Grand Palladium Jamaica/Lady Hamilton - 2011 Brides!

[ShellyCarter]

has anyone used the hotel's salon for their hair?

anything pics of their work?

 

[lindsayraz]

Here's one with photos:  http://www.bestdestinationwedding.com/t/70090/looking-for-help-with-hair-stylist-makeup-artist-etc-for-aug-20-2011-grand-palladium

 

Originally Posted by ShellyCarter 

has anyone used the hotel's salon for their hair?

anything pics of their work?

 

 

[CanadianBride11]

Wow, there seems to be lots of November 2011 weddings at GPLH. I'm getting married there on Nov 30th. When are you going?

[CanadianBride11]

Where did you have your reception? Ours is going to be at Poisedon Restaurant....we only have it until 10pm though, so not sure where the party will go after that?

I haven't done a seating plan because I wasn't sure how many people I could have at each table. I did make place cards though which say what they chose for their meal. I'm not sure how else the restautanr would know what plate to give each person? Would you suggest making a seating plan? How was your dinner served if you had a choice of options for guests?

[sleigh]

Hey all. I got married at the GP last month and Ive been following this board so I just wanted to write a quick review and share some photos.... Excuse typos, Im writing quick!

 

HOTEL:  The hotel is very nice.  Its huge, so lots of walking!  The carts arent as convenient as you'd want them to be.  So keep this in mind for your older guests.  The grounds are very lush and beautiful.  All the beaches are pretty.  The best one for swimming is sunset cove.

The restaurants are pretty good for an all inclusive. Good variety of food, good quality food, tasty overall.  One thing that peeved me is their rule for men wearing long pants to some of the a la carte restaurants.  Who brings pants when they are on a resort vacation?!?!

The service is hit or miss.  Everyone in Jamaica seems very friendly and easy going.  Some of the service at the resort was anything but.  This resort can NOT handle large groups for the life of them.  If you have a group of 4 or more they act like you're crazy.  They refuse to put tables together, even if a restaurant is empty.  One night we went in for a table of 7 at one of the casual a la carte restaurants and they told us it would be a wait, or we could not all sit together.  I said we would wait and they got in attitude with me about how they couldn't put TWO tables together, even though the restaurant was far from full.  It was quite ridiculous.  We had the same issue at breakfast one morning (at a buffet! - we waited 30 minutes for a table) .... and forget about our rehearsal dinner at one of the buffets for 34 people.  We even called ahead to let them know and they said they wouldnt be able to put one large table together, which was fine, we werent expecting them to but they said we could all sit in the same area.  When we got there, they had one large table set up for about 12 and then the rest were 4 tops for us in our own corner.  Which made no sense, why couldn't they just stick the other sets of tables like that as well.  When are guest started combining just two tables together in our "designated corner" , because they wanted to sit together as friends, the restaurant manager through a fit and was very rude to my husband.  They could not explain why we couldn't push tables together! We did have an awesome server, latiesha, all the staff should take lessons from Latiesha!

WEDDING:  

Upon checking in, I was a little disappointed we didn't receive any acknowledgment that our wedding was being held there and we didnt get red wrist bands which I think is for VIP.

We met with our coordinator (who was about 15 minutes late for our meeting, not a big deal but just something to note), she was very nice and I was relieved to meet her.  She went over all the final pricing with us and I had brought a whole bunch of our own decor.

The night before our wedding my coordinator called me and told me my florist (who the resort uses and I went out of my package and spent an additional 2 grand with) told me Tai Flora did not order the peonies (my favorite flower which was suppose to be in my bouquet) so she replaced them with a similar flower.  I was a little disappointed but if that was it, I was relieved.  

On the wedding day, we had a busy day ahead, our coordinator told us to come in first thing in the AM to pay the bill and drop off the resort of our stuff.  We went in at 9AM and she wasn't there, so we went on with our day.  She finally got back to us at 12:30 and at this point I was starting to get ready so my husband had to go alone and take care of it. This wouldnt of been a huge deal, again if the resort wasn't humungous and walking back and forth on the other end of the resort on a time crunch.

The bouquets and boots were delivered on time and were beautiful, despite not having my peonies.  I was very impressed with the heft of my bouquet.

When someone went to check in on the setup, they had set up the two included altar flowers in our package (which I didn't want but they wouldnt let me upgrade to something I did want), on the altar, which I specifically said and noted I wanted displayed on the front row of chairs instead. Not to mention they were suppose to be all white, but they had red roses in them.  There was absolutely not red or anything close to it in any of my decor or other flowers.  It was quite tacky looking so I had to get someone to pluck them out. It was fixed and they set up my provided altar decor, which they did manage to put up very nicely.

