2013 Now Larimar Brides !!! Any out there ???

[mvee1025]

Originally Posted by EJM17 

 

So here it is ladies..........my wedding review! I'll start off with the negative and end with the positive.

 

NOW Larimar was by far the WORST resort I have ever been too. I regret choosing this resort for my wedding. My wedding ended at 93 guests and you would think since we were a pretty big group we would be accommodated and treated a little better. We definitely were not. To list just a few things that happened to us:

 

-My parents check in AND in-laws took 3 hours as well as other family members

 

-My parents ended up with a room with 2 double beds when a KING was requested 

 

-The "tropical view" isn't so tropical. Some of my guests had the view of an ugly street outside of the resort.

 

-The resort initially offered me a promotion with my rooms - for every six booked I would get one for free. But they failed to tell me the terms and conditions. I had 35 rooms booked and they declined to give me ANY free rooms because none of them were booked under one reservation number. Beatriz who is the supervisor in Group Reservations was horrible to speak with as well as Gilbert. I asked if the Wedding Day Pass of $45 could be waived for some of the guests since they weren't giving me ANY rooms. She refused to bend the rule for me. 

 

-Housekeeping was horrible. OUR ROOM (Bride&Groom) was cleaned at 4:00PM two days!!!!! The day we arrived they had champagne, strawberries, and chocolate for us in the room, they took three days to take the dirty plate out of the room. 

 

-My husband's family requested another bed to be brought into 2 of their rooms. The beds were never sent.

 

-The night of our rehearsal dinner three of my guests came from a different resort. When they arrived at the entrance they were turned away because they didn't have photo ID. Security spoke with my wedding coordinator to confirm that there was a rehearsal dinner and STILL turned them away. My cousins had to go back to their resort and get their ID's and pay 2 cab rides. 

 

-My wedding coordinator Yeomandry was sweet. I just feel they have SOOO many weddings they don't have the chance to give you all their attention nor are they allowed to bend a rule on that "wedding planner". Mercy the wedding coordinator supervisor made that very clear. I spoke with her the day before I flew out. I expressed my frustration to her about the resort not being accommodating and not offering me ANYTHING for all the rooms and for bringing my wedding. She had the nerve to tell me "well you have understand this is a business as well, you basically only have your food/beverage with us. The rest are outside vendors. So there's only so much we can do for you" I couldn't believe she said that to me! They didn't like the fact I had my decorator, DJ, photographer, videographer, and cake from outside. I didn't want to get myself more aggravated nor have them hate me more and ruin my wedding day. So I accepted the way everything was going to be because there was so turning back or changing anything 4 days before the wedding.

 

-Our last night at the resort with the family (before we left for our honeymoon) we reserved 2 tables at the restaurant Tamarindo and 10 more of our guests ended up joining us last minute. The restaurant REFUSED to set up another table for us when they perfectly well could have put together three tables that were still open. They offered to put the 10 guests on the wait list that was one hour, which was ridiculous because we all wanted to be together. I had all of the 20 guests that were seated already get up and leave the restaurant and we spoke with the hotel manager- Angel Holgado. He apologized for everything that we went through and offered to put the extra tables for us. We declined his offer since everyone started eating at the buffet.

 

At check-out payment for the wedding was made. We paid cash for the wedding. The front desk after they counted the money had the nerve to say they couldn't accept some of the bills because they had writing on them. (We're talking about the littlest thing like a number that is written on a bill) The money was withdrawn from our bank here in the States. Money circulates and we have no control over that and we told them that. That was literally the icing to the cake when they pulled that one. We argued with the front desk and had the manager Angel Holgado come out again. We stood there another hour FOR NOTHING because the person supposedly in charge of bringing cash to the bank came out with a Counterfeit Detector MARKER!!!! The writing on some of the bills didn't matter!!! The manager didn't offer us anything for all the inconveniences the hotel put us through. We are absolutely disgusted with the service and people there. 

