My August 3 wedding at Majestic Colonial w/ Photo Souvenir

[Melwhip]

This site was so incredibly helpful to me as I was planning my wedding, so I definitely wanted to share my review of my big day at Majestic Colonial on August 3, 2009. There were a total of 53 of us that made the trip for our wedding. This was our 2nd time at the Majestic - my husband actually proposed to me at the resort in december 2007; we fell in love with it, so we decided to make it our wedding location! Unfortunately, things did not go perfectly but we managed to make the best of it.

 

Upon arrival at Majestic on FRiday July 31, they did not have an upgrade available for us until Monday, the day of our wedding. We had booked the category of room just under oceanfront which is the room we got until Monday, when we were transferred to an oceanfront room - the view was stunning!!!!!!!!!!

 

We had our pre-wedding meeting with Sandra on Saturday at 11am. She was professional, sweet, and had all of my requests noted. The meeting lasted maybe 45 minutes. We reviewed the details - we had arranged for a beach wedding at 3pm Monday, with dinner to follow at the Steakhouse and a private reception to follow dinner at the Wet Bar with an open bar. We rented the sound system. I selected my flowers and cake flavor.

 

I had my hair done by the salon on my wedding day and it turned out AMAZING. I love, love, loved my hair so much - I could not have been happier. They had a bunch of photos to pick from and my hair looked even better than the photo that I picked. I had 6 bridesmaids and since one of them does hair well, they all did not have their hair done by the salon.

 

On the day of the ceremony my bridesmaids and I got ready together. The flowers arrived at our room about an hour before the wedding. I was very happy with those. My bouquet was made of white lilies and pink roses and was gorgeous; the cost was $75.40. I did not have a huge budget for flowers so my maid of honor carried 3 white lilies tied with ribbon ($25.00)and my 5 bridesmaids carried a single white lily with a ribbon tied around the stem ($8 each).

 

The beach ceremony set up was stunning and despite the hot weather there was a nice breeze to keep everyone cool. The problem with the ceremony is that the sound system was HORRIBLE. I had given them a CD to use and a backup IPOD for the songs. My groom later told me that the song they took their places to sounded so bad - it was very staticy and they could not get the volume right. The sound was okay for my bridesmaids and I. However, Sandra read our opening, vows, and closing and we could barely hear a word that she said. As it turns out, this was not due to the sound of the ocean and wind but due to an important wire in the system being terribly frayed. This was a huge disappointment as I worked hard to prepare a lovely script and it sucked not being able to hear it! We had the wedding videotaped by Photo Souvenir (more on them soon - they are absolutely AMAZING!!!) and it affected the video as well because it is very hard to hear her as well as ourselves saying the vows on the video.

 

After the ceremony we had a champagne toast and had group photos taken. Then our guests got a break since dinner was at 6:30pm and my husband and I took photos. Severine from Photo Souvenir did our photos and she was absolutely amazing. Out of all the decisions that we had to make regarding our island wedding, booking Photo Souvenir was the best. We booked her for 5 hours so she took some getting ready shots, ceremony shots, group shots, and me & hubby shots. Renaud, the videographer who was also amazing dropped the proofs off to us on Wednesday. We selected our favorite for the oil painting done of that shot that was included in our package. We met with her on Thursday and she gave us everything - DVD slideshow of shots, ceremony DVD (shot by Renaud, who was also amazing), and the painting which is incredible. We have nearly 500 photographs and they are stunning - they are true professionals and Severine is the sweetest. I cannot stop looking at the photos - they are so gorgeous!!! I'll post some of my favs below.

 

At 6:30 we all met at the steakhouse for dinner. The table was set up nicely (Due to a crazy busy schedule, I had not brought down extra decorations - If you want the table to look amazing, I would recommend bringing down some decorations so that it looks just how you want it). We selected chicken ceasar salad and surf & turf for the meal and it was delicious - way better than I expected!!! The "turf" were steak medallions that were very tender and good and the "surf" was lobster tails that were awesome!! Everyone raved about the meal, including the salad!!

 

It rained briefly during dinner. In the middle of dinner, Sandra came up to us (the first time I'd seen her since the ceremony) and told us that staff members were concerned that it could rain later due to clouds building up. She asked if we would mind moving our reception from the Wet Bar to the Sports Bar (which is indoors, next to the casino). She assured us that it would be a private reception still, we'd still have 2 bartenders for our open bar and thus it would be closed of to the public. So we were absolutely fine with the switch.

