Kcole123 Planning Thread - April 17, 2015 - Melia Caribe Tropical

[ashhtayy]

@@kcole123 I've been creeping around this site for a couple months now and came upon your planning thread about a month ago. I found it because I was searching for reviews on our travel agent...your travel agent.

 

Before I say anything about that, I'd like to say you did a fantastic job and looked so gorgeous on your wedding day. My fingers are crossed my FI and I can pull this all together half as well as yourself and all the other successful brides on this site. I am so early on in the planning stages that I don't have many specific questions for you BUT I am certain I will be looking for your advice and guidance in the future. Thanks in advance

 

I also struggled to find a great TA. Our stories seemed to start off the same - like most DW brides, finding a responsive TA was troublesome. When I came across her I was in awe. She replies in no time, she provides information before I even ask for it (or know I want to know about that) and just before we booked I found out an acquaintance was using her for their DW this May and they have been pretty happy with her.

 

Thus far I've had zero issues - only great things to say actually. We sent our STDs out last Monday (and the last ten or so today) and today was the first time a GF flipped me her correspondence with our TA. Yet again, she was unreal. Replied to my bridesmaid in 2 minutes and has the ball rolling on her "custom package" (because she and her FI can only attend for 4 nights).

 

I am writing to ask you for any advice or red flags to look for. You are not the only bride that I have read that had great success in the beginning and then things started to go down hill. I'd like to try my best to remain optimistic but I also need to be realistic. If I need to be more assertive and ask to be more involved in the booking process, I'd like to jump in sooner than later. One thing I loved about her is that she said she would not bother me with the little things until she absolutely had to. She told me not to answer any travel questions and send everyone to her because I didn't need that added stress.

 

Not sure what exactly I'm asking you but if you do have any advice with getting through this without pulling my hair out I'd really appreciate it.

 

PS. Hope your burn heals well. You can hardly notice the bandaid and, like some of the other girls said, I doubt I would have noticed at all if you didn't tell us.

[kcole123]

@@ashhtayy

 

Thanks for touching base with me and also for your kind words. I am hoping you have a better experience with the travel agent. I believe she honestly knows her stuff and what she is doing it's just to me it seems like she doesn't know how to put it all together without confusing people. Sorry if this seems harsh. I don't know if she had a harder time with us because maybe she was taking on too many clients at that time. But when she was gone out of the Country, she did respond back to me pretty quickly but a couple of my guests said she didn't respond back to them at all. That's when I had to step in to email her and give her a head's up that people were emailing and maybe it was going to her junk mail. I had to be the proactive one and just keep on top of things. I didn't consider myself a bridezilla but I felt frustrated that I had to do a lot of the work a travel agent should have done.

That was something else I found. I found that whenever I addressed a problem or an issue and excuse quickly followed like her email wasn't working, her IT department needed to get the email fixed, the phone was out of order for the day. And she used these excuses with the guests too. Instead she should have let me know of any issues before I had a chance to address them. I just found that I had to keep on top of all the bookings and what was going on because if I didn't I would be in the blind from day one.

One thing that I noticed from the beginning was she said that once we book with her that she will have a link to a website that we would have access to, which I never did get. I did however get the email of a STD kind of email to send my guests.

I honestly didn't have just one guest complain but a couple people complain. One girl wanted to book 5 days only and she said she couldn't do that. Ok if this is the case than explain to the guest why, which she didn't do.

Sorry for being such a downer on this subject but I was actually the one taking up for her with my guests during the whole time just so I wouldn't make them worried or stressed over the whole thing. I know from my experience, If I plan on using a travel agent again, that I will start all over in my search.

 

Good luck to you and anything else you need let me know.

 

Kristy

@@calgarybride2015

Finally I was so excited when this notice came up in the screen. One photo book down another one to go.

[kcole123]

actually one down, two to go. Nathan just informs me that he would like one for his nan. Oh well keeping me busy still with wedding stuff...haha

[acw271011]

Kristy you make me laugh being the "old married lady" now telling the girls to relax and not sweat the small stuff!! I did exactly the same thing almost 4 years ago!!! I love to read the reviews when everyone is getting so stressed and I know I'm talking to a hole in the wall when I say "relax. it will all work out" and I know darned well nobody believes me!! lmao Then everyone comes back and says "I worried for nothing and it all worked out and ladies, don't sweat the little things". it all makes me smile.

 

Your review is great and I'm so happy that everything worked out so well. Your pics are gorgeous. You definitely scored with your photographer. No doubt there at all.

 

I'm sorry I didn't look up the photobook stuff. It was a wild week last week and I honestly slept so much on the weekend. I didn't realize I was so exhausted! But it sounds like you made out ok and if you got the message there are no errors you should be fine!