 

The POSITIVE - my vendors:

 

-The wedding day was beautiful. I have Gary from Innovart Decorations to thank for that. He did an ABSOLUTE beautiful job with my flowers, ceremony, reception. He was amazing to work with as well. We communicated through Facebook chat and later with the "WhatsApp" application. His prices were half the price of what the resort was trying to charge. It was SOOOO worth it to pay the vendor fee for him. He offers everything and anything a girl can dream of for their wedding. If he doesn't he will make it happen! This is his Facebook link to see his work: https://www.facebook.com/InnovartSRL?fref=ts

My wedding album in his profile is listed as: "Erica & Joseph Wedding" 

 

My photographer Katya Nova and her husband Rob were an absolute pleasure to work with as well as my videographer Mibsan Espejo. I can't wait to see our pics and video in a few weeks! Once I have that I'll post! 

 

DJ Mannia was great! Carlos Martinez was our DJ and MC. He was very easy going and great to work with. Even though we had a live band come in for our reception and we didn't use there services for the whole night. He still made sure to keep on top of everything like (speeches, cake, bouquet toss, garter toss). 

 

-Pastor Mark Lykins was our officiant and amazing to work with as well. He knows English and Spanish. It was very important to us to have the ceremony bilingual since we have some only Spanish speaking family members. 

 

Let me know if you have any questions ladies! 

You can PM here or email me at [email protected] I wish you all luck with Now Larimar! 

I hope your experiences with them are nothing like mine.

ok, seriously not cool!  This is seriously what I have been worried about!  My group is only 35, most booked tropical view accept for a handful that got preferred poolside

how far were these rooms from the main pool area?  Do you have an image of the map you can upload?  Another bride shared one she found online but it doesn't show the location of these rooms.

 

I'll have inbox you!

[jennifer8913]

ok, seriously not cool!  This is seriously what I have been worried about!  My group is only 35, most booked tropical view accept for a handful that got preferred poolside how far were these rooms from the main pool area?  Do you have an image of the map you can upload?  Another bride shared one she found online but it doesn't show the location of these rooms. I'll have inbox you!

I heard the tropical view rooms are close to all the other rooms, but it is the garden view rooms that are far from everyone else, like close to the entrance of the resort.

[duchovny0901]

@ mvee I read the same thing that jennifer8913 said. You can request that your group be on the upper floors of the building if they have the availability. The rooms are located on the outside of the buildings. Additionally I hear the Bavaro Building is the newest one on the resort and closer to the beach. They have a map on the website that shows the building locations.

[rachel930]

Heres my opinion on the rooms. I have 57 guest booked for my wedding... if they booked the cheapest room to stay thats on them. Honestly thats the least of my concerns... thats how they wanted to plan their vacation. I paid the money for us to be in the preferred pool room because thats what I wanted. If my guest wanted it they could have clicked that box as well... they picked their room. Dont stress

[AMYEVANS]

Glad you said that Rachel930 - my thoughts too.... they can do their own research on tripadvisor.. us girls have enough on planning the wedding! :-)

[foreverlove]

Is anyone else getting really nervous? I have read quite a few negative comments about now larimar within the last few weeks. I'm getting scared I made the wrong choice :0

[AMYEVANS]

to every 1 bad review there are about 15 good ones... I wouldn't worry too much, some people find fault anywhere! Just keep smiling else it will ruin the fun and excitement :-)

[duchovny0901]

I agree with you Amy. I've read pretty much every review about the resort and wedding experiences on different websites and the good definitely outweigh the bad. I was worried too about the negative reviews but I also saw negative reviews for EVERY other resort I've looked in to. I'm a positive person and am not too picky, so I am confident that your wedding and all of our wedding experiences will be awesome. 

[Kacey0829]

Here are a few more pics done by WBA....

[Jl3131]

I got married on July 19th and it was absolutely amazing! I couldn't have asked for a better day. We had a few bumps in the road when we had arrived but everything worked out to our advantage. Had a beach ceremony and originally was supposed to have the reception at relaxed pool but our wedding coordinator Yakarya had mentioned early that morning of a pretty high percentage of rain. We had switched to the ballroom and it was probably the best decision as it was very humid that might. We used DJ mania and he had all our guests up dancing all night long. He was great and I would definitely recommend him! We used WBA for pictures and they were amazing. Amelia was awesome. Highly recommend her for your wedding pictures. We had a group of 46 people and she involved everyone in pictures. She was great! Overall I would highly recommend Now Larimar!