Ana Alvarez

My daughter's wedding was a great sucess. Michael did all the pictures and Greg did the wedding video. It was money worth paying for. We just received the edited pictures and the one we asked for him to do, he did: them standing at the Infinity Pool!!!

Hi, The pics were taken by Michael (Photoshop @the Riu) and they were all beautiful! It all depends which area you pic for your reception and or party. Email me at angelo201@comcast.net and I'll you our link to the pics. Ana

Nothing was planned because we never received any answers to our emails. If you have emails confirming your pool side reception, bring them. But what I think is that the WC's are trying to do things as they come up. Maybe by now they (when we went to the office there were 2 girls as WC's) have caught up with what Chandlyn left behind. Don't forget that they have 3-4 weddings a day (except for Sunday's). I would keep emailing Antoinette by forwarding your emails with Chandlyn. Ana

Our wedding was July 10th and Antoinette was our WC. She had been on the job 2 weeks and she gave us a lot of freebies. But we think the reason was because Chandlyn NEVER contacted us & we sent emails to all their websites and NO ONE answered us. We were very worried when we left New Jersey not knowing what to expect when we got there (we had 34 adults and 3 children). She gave us the steel drum for free for the ceremony and the white chairs. The only problem was that we wanted the reception at Mammee Bay and everything was already booked so we ended at Seagrape (BUT she gave us the Mammee Bay menu!). Also, we rented to play our CD's and we thought we could dance there. Not so, there was another wedding having their music on the beach right below and we had to combine our dancing with theirs. Overall, we were happy with the wedding and we do recommend Michael for the wedding pictures and Greg for the video shoot. We have great pictures and the video was worth the money. Regards, Ana (mother of the bride)

Well, our daughter gets married there NEXT Saturday. No wonder we have not received 1 email. At this point I will definately take ALL my 2009 emails-because I don't have 1 for 2010. Very un-professional. I'm sending RIU an email today about this. Thanks a lot!!!!!!

Hi Marie, My daughter gets married in a week and no emails AT ALL from Chandlyn. We have 8 questions that we have emailed since June 3rd-no reply. I'm going to ask you one and hope you can help us out. 1) Is there a pressing service for her gown & the guys outfits inside the RIU? Thanks again, Ana

Pics were great! 1 more ?, some people said building 1 (3rd floor) is the best; it's that true? Our daughter gets married July 10th & your review was excellent. Ana

Marie, this was the best review ever!! Our daughter Stacey is getting married there July 10th. Your review made the decision for us NOT to buy a cake. Also we are picking Mamme Bay. Tell me more about your reception near the sea grape. We plan to rent equipment to play CD's & of course the speakers. Thanks for all your help, Ana (NJ)

