Dolfinluck's wedding review - Dreams La Romana (*Lots of PICS Included*)

[cwaters728]

Thanks so much for the feedback!

Everything looked awesome! Love the smore idea!

[mdb]

Your pictures are beautiful!!!

[ashley1316]

i love love your shoes!

[MysTea]

Beautiful Pics! Love the colors!

[sera1124]

Congratulations!!!  Thanks so much for the GREAT review.  DLR seems like a great location.  The paper lanterns were gorgeous and the bonfire must have been so great for the guests.

 

Congrats again!

[AwayDC]

Congrats! your pictures are fantastic.

[irisheyes]

Hi Dolfinluck, i'm getting married in DLR next march, i'm planning my dinner for the beach.

I love your reception set-up, i really want to do the same thing with the LED lights wrapped around the trees, can i ask you where you bought these? Also did Tiara/Yanna hang them up for you and what was used to keep them wrapped around the tree?

 

Do you have any other suggestions for lighting for the beach reception, i want to make it really romantic and was thinking of maybe having some tiki torches to light up a pathway to the table? Do you think this would work?

 

Thanks in advance.

[dolfinluck]

 

Originally Posted by irisheyes 

Hi Dolfinluck, i'm getting married in DLR next march, i'm planning my dinner for the beach.

I love your reception set-up, i really want to do the same thing with the LED lights wrapped around the trees, can i ask you where you bought these? Also did Tiara/Yanna hang them up for you and what was used to keep them wrapped around the tree?

 

Do you have any other suggestions for lighting for the beach reception, i want to make it really romantic and was thinking of maybe having some tiki torches to light up a pathway to the table? Do you think this would work?

 

Thanks in advance.

Thanks so much!  I bought the rope lights from Ace Hardware (they had the best prices), i got 8 of them at 18 feet each for $10 a piece.  Yanna got them hung up for me for free.  i think they might of used tape or string to tie the top end to the palm tree but not sure.  You just need something on the end on the top to keep them in place. 

I was thinking of using tiki torches but someone else said they were a waste since the wind would keep blowing them out.  You could maybe hang some paper lanterns for extra lighting.

[katierenae]

hey dolfinluck...were your flowers real???
 

Originally Posted by dolfinluck 

Reception: A+
The reception site was just perfect. We were set-up right behind building 4. The resort marked off the wrong location with yellow caution tape in the morning but Yanna was on top of it and went down there and had them move it to the correct location. I gave Yanna most of the details for the tables, and my sister just finished up with favors, LED lights for the paper lanterns and the food for the smores. I got the silver menu and the food was great. We got the assorted Assorted Dominican Appetizers; Dominican “Sancocho†(warning has big pieces of bones in it); Chicken Cordon Blue in a Pomodoro Sauce & Broiled Beef Tampiqueña Style; Pineapple “Volteado†with a Rum-Raisin Sauce and chocolate for the wedding cake. Yanna stay around during the reception and would come over every once in a while to ask if everything was good. Once we cut the cake the bonfire was lit and we had our first dance near it. And then made s’mores!! Overall there was too much food; I only had a little bit of each course. I thought we should have ended at 10:30 since we started at 7:30 but Yanna wasn’t there so we kept going till a little bit after 11. The workers were patiently waiting for us to end so they could clean up, so once we saw that we moved it along to wrap things up. The other wedding was at the SSG and I could hear their music a couple of times but it did not affect us at all and was only really during our softer songs. But if we would have been at the pier for the reception it would have been more of an issue. We did have some onlookers but it didn’t bother me, the resort did put up a private function sign but that didn’t stop some people. We even had a women asked to take mine and DH pic so she could show her niece. But once again I didn’t mind at all.

for better pics see the link at the bottom of this post for the pro teaser pics

Reception set-up


Table set-up (a little dark)




Cake


Seavis: A++
So glad I found Seavis, Alexander is very quick to respond and open to ideas if you want to do something a little different. Plus he reorganized a couple of things so they could fit us in. Since we had ppl coming and leaving on all different days we just had 8 of us go on the Hookah Catalina half day Tour on Friday. The staff is great and we all had so much fun. My dad stayed in the water forever we almost had to pull him out of the water so we could go back. If you’re planning a trip for your group book it with Seavis. Also they are still collecting items for Haiti, they have a truck go over every two weeks, and the day before we left we dropped off the items we had for them to take over.

My friend using the hookah


Beach at Catalina


Photographer - Elisabeth Millay: A+++++++++++++++++++
Photography was the most important item of the wedding for DH and I. I love Photojournalist style and really couldn’t find what I was looking for in the DR. So I went to wpja.com and looked at all the photographers in NJ (30 plus!) and cut down the list to my top 5 and contacted all of them. Elisabeth responded very quickly and with such a cheerful tone and like she really wanted to travel down there and shoot our wedding; where as some of the other photographer I contacted it sounded like more of a hassle. She was a little out of our budget but worked with us to make it work. Plus Jonathan Young (from Love Captures) would be coming as well as our second photographer and his work is just as great! Our first meeting with Elisabeth went so well; we talked about our ideas for the wedding and colors; she is so easy to talk to. Whenever I had any wedding related question during my wedding planning she would lend me her expertise. The best piece of her advice was to build in extra time to cool off in the AC, which helped sooo much. It was amazing to have someone I trusted so much to just do her thing and know that it would turn out perfectly. Like I was running late at the spa and I left out all of my wedding stuff so when Elisabeth got to my room she just started taking pictures and setting up all the little stuff for some really great shots, this really helped to make-up some time. We did our first look at the pier, and my dress got pretty dirty and when I went back to my room to cool off before the ceremony Jonathan took the chalk from my sister so she could help my mom finish-up getting ready and started to work on hiding the stains, thanks again Jonathan! They were such great people to have at the wedding; they had tons of great ideas and were open to ideas as well. Below is the link to the teaser picture I just got from Elisabeth and words cannot even describe how overjoyed we are with them. It brought a tear to my eye and that is something really hard to do! When I look at her pictures all the little bumps and things that annoyed me that happened that day are completely forgotten and I just remember all the great things from the day!!! My co-workers even commented that they look like they are from a movie! I can’t wait to see the rest of the pictures!

Teaser pics from Elisabeth!!!

Tips
-Hire a BDW TA
-Hire an amazing photographer (ie Elisabeth and Jonathan)cause when it’s all said and done it’s all you have to remember the day
-Get your room in building 5 if using the spa and gazebo so you will not melt in the walks over.
-Build in extra time before they ceremony, I thought I would be on time but so many little things pop up and in-laws did their own thing that pushed back the timeline
-Sharing items, if you must have those items you are sharing you should be the first maybe second person to use but being the 3rd person things went missing or were not in the best condition. For me in the end it did not save me any money but live and learn.
-Assign someone to go over the reception and ceremony locations so everything is set up the way you want (if it’s important to you) & to make your instructions for the WC as clear as possible (I even drew a reception layout on PowerPoint that was very easy to follow)

Feel free to ask any questions!

[dolfinluck]

the flower petals were real, the rest of the flowers used were fake, i got them from angels accent and they were beautiful!

Originally Posted by katierenae 

hey dolfinluck...were your flowers real???