Any Gran Bahia Principe Runaway Bay Brides out there?

[welshmother]

Hello ladies, not long to go now, we fly on the 15th and get married on the 18th.  Quick question:  Chandlyn has copies of our birth certificates but do we need to bring the originals with us too? x

[ChristyLK]

Hi Ladies,

 

I am just beginning to work with Chandlyn for my March 5th 2012 wedding.  I'm from Fort McMurray Alberta Canada.  We will be flying out from Edmonton on March 2nd.  We booked our wedding package directly through our travel agent.  She booked us with Transat.  Our 1500 dollar package includes the dj, flowers etc.  Has anyone else booked through Transat? Was it easy to deal with the wedding planner when not booking straight with the resort?

 

 

 

[FleetMac bride]

Wow Mrs. Johnson

 

your pics are great and sounds like you had a blast. I am so excited 12 days till I'm there and 15 days till I say I do

[chrisdior]

the water shot is awesome!! you looked gorgeous congratulations

[futurejohnson]

Thanks everybody!!! 

 

BusyBee123 - Haha yes It's Mrs. Johnson now!  But I guess not officially yet, since I'm waiting for the marriage certificate to change my name.  Donnalee said it'd take 2 months to get my certificate!

 

 

Originally Posted by BusyBee123 

FutureJohnson ... or is it Mrs Johnson now?!

 

Thanks so much for such a detailed review!  Those of us with weddings coming up shortly really appreciate of all of the details!  I'm glad to know that things went well with Donnalee.  I've been primarily working with her as well and was hoping that she would be professional and helpful come the big day!  Now I'm reassured!  With only 67 days to go, that's one less stress!  

 

That disappointing to hear about the that they didn't stop the afternoon entertainment, but I guess its not too surprising. I was hoping that seeing as the gazebo is quite far out from the rest of the resort, that we wouldn't hear it as much!  Guess that's not the case! We're at 3pm as well, so I will anticipate that and not be surprised!  Glad to hear the steel band was great!  I can't imagine getting married in Jamaica without the steel drums and am so looking forward to them! At least they'll drown out the afternoon entertainment!  

 

Not getting the rest of your cake seems to be a trend.  To try to avoid this we bought cake boxes for all of our guests (hoping it might be a snack post dancing in the gazebo!) so hopefully they will pack it up!  Especially with us being a small group, I would hate for it all to go to waste!  

 

Congrats on being a Mrs!  Thanks again for the review!  You looked stunning on your wedding day and your bouquet is beautiful!  The colours definitely stand out against the background!  Can't wait to see more of your pics!  

 

 

 

[acw271011]

Congrats on being a new Mrs!!  glad to hear everything went well and I agree that there was no reason to sweat the small stuff. it's just too beautiful of a place to get stressed over things.

 

your pics are stunning and the water shot is incredible!!

 

Originally Posted by futurejohnson 

Hi everybody!!

 

I’m finally married and back from the GBPJ!!  I had the best week of my life so far, and for all you ladies who will be getting married at GBPJ, you made a great choice!

 

I’ve received a lot of helpful information from BDW over the past year, so I will do my best in providing a thorough review in the hopes of “paying it forward”.  So this might be kinda long lol. 

 

 

 

 

 

[missmeliss]

Congrats!!!

Wow, I have to say your pictures turned out amazing. I love your dress, it was so flattering and yes I agree your picture in the pool is incredible.  Thanks for the review!

Best!

Originally Posted by futurejohnson 

Hi everybody!!

 

I’m finally married and back from the GBPJ!!  I had the best week of my life so far, and for all you ladies who will be getting married at GBPJ, you made a great choice!

 

I’ve received a lot of helpful information from BDW over the past year, so I will do my best in providing a thorough review in the hopes of “paying it forwardâ€.  So this might be kinda long lol. 

 

Wedding Planner: We dealt with Donnalee for the last few months leading up to the wedding, and we also met with Donnalee the day we arrived at the resort.  Throughout my entire experience with Donnalee, I never had any issues with her being rude, or unhelpful, etc.  On the contrary…she was always very nice and polite, and always had a smile on her face.  So it’s unfortunate that other brides have had issues with her….she was great with us!  There were 2 weddings on my wedding day, so I think Chandlyn was more involved with the other wedding, whereas Donnalee was more involved with mine.  Donnalee was very helpful and ensured that all of my requests were met.  Since I brought my own flowers, she gave me a centrepiece for the head table free-of-charge.  I didn’t bring any decorations for the gazebo or any chair ties, but since my colour was bright pink, the resort had pink tulle on hand and Donnalee ensured that the gazebo and chairs were decorated nicely.  (We originally weren’t planning on doing chair ties, but I’m glad we opted to pay the $2.50/tie because it really made a difference in the pictures.)  Also, we had 4 surprise guests on our wedding day, so even though we hadn’t accounted for them, Donnalee made sure that they were included in our wedding dinner.  (Sidenote: I don’t think she even charged me for the 4 extra people afterwards!)

