dolfinluck

I would switch TAs. I used TA Dina from this forum and got married at DLR. I had no problems with booking my wedding with the hotel and we only had 14 ppl. I was also told if another wedding booked on my day I would have first choice of ceremony and reception as I booked first.

Quote: Originally Posted by Pink_Petals I went to check out your flowers on Angel's website They looked gorgeous. Btw, your pro pics turned out amazing!!! Did you bring those petals with you (and are they real/fake?) for the aisle or did the resort provided for you? Thanks so much xoxo Thanks! since the wedding package came with bouquet and bout I asked for rose petals instead since i didnt need them cause i had angel's. in my meeting with Yanna i gave her a picture and two fake rose petals in the colors I wanted, dont know if they were an exact match but looked fabulous!

Sorry to hear about all the bumps along the way but in the end you looked beautiful in your pictures! Love your colors and the chair sashes!

Quote: Originally Posted by lizzyjayne Gem I was going to have service on pier then beach and finally and still gazebo. But I'm still debating the reception, think I have settled on SSG but only because my step daughter wouldn't eat anything off the silver or gold menu and thats the only option for gazebo, beach or pier, would have loved the gazebo as i could have just turned the battery lights on inside the lanterns. Flowers I emailed and requested our rooms together in block 5 and I just got an email back saying they would try depending on occupency. So no guarantees. Dolfin after seeing your reception on the beach I would love that it looks fantastic and I too like the lights round the tree. We had a picky eater in our group, DH's niece, and the waiter just brought her pizza for her meal while the rest of us had the silver menu.

Forgot to mention in my review that one of the tour operators said they are finishing up a 4 lane highway that will go from Santo Domingo to Punta Cana. While it will not cut down the current time from Punta Cana to La Romana, it will cut down the time from Santo Domingo to La Romana to one hour and 15 mins. Almost everyone in my group flew into Santo Domingo as the flights were a lot cheaper. Nadia, i was looking at my bookmarks that I can now delete and I believe Amy originally posted this link for its pictures of the resort, go to this link and it shows what the old decor looks like. Quote: Originally Posted by GEM Hello, ladies! =) Thanks dolfin for your review, too. Love the dinner table and the palm trees with the lights Did you guys bring the sashes for the chairs? And how much extra was the bonfire? I love your smores idea! We might steal it=) Yeah we brought down the chair sashes, they were about $.70 a piece instead of $5 a piece thru the vendor at the resort. The bonfire was $120 for an hour (but lasted longer than that), I thought it would be a nice way to breakup the night since we had such a small group. And I dont mind, steal away, if you need the sticks (30 inches long) for it let me know, I ordered them from a place online. Quote: Originally Posted by flowersfizz28 WOW!!! Dolfin- your wedding sounds amazing and you looked totally beautiful, thanks for the reveiw!!xx Hi girls- have been away for a few weeks, loved catching up on all you plans, Pink- you look stunning in your dress and I love all the special touches for your day xxx Amy- your photos are fab, you look amazing!! love your dress!!! Dolfin and anyone else that can help!! I have a few questions if you dont mind?! 1, were the rooms in block 5 preferred club? and are they the newly decorated rooms? as we are renewing our wedding vows in the gazebo I would like to take your advise and request there!! 2, we are only having a very small ceromony as its me, my husband and our 2 little girls- we were looking at the pier- but im concerned that an intimate dinner may be slightly spoilt by noise from the seaside grill? or is it just filtered background music? our second choice is on the beach? what do you think? 3, we want to have plenty of time for photos on beach-what time would you girls suggest having our ceromony- taking into account sunset and the heat!!? Thanks girls xx 1. No the rooms in building 5 are not all preferred both my self and my parents stayed there and my friend was in building 7 and none of us had the preferred club. And the three rooms i saw were the updated ones (i believe all are and the same with building 4) 2. I think you will only have a problem with noise if there is another wedding going on with a dj at the SSG. Otherwise there was not much noise coming from the SSG on most nights. 3. I would really ask your photographer as they would know best, our ceremony was at 4:30 but didnt start till about 4:45. After family pics we started the bridal party shots at 5:30 and kept going with DH and I till 7:15ish. Sunset was at 7. To me it really started to cool down around 5.