 

Again, congrats lady! Ya done good!!! lol

[kcole123]

Oh dear god. Get ready for another laugh then @@acw271011 I always speak way to soon. Anyway I went to finalize my purchase with my groupon I got by entering in the voucher and it didn't work. It came up as invalid. So I tried to figure out why and here the one I made doesn't match the size of the groupon I ordered. And to make matters worse I did the project online and didn't download the program. Apparently if you download the program you can switch to a different size if you made a mistake but can't do that online apparently. So when I looked into the help section and they stated this, it then said I would have to start my project over if this is the case. Oh my and to think of the hours I spent on this one photo book. I have since a half hour ago, downloaded the software and here I am starting from scratch.

Must go get a glass of wine before I start over.

[acw271011]

Well there's your planning project over the next few days! Take your time - mine I swear took me a week by the time I shifted the pictures and changed the backgrounds and played with the sizes..... until I finally had what I wanted. Plus, our photographer with the equipment he uses, the photos were too big to download. It kept telling me that the file size was too big!!! But hang in there. It will turn out beautifully if you're just patient and take your time. I think they're a great thing to do. We did one for Doug's parents and my father as well and they loved them. I did one of our engagement pics, one of our wedding in Jamaica and then one of our AHR since it had all the photos of our kids. Once I did the first one, I was hooked lol And I wanted to do more. Have fun with it. Wagjag also has coupons all the time so keep an eye out for them. So does Picaboo, which is the other software. They're constantly sending me deals.

[ashhtayy]

@@kcole123 you've helped me without even realizing it. I did in fact get the link to the centre holidays website specific to my wedding and put it on my wedding website. She did this before I even booked and then we had to change the date. I asked for it to be updated with our new date and it was. After reading your message I decided to take a closer look at her website and I noticed an error. Prices and departure dates were correct, just the return date of one of our two gates was incorrect. Thanks for making me take a closer peak; I cant believe I missed that.

 

She does definitely have a ton of experience and coordinates so many weddings at once. She has done a great job making me feel like I'm her only bride so fingers crossed we don't run into any major issues down the road.

 

Thanks for the msg.

 

Also, sorry to hear about the ebook fiasco. They say third times a charm. Good luck.

[kcole123]

@@ashhtayy she seems to be better for you so fingers crossed for you. Just keep an eye out like you are starting to do and you should be fine. Just double check things when she sends things to you to make sure it's all correct. You are going to be checking like crazy now..lol I seriously think she had too many clients when I booked so maybe that was her reasoning.

[diadiamond]

That's exactly how i felt when we booked ours. Up until now it was just a party, now there's real legal stuff going on! haha 

 

Don't feel bad, a lot of people take it as just a formality to get married before. We basically had no choice because my mom would have been beyond offended. I tried to tell her that we didn't want to make a big deal out of it and she seemed so insulted haha. She was like "well that's the one that counts!". Anyway, I had to put some limits because she would have actually planned a whole event if I let her. i told her that I basically have $300 for this thing including the officiant but she still wants to push for all these details.

 

Do you think it would be a big deal for your family to not be there? Now i know my mom would have been super mad if I had gotten married behind her back hahah. It's just our parents and siblings for that day. If you're in doubt, they already paid for the wedding so they can't back out, you could always tell them and just have them over for the legal part , even if it's nothing fancy. 

 

I'm having the same issue!  I wanted to do it just the two of us before we left, but my FI didn't like that idea as he felt like he was betraying his family.  So I came up with the idea of having a small ceremony with just his parents, my mom, my step-dad, and our siblings either before we leave or when we came back.  Nothing big just maybe a city hall ceremony and dinner or something.  My MIL hasn't been supportive of our choice to have a destination wedding so at first she tried to take over and plan it.  Then said to me "If you're not getting legally married there what's the point of your wedding why not just have a wedding here instead, no need to go to Cuba since it's not a 'real' wedding."  My feelings were beyond hurt by this.  We are putting the significance on our Cuban ceremony on the beach the legal ceremony is literally just signing a piece of paper.  We would have done a Cuban legal ceremony, but we didn't want to wait up to a year just to get our marriage certificate.  

 

At the end of it we decided to do a small legal ceremony after we come back on the day of our anniversary with just parents and siblings at a restaurant.  My FI had a talk with him mom about the wedding and she's backed off quite a bit.  We still want her involved, we just want to be the ones to plan our day.    

[tygrrlily]

Kristy, had to come and read your wedding review! Glad everything turned out so well, and you ended up saving money not having to extend or get the decorations!

 

I haven't done photobooks yet - so lazy

 

Haha and I obviously concur on everything about the TA - bleh. I listed her name as well though because I wanted to give local brides the head's up if they did a search