 

Weather: If you’ve been to the resort, you’ll know that it rains for about 10 minutes every afternoon….no biggy, the grey clouds come and go.  Plus it’s super windy out by the gazebo, so it keeps you cool.  However, 2 hours before our ceremony, it started thunderstorming and it proceeded to downpour for about 1.5 hours.  Totally freaked me out, because I really didn’t want to get married in the lobby.  Chandlyn called me 45 minutes before the ceremony and asked whether to move the wedding to the lobby, so I begged her to wait another half hour because I finally started to see some blue sky in the distance.  Thank goodness I waited, because 10 minutes later, the rain stopped.  Chandlyn and Donnalee quickly set up the chairs by the gazebo, and everything turned out perfect.  Only downside is that the wind stopped dead after the storm, so it was extremely hot and humid.  I stuffed a handkerchief into my wedding bouquet and used it as a sweat napkin throughout the ceremony LOL. 

 

Hair Salon: Loved my hair!  I didn’t even have to show the salon a picture, but they did a great job and the hairspray/freezing spray they used was so crazy heavy-duty, nothing moved all day/night.  

 

Ceremony: We wrote our ceremony script ahead of time, so I sent it down to Donnalee a few days before we left and she gave a copy to the minister.  The minister was awesome and everything turned out perfect, except for a couple things:  1) This is pretty ridiculous, but they don’t stop the poolside entertainment during your ceremony, so throughout my ceremony, I could hear club beats and guys on microphones coming from the pool.  I tuned it out and was off in my own little world, but I know a lot of my guests complained about this afterwards.  I wrote this in my comment card after the wedding, but I’m not sure if this will change in the future. 2) Some stupid kid was snorkeling by the wedding gazebo and at one point, started yelling “SHARK!  SHARK!† Again, I was off in my own little world and didn’t even notice, but a bunch of guests told me afterwards.  Other than those 2 issues, everything was great.  Our ceremony was at 3:15pm (originally 3pm, but there was a slight rain delay), which gave us enough time to take pictures before the sun started setting.  (Sun started setting around 5:15-5:30pm….it was pretty dark by 6pm.) 

 

Cake: Delicious!  We added an extra layer for $40, and we’re so glad we did since we had 65 guests with us.  We chose vanilla, vanilla raspberry, and coconut.  Everybody told us it was delicious.  Downside: We didn’t get any of the extra cake afterwards, which we didn’t care too much about, but it would have been nice to try the other flavours.  I spoke with Donnalee about this a few days later and she felt really bad…she had instructed them to leave it in my fridge after the wedding, but they never did.  Oh well.  If you care about saving the cake, I suggest you bring your own container and have somebody scoop it up for you. 

 

Steel Drum Band: They were awesome!  They played for the entire hour after our ceremony and really added to the Caribbean setting.

 

Dinner: We had our dinner at the Dolce Vita and the menu we chose was: caesar salad with chicken, roasted thyme and squash soup, stuffed chicken and risotto, and tiramisu.  Not many people liked the Caesar salad, so I’d probably avoid ordering that.  Everybody loved the soup, and the chicken was also really good!  Our dinner was supposed to be at the Garden Grill, but when we got to the resort, we found out that the Garden Grill was under renovation so both weddings were held in the Dolce Vita.  Since our wedding group was larger, we were in the main room while the other bride was in the circular room off to the side.  It was a little awkward having 2 weddings in the same restaurant and I felt really bad because our wedding group was a little loud.  We originally planned to do all our wedding speeches at the gazebo after dinner, but the best man brought a bunch of Bristol boards with him with pictures on them, so he asked to do his speech at the restaurant since the lighting was better.  So it was a little awkward because the other wedding probably heard his entire speech, and all the hootin’ and hollerin’ from the pictures. 