Quote: Originally Posted by amygirl1169 omg, Heather - post the other 14 items!!! LOL I'll email them to you just in case they ever find this

Thanks KPEG! really most of the headaches were from the in-law when i look back on the day. like a lot, wrote an email to my friend about it and there was 15 items! here's one: we ordered room service for myself, sister and mom since we did not have lunch and his family started eating our food when they already had lunch!! I'm so sorry to heard about you FIL, i hope that he is feeling better! Congrats fyniac! Wishing you the best on your wedding day!

thanks everyone! Nadia, the lanterns that were hung were in good condition (well i saw one with a rip in it) but we had about 60 we shared. The WC and staff did not do a good job in taking care of them. Amy, its really no worries about the shared items! in the grand scheme of things I didnt lose any sleep over it and it wasnt too much money. more of a warning for future brides Lizzy, the cost of the private reception on the beach with the silver menu and bar service came to about $560. We had 13 adults and 1 child (half-price). If you want it broken out even more let me know, I have it in excel with formulas.

Sorry it took so long here's the review dolfinlucks wedding review dreams la romana and if you want to just skip to the pro teaser pics by Elisabeth Millay here they are!!! just got them this afternoon and completely delayed me from doing anything else

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!

Wedding Details: 14 Total people Ceremony at 4:30 at the gazebo Reception on the beach at 7:30 Sunkissed Vacations: A++ I used TA Dina from the forum and this was one of the best decisions that I made. It was great to have a DW expert and it defiantly paid off. Even though I had a small group, a bunch of the bookings had changes made after the initial booking (good luck with trying to do that with orbitz) and had a couple of late bookers (like my uncle booking on Monday and leaving Thursday). The best part was that Dina saved me $800! DLR has a policy that you cannot change your wedding package within 90 days of the wedding but the problem is this is stated nowhere, so when I switched my wedding package on day 67 the WC let me downgrade to the free wedding package but said I would have to pay for it! I even asked the WC in March 2009 if I could change my wedding package and she said yes but never mentioned a time frame. Well Dina was not happy with is and fought for me. She had to go up the chain at the resort and in the end got me the free wedding package that I qualified for. I would have never been able to get this resolved without her. Thank you again Dina!! Airport and Continental airlines: A I was stressing out a little bit about this part since I always feel so rushed at the airport to move quickly along and since we had so much stuff to carry and wedding items I was a bit worried that everything wouldn’t make it. In the end everything went smoothly. We each checked in one bag, each had a carry-on suitcase, DH carried on my bouquet in a box inside a re-usable grocery bag and I had my wedding dress and a small purse. There were two other brides on the flight and Continental didn’t let any of us get on early, but I planned for that and picked the last row so I was the first one on but the closet they had was way too small so they suggested to just take up a whole over head storage. It worked out better since when we landed in Punta Cana they also opened up the back door of the plane as well so we were off the plane a lot quicker than I was expecting. Just a reminder, employees at the Punta Cana airport will try to help you 100 feet with your luggage and then want a $10 tip, I forgot to tell my guest to just say no thank you; my parents fell for this. Prieto Tours - Airport Shuttle: A The drive over to DLR wasn’t too bad, about an hour and 15 mins. The plus was we were the only ones on the transfer so we got a private transfer for free. The driver we had was very cautious for DR standards. Dreams La Romana: A- Overall the resort is well laid out and the food was great (comparing to the 1 other AI I have been to). The entire group loved DLR and wanted to stay longer. Some even are planning on a trip back next year. They have so much to do all day long or you can just relax if you want. We did not have a problem with getting a chair at the beach or the pools at any time of the day. There was a slight bump with check in, my TA sent in my room requests and they were not correct at all (not a major issue) but a couple of us switched locations and really was not too much of an issue to do so at the front desk. I would def recommend if you are getting married at the gazebo and using the spa for hair and make-up to be in building 5 as the spa is right at the one end and the gazebo is at the other end . In my opinion the preferred club was not worth the extra money if the rest of your guests are not also there, but I could be wrong since we did not get the preferred club. We just got the standard room and it was perfect. Also the beach was great, pretty blue calm water with tons of fish to see when snorkeling. Two cons: there was no deep end in any of