you for posting your review so quickly, it really helps the rest of us out I am definately going to book Kevan the DJ now!

[Mallory57]

Lauren---glad everything went so well!! I'm glad I know you used Miss Myrie...the pics she sent me off cakes to be honest did not look very good at all (lopsided, melty-looking) but yours is so cute!! If you don't mind me asking, how much did she charge you and how much did it feed? She quoted me like $400 for a plain white cake with no decoration, so I want to see what she actually charged you. Thanks and let us know when you get your pics...I would LOVE to see them!! CONGRATS!

[gbyrd]

Lauren

 

Thank you so much for the review. I just booked Kevan who was hundreds less than DJ sound illusion. I also booked Roxroy, please let me know how the video was. I am glad your wedding weekend was a blast.

 

less than 4 months until our big day!

[lbcs]

Miss Myries told us $7 per person and I think she added $1 each since we chose the rum frosting. I agree that her pictures were not too great but I could not have been happier with our cake! So definitely find a picture for her to go from. I will say that her cakes are very large so you may want to order for fewer people than you actually need. Our entire wedding group was eating the cake for the next 2 days. But it was kind of fun to have left overs!

 

Ok I tried to attach some pics in a document - first one is of cake, one you can see gazebo, one dance floor, and the signature drink I chose to match the dresses . If this works, I will attach more. I don't have the professional ones yet, so these are just ones our friends have emailed.

 

Let me know if you guys have any other questions.

 

I will let you know about the video when I receive it.

 

Lauren

 

 

forum pics.doc

[Mallory57]

Lauren--everything looks SO good!! You must be thrilled!! A few questions from the pics you posted:

 

-Did you bring your own tulle with you to decorate? (I see it on your knife, cake table, marriage cert table, sand ceremony table etc.) Did they set this all up for you? Same with the white fabric on the gazebo--did you bring it with you?

-The signature drink=awesome! I've seen this in other MDC bride's pics, so I'm assuming they do this for all weddings for a post-vow toast?

-Was the dance floor open and big enough for everyone? Did you bring the lanterns that are hanging?

 

You must be soo excited to get your pro pics back since the ones your guests took are so awesome! Sorry to bombard you with questions but I'm so glad I have this forum to help with my planning

[lbcs]

Mallory, Don't apologize for a second! I pretty much planned every detail of our wedding with the help of this forum, so I am more than happy to contribute!

 

We did bring a lot of stuff with us for the wedding day. I actually had a lot of the stuff that I ordered online sent to my bridesmaids to bring. Because with decorations and all of the OOT bag stuff, it ends up being too much to bring yourself.

 

So for the wedding/decorations - you provide all of the decorations yourself - we brought the tulle, fans with personalized ribbon, bubbles, a wish box with cards for people to write on, sand ceremony frame and the sand, personalized napkins, confetti, red lanterns, cake topper. Kerry just took all of this stuff from me right away when we arrived and had it set up on the wedding day, which was SO NICE! They even put the tulle on the chairs.

 

They decorated the gazebo with flowers and the white drapes - they charged $50 for this.

 

The signature drink is such a great touch. I picked a drink to match the our color (red). They are happy to make any drink that you want. I would recommend not having rum in your signature drink b/c you will be drinking tons of rum already on this trip!

 

Here is what we chose and it was SO good!

Pomegranate Margarita Recipe : Danny Boome : Food Network

 

* Lime wedge, plus more for garnish

* Salt

* Ice

* 4 ounces white tequila

* 2 ounces Triple Sec

* 1/2 cup pomegranate juice

* 1 lime, juiced (optional)

* Club soda

 

The dance floor was plenty big for us. We had 40 guests. The nice thing is that the bar is right on the dance floor so your guests don't have to leave to get a drink. You can pretty much keep dancing while they make your drink

 

Feel free to ask anything else!

 

Lauren

[Dreamstar224]

Congrats Lauren! Sounds like you had a blast and that everything went even better than planned. I wish i could see your pics (but i'm pretty technologically illiterate and cannot figure out how to open them since the site will not let me) but it sounds like it was gorgeous.

 

You've made me even more excited about mine :-)

[Mallory57]

Thanks so much for the info! I'd LOVE to see more pics (esp. one of how they decorated the whole gazebo for $50) once you get them back if you'd be willing to share. The few that I've seen already have made me so excited for my own wedding...waiting so long is going to be torture! lol