amygirl1169

Congrats! Everything looks fab! * What a small world, I went to high school with one of the girls at your shower!

Great job, love the centrepieces!!!

*bump*! This stunning dress is still for sale!

Hi ladies! Well I'm not one for hanging onto material items and I'd love to see my beloved wedding dress enjoyed by another bride! I'm selling my Mori Lee Voyage line ivory/antique white sleek satin dress. It's originally a bridal size 14, but I wear a street size 8-10. I paid $550 + $250 for alterations. (I had a bustle put in, hemmed slightly - I'm 5'6" and wore 3" heels, had the bust and hips taken in as well) It's got beautiful bead work under the ruched bust and a sleek body with a slight mermaid flair at the bottom and approx 1' train, with satin covered buttons all the way down. Simple, elegant and stunning! I wore it with a birdcage veil and orchid flower/feather fascinator. I had it professionally cleaned and it came out perfectly! I'm asking $375Cdn/$350US + shipping from Canada. Below are some pics. Please PM me with any questions!

Quote: Originally Posted by nsimpson Now that I'm getting down to the wire, I've got more detailed questions it seems! I'm going with the "free" wedding and wanted to know if anyone else went with that option as well. -- I'm hoping that they will include wine with dinner and not at an extra price. Did any of you encounter this? Nadia, We went with the free package and had wine at no extra charge. We even had a few bottles of booze (tequila, sambuca, etc.) also no charge, they were super accommodating to us.

wow, I'm sorry to hear about all your room issues and that you did not LOVE the beach! It almost sounds like we were at a different resort! haha! Most important is that it cleared up for your ceremony and you're a happily married woman now!

omg, Heather - post the other 14 items!!! LOL

OMG ok, the links opened up. A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!!!!! I can't believe how incredible the pics are!!! Excellent choice!

Awesome review, Heather!! I LOVE your reception set up!!! I can't open the photography blog, but the pics you posted look great! Sorry the shared items weren't in the best condition. I didn't even check them out on my day or realize that some were missing! Congrats on being a MRS! xoxo

I agree with Jenne - only bother with the preferred club if your other guests are going preferred as well. Otherwise, you will be slightly far from where they are. I had my parents and the bridal party upgraded to the preferred club and then some of our other guests chose to upgrade themselves, so it was nice for us to be in the preferred side as well. Plus you get to use the uber quiet, relaxing preferred club pool. The free wifi, 10% spa discount and premium booze was nice too but you can live without. Some of our guests just borrowed our black preferred club keys to get the bright yellow preferred club towels in order to use the pool area - then no one asks you any questions or even checks into whether you're preferred or not!

Happy Wedding Day, Heather!!!! (dolfinluck)

Ahhh yes... I remember those... they were awful!

I'm pretty sure they were candlelit. It looked very romantic. I used HDC Photo, but the photos I saw by the resort photog looked really cool as well. I'm not sure what their pricing is like, but HDC was a really good price - (you also have to pay $60 day pass fee for them to come on the property though).

I think the pier would be GREAT for a small group dinner. They actually sell private lobster dinners which are held on the pier. One is set up at the end of the pier and one at the beginning. I think if it were for my wedding, I would ask that no other dinners be held on the pier that night (they probably do that anyway). I don't think there is electricity on the pier though, so not sure about music. There is electricity at the gazebo though. They have this area where the 'dj' is set up with these big speakers (I believe there is an electrical box stationed there) about 10' from the gazebo near one of the trees. If there is a bit of a breeze on the pier, it would be very welcomed, TRUST ME! Especially as we get closer to the summer months... even the people on the resort said that the weather just gets hotter and hotter.

WOW, amazing stuff, Amy!! Happy wedding day!! xo

**Btw, I forgot to mention in my review that there was actually a 2nd wedding on my day and I didn't even know until we were headed to the reception and I looked over and there was a bride & groom at one of the nearby restaurants (giving us cut-eye, I might add!). There were SO many brides down there that haven't heard of this forum, so don't be surprised if you meet other girls that you hadn't met online. But, moral of this story is that the other wedding in no way affected or interfered with my day and wouldn't have even know unless I happened to see them standing at the restuarant. Since I booked pretty early, I think I had first choice of locations for the ceremony/reception..

That's strange... I didn't know of any other packages other than what Dreams offers. I would double check that with your TA and Tiara. I just told Tiara I wanted bright pink and orange and she showed up to my room with a fabulous bouquet of lillies and roses. Wrapped in white ribbon. I loved it. But in the extreme heat, it did wilt by the end of the day and in that aspect I wished I had of brought real touch bouquets...