the pools (very minor but would have been nice) and the vendors they have on the resort every other day around the main pool. DH was really annoyed by the vendors and would be a reason for him for not returning since they are located in such a main part of the resort and there so often. The other AI we went to only had them in the lobby once a week. It got to a point we would have to plan a route out of the way to avoid them as some would not take no for an answer. Plus there are vendors right at edge of the resort in and in the little town down the beach that have much better prices. WCs : B+ All my communication was with Tiara up until a week before the wedding and then I was assigned to Yanna (think Tiara handles the larger weddings as there was another wedding the same day with over 50 ppl). The WCs are very busy, but there are a couple of things that could improve. One issue was having different answers for different brides and even different answers for the same bride on different days. Just one example is I got 3 different answers about the non-private reception costing anywhere from being free to about $400 (just $100 less than the private reception!?!). Also, I booked my wedding for gazebo at 4:30 over a year before the wedding but never confirmed the reception location until three weeks before the wedding when I submitted the wedding questionnaire. When the other bride had her meeting with Tiara, Tiara told her that I was at the beach for both the ceremony and reception so the other bride switched her wedding ceremony to the gazebo for a 5:30 ceremony. This doesn’t make any sense at all since I never even questioned about changed the ceremony location (this was the #1 one reason for picking DLR), the questionnaire had the gazebo written down as the ceremony location and I was sharing gazebo decorations with Amy and Bridget which she knew. Lastly was the missing/broken items that I was sharing (was not a huge deal but would have been nice to use all the items that I paid for). So back to the meeting, Yanna was very friendly and helpful. I gave her all the stuff I brought down, and showed her pictures of everything. The meeting went by so quickly but everything was great in the end. If you want things set up a certain way be very detailed in pictures and instructions. Also I asked my sister to be in charge of the reception set-up and it was great. And asked my SIL to cover the gazebo, which she did a good job at supervising. Spa at DLR: B I booked my hair and make-up and my sister’s back in Feb but the other wedding that day already booked hers and she had a lot of ppl getting their hair done so getting a time that worked was a bit of a issue and cause some stress. I don’t want to get too much into the details as I think this is an issue that rarely happens, but would recommend contacting the spa directly beforehand especially if you have a wedding in April or May as this is their busiest time. In the end I was very happy with my hair and so was my sister. The make-up was ok. Because there was so many ppl getting their hair done, I believe the woman that normally does it was so busy with hair, so different girl did it and took forever since she didn’t know where any of the make-up was and never put on fake lashes before. I had the right one put on my left eye and 3 tries later the right eye was good to go but had to be taken off before the reception as the right one was coming off. The plus was after every step she asked me if it was ok, which was good because she did my eyebrows and whoa! I had her take the color off right away. Because of this I was running about 30-45 mins late but my photographer had built in enough time. Also you get a 15% discount on anything from the spa so I put my sister’s hair and make-up under my room to save $21. My sister and I with our hair and make-up done by the spa Ceremony: B+ Everything was set up perfectly except I wanted about 5-10 more paper lanterns in the gazebo (not sure if more did not get hung since the other wedding was so close to mine and they had to completely change over the space or if that was all the paper lanterns that where left in good condition) and was missing the starfish for the chairs and hanging in the gazebo but in the end this was a minor issue and did not ruin the wedding. Yanna had the speakers and mic set up, DH just got to the ceremony site 15 mins beforehand and went over what to play and when and all went perfectly. We had Elke from the spa perform the ceremony; it was $50 and would definitely recommend this option. I gave Yanna my ceremony script at our meeting. Elke has an accent but it’s not hard to understand her in my opinion. After we walked down the aisle we only had about 5 mins in front of the gazebo for pics as they had to completely change over the space. I would have like another 10 mins to take in the space as ceremony just flies by and had complete tunnel vision. I had to look at family pictures to see what details were missing. Also we did start the ceremony a bit late; I’m not sure why since DH got to the gazebo at 4:15 and I was in my room at 4:20 like Yanna instructed. I believe Yanna came to my room around 4:40. Not a big deal though. Ceremony set up