Quote: Originally Posted by kris I would like to start of my review by talking first of all about Jamaica. back in elementary school when all the other kids were writing about growing up to be astronauts and doctors, I was writing about being married to a jamaican and living in Jamaica!!! Obviously neither of those things came true for me but I had HUGE expectations going there and it exceeded every one of them ! First of all the driving....KICKS ASS! Why brake for people when you can tail them for 2 minutes with your brights on, hammer on your horn and pass them into on-coming traffic! I honestly felt safer in vehicles there than I do here with people braking every 5 seconds haha. Also where else in the world will you find signs like "only fools break safety rules" and "drive, ride and walk good" or bars named "rehab bar", " get drunk bar" and "the Bob Marley bar and lawn" AMAZING! The people there are the nicest people I have ever met in my life! You will not regret choosing Jamaica! We had 43 people with us and not one person had a complaint! TRAVEL AGENT: A I used Janelle Nekola at Boulevard travel in Calgary. She was very helpful. If your someone who constantly needs to be in contact with your travel agent I wouldn't recommend her because she was only in the office 3 days a week but she always responded as quick as she could and in the end everything turned out perfect so I would definitely use her again. FLIGHT: A+ We booked the entire trip through Sunquest and they were great. We ended up flying with Air Transat. They were also great. Our entire group was able to get seats together and they let me hang my dress in the flight attendants closet. Our flight was on time and our hotel transfer was ready immediately to take us to the hotel. HOTEL: A ROR was amazing. It was HUGE! Chris and I booked a junior suite (in building1) and the rest of our group had regular rooms (in building 3) I kind of wish that we just got a regular room to be closer to everyone because we did ALOT of walking back and forth. Our room was nice but we barely spent any time in it anyways so I don't think I would do it again. As far as problems with the hotel, everything that people warned us about happened to us. I went through about 20 card keys, our toilet leaked the entire 1st week we stayed there and I never got given face cloths when the maid came. This sucked but honestly it didn't bother us to much because we were having soooo much fun we didn't let it get to us. FOOD: B+ I thought the food was pretty good. You can't really have huge expectations with buffet style food and I thought they did a pretty decent job. The best meal of the day was definitely breakfast!!!!!!!!!!!! I wish they had that going 24 hours! I'm for sure going through french toast and eggs withdrawl right now. The only restaurants we tried were the mammee bay steakhouse which was really good but you should order your steak rarer than you actually want it because it was always overcooked. We also tried the asian which I wasn't a big fan of but it was ok. WEDDING DAY:A+ I was so worried I would have terrible weather on my wedding day and woke up to not one cloud in the sky. It was the hottest, clearest, least windy day of my trip, I couldn't have asked for a better day! I was also soooooooooooo nervous the day of the wedding (I am talking couldn't eat breakfast felt like throwing up nervous) At 10am every day on the beach they do a 40 minute workout, I decided in my nervous state that this would be a great idea so all my girlfriends and I did it and laughed so hard it made me feel 10000 times better! HAIR: A++++++++++ After the workout we headed to Renova Spa to get our hair done. This is the one thing I was most terrified about because my hair is REDICULOUS in humidity..it goes fuzzy and curly. I had a hair trial before I left aand showed them a picture and Melrose did a WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY better job than my trial. She was awesome. The girls in the spa were hilarious by the way. My photographer was in there taking pictures and the kept sending him out to bring us all pina colada's and every time he came back in the would try hitting on him. That appointment definitely eased the rest of my nerves! FLOWERS: A I ordered my flowers from Tai Flora. I got 4 bridesmaid bouquets, a bridal bouquet and a bag of petals for 450.00. They showed up perfect. My only complaint was that they were 1 hour late!!! That's right, my ceremony was supposed to start at 2pm and we didn't head down until 3. (I'm not going to lie this got me a little panicked but it all worked out in the end) CEREMONY: A+ Other than it starting late it turned out great. Chandlyn played all the right music and Niki helped to get everyone in the right positions and walking down the isle at the right time. I had all the parents and bridesmaids walk out to Canon D and then I walked down to "Foxy Lady." For all the girls with 2 dad's this is how I did it and It's not how we planned it but it worked out SOOO well! My brother walked me to the isle which was great because I was so nervous before walking, so my brother and I started singing "fresh prince of Belair" which was exactly what I needed haha. Once we got to the isle, I was met by both my dad's and had one on each arm. It was so much less awkward this way. We did our recessional to "Love man" It was Perfect!!! Oh and our minister was Sheldon, he was awesome! RECEPTION:A++++ We booked the private poolside reception. I brought all my own table decorations and favor's as well as rented paper lanterns from Tai Flora (these were $466 and worth every penny) We also rented a projector because we had a slideshow and I got the DJ for 4 hours. I am so happy I went with the dj because he was so funny and almost became our MC which was fine by me because he was awesome! The food at the reception was AMAZING!!!! The best food we had the entire time we were there hands down!!!!! It was buffet style bbq menu and had the best potatoes/corn I had ever tasted! A couple nights before we met the 2 best waiters and bartender EVER!!!!! Karlton, Renford and Devon. I requested that they be the ones to do our wedding and was lucky enough to get a yes from the restaurant manager. They seriously made our night!!! I will Never forget it because of them. The funniest most random thing happened at the end of the night to when everything ended. The dj gave us the mike and we sang OH Canada and they sang the Jamaican national anthem...I know this probably sounds weird to you but it was HILARIOUS! I mean come on...what kind of losers do that on their wedding day...LOL! WEDDING COORDINATOR: A+ Chandlyn was great. She was really good about responding to emails all until 2 weeks before we left but that's ok it all worked out. We did have a welcome dinner booked at St.Ann's which she had not set up but luckily I had my email confirming it and the waiters set us up a table and it all worked out. She was very hard to find in the first couple days. We arrived on a friday and I never saw/met up with her until monday. She did a fantastic job for how hard she is worked. EXCURSIONS: A We did alot of excursions. I wont go into great detail but I'll let you know what we did. Cool Runnings (Dunn's river falls/ snorkelling tour): This was really fun! Our entire group came on this, we all drank and danced the whole time. Luminous lagoon: This was pretty cool but kind of a long drive for not much. Bob Marley Jeep Safari tour: This tour was awesome. The drive was so fun...you are seriously on a one way road with 2 way traffic going 120 km/h around 180 degree turns. We also got to frolic through and entire marijuana field which I'm pretty sure is not part of the tour and that not many people see it but it was sweet. Black River/ Appleton Rum/ YS Falls tour: This was really cool but reaaaaaallllly long! You leave at 7:30 in the morning and don't get back until 9pm. Most of it is spent in the bus on winding roads. I don't think I would do this again but you got to see some cool stuff. Negril Sunset Tour: This tour was awesome! We got to spend most of the day on the beach then got to watch the sunset at Ricks Cafe. I would definitely do this again. And if you ever go to the palms hotel get the pineapple ginger mojito, it was the best drink Ive EVER had haha! Well I think that's all, I will post pics soon!!! My daughter is getting married on July 10th. Was the DJ worth the $? Ana

Thanks for all the info!! We definately want your link to see the pics. My daughter's wedding is July 10th, so any tidbits will help.

Thanks for all the tips! Who made the wedding cake? Ana

Quick ? for anyone that has been married there. Do you have to do anything after or before for this marriage cert to be valid in the USA? Ana

I'll be glad to receive any info for my daughter's upcoming wedding! Thank you. Ana