15 minutes before the ceremony was to start it started raining cats and dogs.  But it rained everyday we were there around that time.  And the rain usually passed pretty quick so the coordinator said we could delay up to 30 minutes. So we decided to wait.   Once it cleared, which was about 4:10/4:15 I got the call to hurry and get down a car was coming and should get the ceremony done now before it starts again so we all went down that minute, the car came about 7-10 minutes after and said they werent done setting up.  So we waited another 10 minutes and at that time it started raining again.  So in all this waiting time we definitely could of gotten the ceremony done and over with.  Why was the ceremony not done being set up well after the proposed time, I have no idea.  Not to mention the steel drum band we paid for started playing after 4PM ( our ceremony was suppose to start at 4 and they were suppose to setup at 3:30).  They even had a covered area to play so this wasn't due to rain.

Our coordinator could not tell us if it was going to pass so we decided to move it to the spa, but it would take another 30 minutes to set up. which seemed ridiculous for our small wedding with very little decor (actually none, really, since it was being left out in the rain).

The staff seemed totally unprepared.  We upgraded to the garden chairs and assumed they would have more on site so they could just set up at the spa with other chairs, but they had to take the wet ones from the beach where are ceremony was suppose to be and move them.  It was much chaos trying to get everyone to the spa. The resort had no umbrellas available for our guests, I felt so bad they were all soaked running through the rain. I wanted to get there first so we could start doing family photos without all our guests seeing us.  So much for that, they took the guests first and the wedding party last and just dropped us all at front where all our guests saw us.  At this point I didnt care, I wanted to get our family photos done before we lost light.  It took a good 30 minutes for them to simply set up the chairs.  And the steel drum band still wasn't there.  They finally arrived and we could get the show on the road but apparently its a law in jamaica that you have to be married by 6 so at this point it was 10 till (our ceremony was suppose to be at 4) so we signed the papers first so we wouldnt have to rush through the ceremony.

There ceremony went well, our officiant, vincent did a very good job and was very nice.  He even offered to stand out in the pouring rain at the beach if thats what we wanted.

After they shuttled everyone to the reception one van at a time (thats like 6-8 people at a time, guh).  My reception was suppose to be on the beach (I paid 60/pp for a beach BBQ, the most expensive option).  At this point it stopped raining so I wish we still could have set up on the beach but we had it at the blue lagoon, not my first choice but it was pretty nice.  The layout was wonky though, they made a huge (for 30 people?)  dance area far away from everything so we made our own dance floor closer.  They had all these bright lights on and it took forever for them to get them to turn them off, we had candles going so we wanted ambiance. It looked a thousand times better once the lights were off.  They had set up mostly everything right, again mostly (they layout was off, they folded the napkins in fans instead of flat like I asked, they didnt light candles on our guestbook table, etc.) just small stuff.  The rest of the night went fine, we rented the resort sound sytsem, we danced, we had fun.

After the wedding we were leaving the next day so we went to the wedding office first thing to pick up all our decor but our coordinator wasnt there and neither was our stuff.  We didnt manage to make it back with one thing in hand .  Right before we checked out we went back to get the rest, which was 3 boxes of string lights (unopened because it was suppose to be for the beach), 50+ votive candle holders and our altar decor (that we never really got to see because of the rain.  We only got the string lights, but I guess that was the most important thing to us, just interesting that they werent organized with our things.

In all, it was a great wedding (nothing can ruin your wedding), but I was disappointed in the way my wedding was handled.

 

LASTLY PHOTOS: You can view a blog post our photographer made here : http://www.martalocklear.com/blog/index.php/2011/11/09/shelby-brian-10-17-11-jamaica-destination-wedding/

 

We flew our photographer in, because I didnt want any old person photographing our wedding.  She was awesome, the photos speak for themselves!
 

[ShellyCarter]

thx!!!

[lindsayraz]

Just wanna say "ahhhh!!" your wedding is coming up so soon, i'm jealous! hehe.

 

You could always take the party up to the Infinity Bar. It's very nice there and great for all ages, young and old. Or of course the Bob Marley disco.

 

I'm also very curious to hear the verdict on how the servers know which guest ordered which meal...
 

Originally Posted by CanadianBride11 

Where did you have your reception? Ours is going to be at Poisedon Restaurant....we only have it until 10pm though, so not sure where the party will go after that?

I haven't done a seating plan because I wasn't sure how many people I could have at each table. I did make place cards though which say what they chose for their meal. I'm not sure how else the restautanr would know what plate to give each person? Would you suggest making a seating plan? How was your dinner served if you had a choice of options for guests?

 

[GP Bride]

Hello to all!

I am getting married Jan. 30, 2012! Everything has gone smoothly so far no complaints! We have 47 guests booked and paid for! Cant wait-just trying to lock down a photographer...any ideas?? So far I checked into trucolors photography I have heard some good reviews on them but just want to check into some other places. Thanks 

[canadiangirl]

wow its been a really long time,. and alot of reading lol we are getting married at the GPLH on april 14th 2012 (5 months OMG) and after 2 W/C i really hope it all works out.

[lindsayraz]

a good read: http://palladiumaddict.net/AddictForum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=16372