Quote: Originally Posted by nsimpson Dolfinluck - thanks for the quick response and for the heads up regarding credit card conversions! I'm a little nervous about the rooms though...I'd really like for all my guests to be in the newer rooms but from what you ladies are saying, it seems like you have to book preferred club to get that 'luxury'! We were in building 5 and were not in the preferred club and had a friend in building 7 and was not in it as well. I think they are slowing re-doing all the other rooms. The older rooms are not terrible they are more of a Caribbean decor with wicker. Quote: Originally Posted by KPEG Hi girls! Missed you all! We're back from our week at DLR. Regarding the resort, there was some good and some bad things. The wedding itself was good but there were some last minute things that may make some brides uneasy. We have only been back one day so I'm still doing laundry and getting things back in order but I will have a review and hopefully pics up soon! (pics for sure once I can get the 1000s of pics organized off our cameras!) Dolfinluck, wish we could have met! I think my brothers-in-law may have walked up to see what was going on on the beach the night of your wedding! When they came back and told me it was a wedding, my brain finally clicked that it was yours! I had too much going on that Saturday night when we arrived. Hope your wedding was fab! Congrats KPEG!! i hear you on getting everything back in order, i took off of work thur and friday last week to get everything good again. I wish we could of met up as well. cant wait to see some pics and a review! I should have my review up later today!

Not sure which dreams you are looking at but a lot of brides at Dreams La Romana got the free package and then rented out the Sea Side Grill restaurant for $1000 for the reception (including food and drinks). It was a lot cheap to do this option and just add on the extras that you want.

Congrats Hjack!!! great review and lovely pics!

Quote: Originally Posted by nsimpson Dolfinluck -I'm waiting with bated breath because I know your review will be just awesome Quick questions, 1. did your TA arrange to have everyone in the 'newer' rooms? 2. were the older rooms (yellow decor) really bad or were they average in your opinion? 3. How and when did you settle your wedding tab? Did you have to pay cash for everything before the wedding? Welcome Emma! Thanks! Have most of the review done but waiting on some pics from my sister (she is coming over later). but in the mean time 1. i sent the requests to my TA and she forwarded them on to the correct person but when we got there everyone was in building 2 & 3 instead of 4 & 5. DH wanted us to be in building 5 once he saw the location of the gazebo so I would not have to walk so far. I didnt care as much but he went to the front desk a couple of hours after we checked in and we got changed within 5 mins. I was so happy that he did so as I thought the room looked a lot better. A couple of other ppl switched locations and wasnt a big deal to do so. 2. I thought the decor in the older rooms was ok but the newer rooms are more modern. My sister might have taken a pic of her room as she was in building 3. I'll post one if she took one. 3. In my meeting with Yanna, she said the wedding would be billed to my room and i would pay at check out. I had her total it up right then so there were no surprises. And at check out i paid the bill with my credit card. Side note, if you pay in cash you will pay a couple of dollars less b/c when i paid with my cc they changed it in to pesos at a slightly lower rate. Its not much, like for our couple's massage it was $200 but when I got home and checked my online statement it says $204. Not that big of a deal but thought i would let you know.

