Aruba Wedding with Jason Margarita

[tiffany1980]

Beware of Jason Margarita and his unprofessional team of kids
I was planning my wedding about a year ago in Aruba. I had everything planned perfectly with a hotel except signing the contract. I went to aruba.com to ask for different vendors and wanted other brides to respond. I received a private message from a Jason Margarita who told me that if I go with his services he will give me the best prices as with the hotel they are marked up 200%. We were on a budget and wanted extra services so without thinking and only listening to his reviews on aruba.com we went with it.
From flowers to table decoration, transportation, makeup artist, hairdresser and steelpan, you can say the works. He saved us money but in the end we were very unhappy with his unprofessional services.

It started out with my hairdresser and makeup artist showing up very late which made me be late to my own ceremony. Jason was to show up at 5:30 for photography but did not get there till 5:50. My mom was upset as we knew to be downstairs to get us started with a 6:00 ceremony. Jason replied "don't worry I am the planner and everyone has to wait timing is ok, don't worry". When I got to the ceremony I seen that my officiate was not very happy and my guests were hot waiting in the heat. As I looked around I saw black crew of young kids under 22 with cameras, one even looked 16. They were present to take professional photos of my wedding and I have to say it was a joke that my bridesmaid pushed the young kid away because he was right over her breasts to get an angled shot.Jason failed in every aspect of professional services. He is not a 5 star professional in our eyes but rather a scam artist who built his reputation by lying on reviews. My husband had mentioned to me that we got what we paid for, Cheap quality is what stands for this company.The flowers were o.k but not what I ordered, the tablecloths he promised were not anywhere to be found and the chairs were a joke.

Thank God for the reception that was taken care of by the resort itself or else we would of been very disappointed in everything.I hope I get my pictures soon, he promises that proofs are next day for viewing, I still have not got any except for the overexposed image he portrayed on facebook.Hopefully he comes through with edited images and I am praying my video is of good quality.
 

Tiffany

[JayKay]

Originally Posted by tiffany1980 

 

Beware of Jason Margarita and his unprofessional team of kids

I was planning my wedding about a year ago in Aruba. I had everything planned perfectly with a hotel except signing the contract. I went to aruba.com to ask for different vendors and wanted other brides to respond. I received a private message from a Jason Margarita who told me that if I go with his services he will give me the best prices as with the hotel they are marked up 200%. We were on a budget and wanted extra services so without thinking and only listening to his reviews on aruba.com we went with it.

From flowers to table decoration, transportation, makeup artist, hairdresser and steelpan, you can say the works. He saved us money but in the end we were very unhappy with his unprofessional services.

It started out with my hairdresser and makeup artist showing up very late which made me be late to my own ceremony. Jason was to show up at 5:30 for photography but did not get there till 5:50. My mom was upset as we knew to be downstairs to get us started with a 6:00 ceremony. Jason replied "don't worry I am the planner and everyone has to wait timing is ok, don't worry". When I got to the ceremony I seen that my officiate was not very happy and my guests were hot waiting in the heat. As I looked around I saw black crew of young kids under 22 with cameras, one even looked 16. They were present to take professional photos of my wedding and I have to say it was a joke that my bridesmaid pushed the young kid away because he was right over her breasts to get an angled shot.Jason failed in every aspect of professional services. He is not a 5 star professional in our eyes but rather a scam artist who built his reputation by lying on reviews. My husband had mentioned to me that we got what we paid for, Cheap quality is what stands for this company.The flowers were o.k but not what I ordered, the tablecloths he promised were not anywhere to be found and the chairs were a joke.

Thank God for the reception that was taken care of by the resort itself or else we would of been very disappointed in everything.I hope I get my pictures soon, he promises that proofs are next day for viewing, I still have not got any except for the overexposed image he portrayed on facebook.Hopefully he comes through with edited images and I am praying my video is of good quality.

 

Tiffany

 Hopefully this information will be helpful for future brides.  Sorry to hear about your troubles.

[katie2012]

Sorry to hear about your experience with Jason. He seems to dominate the aruba.com forum. I hope you had fun in Aruba anyways! 

 

For any future brides reading this, we worked with Cassandra and Marc Crooze and found them to be very professional. So far we're happy with the facebook pics (it has only been 4 days since our wedding so we only have a few teasers). We used Lissy Lampe as our coordinator and everyone was early/on time for their services  (bus, car, hair/makeup, etc.) besides the officiant at "town hall."

[Cathy72]

So sorry to hear this.

We recently got married in Aruba and can not be any happier. Aruba is located right outside of the hurricane belt so you can plan your wedding year round and do not have to worry about rain. We have been coming to Aruba for the past 12 years and obviously wanted our wedding to be in Aruba. After a few trips to Aruba we met with several vendors, like decorators, photographer, videographer, florists and also did a food tasting. We had our wedding at the Hyatt and Roseangela the romance planner did an excellent job. She understood all of our requests and was really on top of things. Meeting with the local vendors was essential since it gives you peace of mind. We first wanted to hire a home based photographer to fly over to Aruba but after meeting with Elnathan Hijmering, we felt very at ease and confident. We were also offered a very "good" price by this Jason Margarita but my husband warned me about paying peanuts and getting monkeys. We were almost trapped by all his so called reviews on Aruba.com and are we glad we stayed away from his services. We also met with videographer Ingmar Maduro and he clearly knew everything about wedding videography. Robert arranged our bouquet and together with Arlette did a wonderful job with the setup of our arch and chairs. We had a very romantic ceremony performed by Geoffrey Banfield. He knew exactly how and when to break the ice during the ceremony. We had much fun and we were extremely happy with the overall outcome of our wedding. We received our pictures in just 4 days and they look fabulous and so does the video we got. There is really no way you can go wrong at the Hyatt and specially not with the very professional vendors they recommended to us.