 

At about 8:30 our guests made their way to the sports bar. We were last so that we could be announced. When we approached the sportsbar the first people that we saw inside were strangers playing pool so that really upset us. Our parents came out and told us that there were all kinds of strangers in the sportsbar not with our wedding and even as we were talking just outside the security guard that stands in front of the sports bar and casino was opening the sportsbar door to let strangers inside. The sign on the sportsbar still said "open" and there was nothing to indicate that a private reception was supposed to be going on inside. Our parents had to play bouncers and let the strangers know that it was a private party to get them out and that took awhile. Finally we were announced (by a friend) and entered. Though our original location was supposed to be decorated with candles, lanterns, white tables, etc., there were absolutely no decorations inside the sports bar. My engraveable guest frame that I had given to Sandra at the pre-meeting and requested to be set up at the reception was thrown on a corner table still in its bubble wrap. The engraveable pen was missing and I found it underneath a chair by the table!! We then had our first dance but the sound system kept screwing up and would stop in the middle of the song, be very staticy, and would skip. So then we had to stop the music for about 45 minutes while they attempted to fix the sound system. We filled in the time with speeches and just talking to everyone, but we were upset about this. My husband, his mom and my dad went to the front desk to find Sandra but they would not do anything about it and told them that Sandra had left. After Sandra asked us about the switch during dinner, we never saw her again that night. FINALLY they fixed the sound system to the point that it was at least usable and we were able to get music and dancing underway but still strangers were coming into the sportsbar. Finally one of the bartenders locked the door - that was about an hour and a half to two hours after we first moved into the sportsbar.

 

When it came time to cut the cake (which was just plain white - not decorated with any colors or anything) I asked the bartenders to help cut and serve it and they refused - they said they do not do that. So my husband's parents cut it and his aunts served it. I was disappointed that they could not help with that and our guests had to!?! The cake did taste delicious - it was chocolate and banana flavored.

 

Due to all of the problems with the sound system they did allow us to stay until midnight rather than 11 when it was supposed to be over.

 

We still managed to have an amazing time, but I was still disappointed that things did not go smoothly at all. There were 3 weddings that day so I guess Sandra was very busy, but especially due to the location being switched I really think she should have made an extra effort to check on us and to make sure that the sports bar was decorated for a private reception and that security knew what was going on.

 

The following day, Sandra had told us that a romantic breakfast would be served to us in our room at 10AM (part of the wedding package), but that never showed up. At 10:30am I called guest services and they said they had no record of it. Wednesday night we were supposed to get our romantic private dinner (included in the package) and when we showed up - same thing. We went to the front desk very upset and finally they agreed to give us a dinner on the beach on Thursday.

 

On Thursday we met with sandra to voice our complaints regarding what was supposed to be our private reception. She agreed that what happened was horrible and we were refunded our money for the cost of the open bar, rental of the reception space, and sound system which came out to be nearly $2,000. We were glad about the refund, but of course we'd have rather just paid for it and actually had a private reception. We were also disappointed that we had to waste time out of our honeymoon on these meetings after the wedding to voice our concerns.

 

All in all, I think our guests had a wonderful time and really liked the resort. I have read so many fabulous wedding reviews about the resort and so I think what happened to us was maybe a weird fluke?! They must have fixed the sound system because a few days after our wedding we saw another wedding on the beach and the sound was great.

 

If anyone has any questions, please let me know and I'll do my best to answer!!

Melanie

[Melwhip]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://images2d.snapfish.com/2323232...A6%3B347nu0mrj

[sunstarsmoon]

great review and pictures

[Outdoor_girl1010]

You look amazing. I'm sorry you had such a hard time with your resort. Did you do a TTD with Photo Souvenir? I have them book for March and I am in love with your pictures.

 

Jennifer

[Melwhip]

Thank you so much!!! Severine was amazing...I am usually horribly unphotogenic, so she works miracles!! :-) We did not to a TTD due to budget, but luckily we did book her for 5 hours on wedding day, and with the wedding day schedule hubby and I got about 2 hours with her alone so we got some awesome shots nonetheless!

[Jefiner]

Thank you for the review.. these are so helpful to me. I will be getting married there next July. I am glad to hear all in all it went really well. Your pictures are stunning!! Congratulations.

[Love3]

your pics are so pretty

[ali0284]

Thanks for the review!! So sorry you had to deal with all of that on your wedding day and honeymoon. Your pics came out great

[karenk77]

OMG! Congrats! I was actually there the week that you had your wedding for a site visit and we loved the place so much we booked it too. Your pics are amazing..im sorry you had to deal with all that crap.

So you would recommend the hair ppl there? was it at elegance or colonial that you used the spa?

And my last question sorry to be a pain..is the one thats driving me the craziest right now, did you use a travel agent for your guests or had everyone book it themselves?

[ali0284]

Where is Photo Souvenir out of? Do they have a website?