 

Reception at the Gazebo:  AMAZING!!!  So so glad we booked out the gazebo and hired the DJ.  We didn’t pay for the bar set-up because I thought it was ridiculous to pay $1,800 for liquor at an all-inclusive resort.  So instead, we just asked Donnalee for a table to be set up in the gazebo with ice and cups, and our groomsmen left the dinner 15 minutes early to set everything up.  We brought our own inflatable palm tree cooler (http://amazingpartystore.com/storefront/productdetail.aspx?idproduct=33301&idcat=2597) which we filled with ice and bottles of pop/mix.  For the liquor, the gift shop sells 26ers for $20USD, which is pretty expensive considering you’re in Jamaica, so one of our groomsmen spoke with a bartender the day before and managed to get 1L bottles of vodka, rum, and whisky for $10/bottle!  Ended up spending $60 on 6 litres of liquor, another $25 on bottles of pop/mix (which we just got at the gift shop), and we had around 60 cans of Caribe beer, which the groomsmen got from the maids since they stocked the mini fridges daily with Caribe.  I think they left her $5USD and a note asking for their fridge to be stocked with beer instead of pop/water.  Worked like a charm!  As for the music, we had an entire playlist prepared on our iPod, but the DJ was awesome so we never even used our playlist!  He played all the newer top 40 hits, and a few requests that we had on our iPod.  The gazebo rental was supposed to be from 8:45-10:45, but our groomsmen kept slipping him money for more music, and we ended up having the gazebo until almost 11:30-11:45!  Everybody had a blast at the gazebo and kept saying it was their favourite part of the night. 

 

All in all, even though there were a few minor hiccups, we had an amazing wedding and our guests kept telling us it was the most beautiful wedding they’d ever been to.  Yes, there were a few things that could have been changed, and I could have complained about a lot of stuff…. (ie. not getting the leftover cake, not getting a room upgrade, or robe/slippers, or a welcome fruit basket, having 2 weddings in the same restaurant, etc), but in the end, that stuff didn’t matter to us.  The resort was beautiful and everything turned out perfect! 

 

Just one tip: Bring Tide-to-Go and make sure you have it handy on the wedding day!!!  I got a bleeding nose when I was back in my room changing for the gazebo reception, and two long streaks of blood fell down my wedding dress.  I quickly took the dress off and used Tide-to-Go, and not one trace of blood is left on my dress.  Amazing!!!  Plus one of my groomsmen spilled red wine on his linen pants, and again, Tide-to-Go erased everything!! 

 

Anyways, I’ll attach a few pictures that our photographer gave to us….we flew him down with us and he took over 6,000 pictures during the entire week.  He edited around 200 while in Jamaica and gave them to us as a teaser, and will be giving us another 1,000 pictures shortly. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[JayKay]

Welcome! 

 

We too are flying Transat on January 9th from Calgary.  We had the option of going with the wedding packages provided by transat but we decided to go with the wedding packages provided by the resort.  Our travel agent suggested going with the wedding packages from the resort as they are more resort specific then transat packages (you can use those packages anywhere Transat goes to).  She also said that from personal experience its just easier to deal with the resort directly.  I am doing all my wedding planning with the wedding planners from the resort and my travel agent is dealing strictly with the travel part of it rather then having to do both. We also chose to go with the resort packages as they offer a free one.  I guess its personal preference.
 

Originally Posted by ChristyLK 

Hi Ladies,

 

I am just beginning to work with Chandlyn for my March 5th 2012 wedding.  I'm from Fort McMurray Alberta Canada.  We will be flying out from Edmonton on March 2nd.  We booked our wedding package directly through our travel agent.  She booked us with Transat.  Our 1500 dollar package includes the dj, flowers etc.  Has anyone else booked through Transat? Was it easy to deal with the wedding planner when not booking straight with the resort?

 

 

 

 

[Tekeya Thompson]

I just got our marriage certificate 2 weeks ago, so yes it will take just about 2 months. Come to find out AFTER we left Jamaica, gran Bahia is supposed to give you a copy of the marriage certificate (not license) but the signed documents that is sent to the courthouse for the license. After asking chandlyn about it, they forgot to give to me and sent 1 month after wedding. I was able to be added to insurance, change name on bank acct and small stuff like that.

Thanks everybody!!! 

 

BusyBee123 - Haha yes It's Mrs. Johnson now!  But I guess not officially yet, since I'm waiting for the marriage certificate to change my name.  Donnalee said it'd take 2 months to get my certificate!

 

 

 

 

 

[Tekeya Thompson]

I took notarized copies of the birth certificate, not the originals.

Hello ladies, not long to go now, we fly on the 15th and get married on the 18th.  Quick question:  Chandlyn has copies of our birth certificates but do we need to bring the originals with us too? x