[Tropicalwedding]

Hello Katie 2012 & Tiffany 1980,

 

Well he does not dominate the aruba.com forum anymore because all the brides who recommended him are deleted from the board, as well as his posts (make your own conclusion)

 

Be careful with what you read, and who to believe.

 

Regards,

Tracey

[Jason Margarita]

Whomever you are, I did not do your wedding! Your just another photographer or planner trying to damage our reputation! Shame on you!

[ArubaTruth]

The shame is on you for your unethical ways.
I want the world of brides to know what wonderful photograher you really are.
Angel Bonbini on Facebook has Aruba Truth filled with real stories from real brides.
Best Destination Wedding is a wonderful forum, they should check out the thread on aruba.com called 9 months later...a recap of our vow renewal experience, it is located under community forum under wedding and honeymoon section. The truth from the voices of real people hurt by your unethical profession.

[ArubaTruth]

To the moderators on this forum please check out the aruba.com forum and read for yourself the nightmare of brides, renewals, real people scammed by this unprofessional scam artist. Feel free to check out
Angel Bonbini on Facebook which is filled with Aruba Truth real stories from real brides also check out the thread on aruba.com called 9 months later...a recap of our vow renewal experience, it is located under community forum under wedding and honeymoon section. The truth from the voices of real people hurt by Jason and his crew on unethical profession.

[Cal314]

ALMOST 6 MONTHS LATER, STILL NO EDITED PHOTOS IN SIGHT... (Wedding Date: 4/19/13)
Things started out ok with Jason Margarita and his wife Evita Julissa of Ever After Aruba. We contacted them on 8/30/12 for availability and they responded that same evening. As it got closer to the wedding date, we noticed the response time was lacking. There was a span of time where it was weeks before we finally got a response via email. There was a point where we actually weren't sure if we would have a photographer once we got to the island. Jason and his team did what they were supposed to do while were were still on the island. We received a DVD of the raw videos on one of the very last days that we were on the island. However, once we left the island, Jason and Evita's responses slowed down drastically and there seemed to always be an excuse as to why, first, our video was not edited/finished, then why we had not received our edited wedding photo album. The contract that we signed stated that we would receive our edited wedding items within 5 weeks of our wedding date. Today, it is almost 6 months after our wedding and we have yet to receive a single edited photo of our wedding day. After voicing a complaint to the Aruba Chamber of Commerce, Evita let us know that due to our complaint, she would not have time to edit our video and sent us an incomplete video with long unedited clips of our wedding night. Then, Jason got involved and tried to make us think he was going above and beyond his duties of "personally taking over our case." The video was edited and we finally received a copy. Jason sent us a fake tracking number for our photo album. Weeks went by, still excuse after excuse as to why we didn't have a tracking number for our album. After we began including the Aruba Chamber of Commerce on our emails, Jason stopped responding to us and still have not received our album. The Chamber of Commerce has not responded to us once. We have now contacted our credit card company to help us. Needless to say we are very disappointed and will never return to the island of Aruba. I cannot even look at the raw photos of our wedding day without feeling nauseous. This is not how I wanted to remember my wedding day. : (

[Cal314]

ALMOST 6 MONTHS LATER, STILL NO EDITED PHOTOS IN SIGHT... Things started out ok with Jason Margarita and his wife Evita Julissa of Ever After Aruba. We contacted them on 8/30/12 for availability and they responded that same evening. As it got closer to the wedding date, we noticed the response time was lacking. There was a span of time where it was weeks before we finally got a response via email. There was a point where we actually weren't sure if we would have a photographer once we got to the island. Jason and his team did what they were supposed to do while were were still on the island. We received a DVD of the raw videos on one of the very last days that we were on the island. However, once we left the island, Jason and Evita's responses slowed down drastically and there seemed to always be an excuse as to why, first, our video was not edited/finished, then why we had not received our edited wedding photo album. The contract that we signed stated that we would receive our edited wedding items within 5 weeks of our wedding date. Today, it is almost 6 months after our wedding and we have yet to receive a single edited photo of our wedding day. After voicing a complaint to the Aruba Chamber of Commerce, Evita let us know that due to our complaint, she would not have time to edit our video and sent us an incomplete video with long unedited clips of our wedding night. Then, Jason got involved and tried to make us think he was going above and beyond his duties of "personally taking over our case." The video was edited and we finally received a copy. Jason sent us a fake tracking number for our photo album. Weeks went by, still excuse after excuse as to why we didn't have a valid tracking number for our album. After we began including the Aruba Chamber of Commerce on our emails, Jason stopped responding to us and still have not received our album. The Chamber of Commerce has not responded to us once. We have now contacted our credit card company to help us. I do not wish this trouble and heartache on any newly married couple. What a horrible way to remember your wedding day.