Quote: Originally Posted by EmmaHartel Hello ladies! I'm planning my wedding at DLR for next May. I noticed quite a few of you talked or are talking about bringing your centerpieces and other decorations with you - has anyone shipped or thought about shipping their decor? With how expensive it is to bring extra luggage on the flight I was thinking it might be less expensive to ship it all, but I'd like to know if anyone has tried the shipping option. I'm also looking for opinions on using the pier for my ceremony. I've only seen one photo of the pier, but the thought of being married right on the water seems amazing! Thanks! I didnt ship anything down but know people have since i saw a couple of boxes in Tiara and Yanna's office. I would just double check what you can and cannot ship. There have been a couple of brides that have had their boxes stopped in customs and were burned for having something they shouldnt. Also if you have anyone that is active military coming with you I would see if they would bring some stuff down with them as most airlines lets them check 3 bags for free (if not more).

Quote: Originally Posted by JoNewhams I've heard loads and loads of mixed reviews about the rooms, is it true their all the same apart from the views? I know for a fact building 2 and 3 have the older decor while building 4, 5 & 7 are the updated ones. My sister's & SIL rooms (in building 2 & 3) also had a musty smell but nothing a candle didnt take care of, you are in a tropical climate. Quote: Originally Posted by VallieR pink petals...your stuff looks awsome! NancM thanks for the luck, I will need it. Talk about drama the week before the wedding, my FH fell on his face the night of his bachleor party...19 sutures and a broken nose...seriously I couldn't believe it! I was at work when it happened I am a nurse in the ER and he and his guys all showed up...I was ready to kill! fyniac, hopefully we will get to meet. Thank you everyone for all your help OMG Vallie!! i would of killed them! DH did step on a sea urchin the morning of the wedding but thank god he was able to walk with no problem

pink petals- love all your ideas! i got my flowers from angels as well and loved them! they are from approval photo for Fri. Mar 26. my photographers didnt even know they were fake until after the bridal party shot when one of them said that the flowers where holding up great in the heat.

Quote: Originally Posted by jackie_c thanks so much for posting ladies, I only have a few months to go and am really thinking of getting the bose sound dock. The rental will be at least 2 or 300, so I might as well spend 400 and have speakers I can keep after, or sell after the wedding. I'm worried they might be hard to carry, are they huge? I'll have to stop in at Bestbuy and check 'em out. It wasnt big at all, fit right in one of our carry on suite cases and just wrap a towel around it.

We used the portable bose sound dock for the reception. we were on the beach and it worked perfectly. It was very loud, still could hear the music 50 ft away and could still make it louder. we didnt use it for the ceremony as the resort had a mic and speakers for us to use free of charge.

Quote: Originally Posted by saza175 do you guys know if the dresses run true to size? I have small back and medium waist measurements, but hips measurement is def a large haha... would I go off my largest measurement (hip) or would I go off of waist up? i think it all depends on the dress, i ordered the same size i wear in jeans but mine was a a-line dress. if i didnt get an a-line i would def had to go up a size or two as my hips are big.

We'll we are back! thanks for all the well wishes! the wedding was great, a couple of bumps in the road but nothing major. we did the wedding ceremony at the gazebo and reception on the beach with the bonfire for the last hour. I will post a full review with pics soon (need to get some from family and pro photographer). would def recommend being in building 5 as the spa is at one end and the gazebo is at the other end. you dont have to be in the preferred club to be there.

Well i'm off to DLR tomorrow morning, thanks to all you girls for your help!! Will have a review when i get back!

I used to watch it as the place is 5 mins away from my parents house, was hoping to see ppl i knew on it. But since learning from a friend that goes there is all fake (all except the owners are actors) i dont really have too much interest in it anymore.

Go to weather underground and they have a trip planner and you can put in a location and time frame and they will show you what the weather was for the past couple of years. i was great for me deciding when to go.