Quote: Originally Posted by Pink_Petals Amy congrats and thank you for the great review once again. I had a quick question in regards to your cake! It was absolutely beautiful! Could you give me some info on it (are those flowers real provided by the resort? If now, where did you get them from? Where did you get your cake topper? What flavor did you get for the cake and did you provide Tiara with a picture of it? Hi, I just asked Tiara to keep the cake simple with no decorations on it and I provided the flowers (real touch purchased from Michael's, approx $17/stem). My sister made the cake topper from foam core and then painted it and added the Swarovski crystals, and I asked Tiara to just use toothpicks to stick it in. I got the vanilla flavour. It was good from what I remember, but we hardly ate any of it and I just gave it to the servers to take home. I paid extra for the extra pounds, but it wasn't necessary. Although, I think the larger cake looked good with the large cake topper.

Quote: Originally Posted by dolfinluck Question for all the girls that already got married, did the resort have a cake cutter for you to use? Thanks! Yes, they did. Well basically you use the cake server to cut the cake.

http://bestdestinationwedding.com/fo...7/#post1282550

Hi ladies! We’re back and officially married! I want to start off by saying that the one thing I want to stress the most is that you needn’t stress at all! I was like all of you, a major stressball before my wedding, but let me assure you its totally unnecessary! Ok, aside the fact that DH forgot the most important suitcase at home and I only discovered it after standing in line to check in at the airport for an hour… but someone’s mom came to the rescue and picked it up from my house and drove it to the airport, she’s a lifesaver!!! Overall, it was a fabulous vacation and wedding. Don’t forget that your guests are on vacation too and their whole trip does not revolve around your wedding or you, so just do your thing and let them do theirs as much as they want to. Whenever something would go wrong or different than we expected, we would just laugh and say ‘it’s all good!’ Our guests stayed for 1 week and we stayed for 10 days – Canadian ladies, you likely know how difficult it is to book longer trips than 7 days, so we basically paid a fortune for those 3 extra days. Dreams La Romana A++++ I am very happy with our selection of resort. The bus ride from Punta Cana airport was actually a lot of fun and flew by. We stopped for cervezas and booze and then many pee breaks lol. The resort is beautiful. The grounds are immaculate, majority of rooms were renovated and modern (to tell you the truth, I didn’t see the unrenovated ones, but I think some of our guests mentioned the newer buildings were nicer). Check in was a little rocky, but everything got sorted out in time.. With 45 people, I knew there would be a few issues… We didn’t get upgraded to the ‘suite’ until day 4 when we finally contacted our travel agent to make a complaint – we weren’t going to bother because I didn’t want to have to pack up all our stuff and move, but to have all the girls in my room getting ready would’ve been impossible in the smaller room and heck I brought 45 guests with me, we should get upgraded! I’m glad we did move, since we were staying 10 days, it was awesome to have that suite… and when else will you likely get a pimp suite like that?? The staff at this resort really try sooo hard to make your vacation a great experience. If you’re wondering what they say to you, they’re saying: It’s a pleasure. We tipped at most meals, not because we felt we had to, but because we wanted to. The service is top notch. The food is excellent at this resort. Don’t worry about not eating fruits, vegetables, meats, they’re all fantastic. The water is fine to drink, but as with any resort, do not the tap water… only drink the bottled water or filtered water they serve at the restaurants. We stayed for 10 nights and still weren’t able to try all the restaurants! My favourite was the SSG, we went there for lunch most days and the wedding dinner and then our last night dinner there, it is beautiful scenery. Also, don’t miss the Jungle, it’s the outdoor restaurant, but bring bug spray!! I wasn’t a big fan on the French restaurant, but most of my guests loved it. 24 hour room service is also an awesome feature of this resort. We ordered that many times when we couldn’t make it to breakfast or lunch or for a midnight snack! If you order the nachos, be sure to ask for pico de gallo or chopped tomatoes (basically their salsa). The buffet is also great and open most of the day and for late night snacks too (good for after the disco!). Most of us had a little tummy trouble on the trip, but when you’re in a foreign country and majorly changing your diet and lifestyle so drastically, it’s BOUND to happen! It doesn’t mean the resort is not good or the food is poor. Take some immodium and get on with it! The disco is also pretty good. We went there for our bachelor/ette parties and had a blast (from what I remember! Lol) Most of the young people head there at night. My group spread out between the beach, preferred club pool and the swim up bar pool (also known as the pee pool, because no one ever gets out to use the washroom!) it’s where the party’s at during the daytime! The Wedding: Pretty much once I got to the resort, the last thing I wanted to do was stress about the wedding or miss out on some of the fun because I was doing wedding stuff. So I pretty much just went with the flow and I think it turned out pretty perfectly. I had my ceremony at the gazebo (highly recommended, very private and picturesque) and reception at SSG (again, just beautiful setting!) Tiara – A: Tiara is a really lovely woman. She helped me make some wedding decisions (although I think she didn’t want to push me too much in one direction, so she was very objective). She took my decorations and set everything up as I requested. We had the rehearsal the morning before the wedding and it went smoothly. Tiara offered suggestions, but really lets you decide how things should go. In some aspects, I wish she was a little more vocal on what everyone should/shouldn’t be doing I upgraded to the wooden chairs, but on the day of, the rental company didn’t have them available, so I got the tiffany chairs, which were just fine with me. I was under the impression that if you rent those for the day, you get them for ceremony and reception. However, when I showed up to the reception, the plastic chairs with the sashes were set up. I was pretty disappointed but Tiara said these would be more comfortable for my guests and if I really wanted to, she would change them. But since most of my guests were already seated, I wasn’t about to make them get up just to change the chairs. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t a huge deal, I just don’t think I should’ve had to rent them for the full day if I don’t get to use them for the full day. Tiara stayed for the majority of the reception and directed the DJ. Dreams DJ – C: Tiara had downloaded most of the songs I had requested for the DJ to play, but during dinner, the same 4-5 songs were pretty much played on loop. Then during dancing, some older songs were being played… eventually one of my guests just sat with the dj and picked out the songs to be played. I would’ve been better off to set up my computer or iPod and make playlists (this was one of the things I had planned to do once I got to the resort, but didn’t get around to… oh well…!). Also make sure to give the DJ plenty of warning when you plan to do your 1st dance or need a special song. I had our MC announce the father-daughter dance but then the DJ didn’t even flinch with changing the song, so I realized he didn’t understand what I wanted and had to go over and explain it to him. Photographer: HDC Photo: B+ Francisco is the photographer that covers the DLR weddings for HDC. He was a great guy and got the standard wedding poses, but I had really wanted more candid type shots. I also thought for some reason that we booked him for 4 hours, as 3 hours really seemed to fly by. I would definitely recommend to book them for longer. I had wanted to do shots in the spa and wooden walkway areas, but with the extreme heat on my wedding day, everyone was losing patience for photos… and DH was having some stomach issues. They sent another guy, Juan, 2 days later with a cd with all our photos, some were already edited and looked great… however, some of the photos had been too photoshopped and they had blurred out DH sister’s face in about 3 of them, because she was squinting. I can’t show her those photos, as she’ll be crushed that she looks like a ghostface. We reviewed them, and then a day later had our 75 printed photos and our dvd with music. Overall, it’s good, and I'm happy with most of our pictures. Dreams Spa: D (for hair, makeup and nails) A++(for massage) I did do a hair trial and it turned out great!!! … however, on the day of it was a different story! (same hairdresser) but I ended up with a hot cross bun glued to the side of my head! I quickly left and headed straight to my room to try to figure out how to fix it… Luckily I’m fairly inclined in this area and decided not to freak out about it, just wanted to figure out how to fix it. I took out all the pins and brushed out all the tiny curls and re-curled each piece to try to make it look more normal. Then I re-pinned it all back in loosely. It eventually turned out exactly how I wanted it and I spoke to the preferred club manager and they removed the salon charges from my bill. My mom and bridesmaids also got their hair done and it was again, glued down but ok. My mom got her makeup done as well and when she showed up in my room to help us get ready that’s when I almost freaked… I had to fix her makeup as they used a really bright gold colour on her eyes that was hideous and even went straight up into her eyebrows. I tried to remove most of it and tone it down with normal colours, but I still was not happy with the look, but really didn’t have time to fix it. Either do a trial with the makeup or go for a few lessons at MAC beforehand and just do it yourself. Earlier in the week I had also gotten my toes re-painted and the polish used was kind of clumpy and smudged later that day even though I was really careful with it (you know when the polish is so thick it just never dries?), so I had to redo that myself as well. I do highly recommend the couples massage. We sent my parents for one and then on our honeymoon we went as well. I had Hector and it was the most amazing massage I’ve ever had, but not for the shy!!! He really got almost every nook and cranny! My parents also said it was the best massage they’d ever had. DH thought it was just ok, but I think the bed was not that ergonomically designed (when you’re lying face down, it’s easy for your knee to become disjointed and uncomfortable). Seavis Tours (Alexander): A+++++++++++++++++++++++++ Thank you so much to Heather (dolphinluck) for recommending me to Seavis/ Alexander. We booked a daytime snorkeling/snuba excursion to Saona Island and then a sunset cruise for the following day. Alexander and his crew were incredible!!! Very knowledgeable about the history and wildlife, they made our 2 excursions amazing experiences for all my guests. They went way above and beyond for our group and even hung out with some of our guests in the evenings. There was a large music festival happening in Bayahibe and they were very helpful in showing us around. The daytime trip to Saona was awesome, we took 2 speed boats to the island and they stopped along the way to show us neat things and explain the history. Then at the island we did snorkeling and snuba and had lunch (which was REALLY good, everyone said it was fantastic food). The beach is a little rocky when first trying to step in, water shoes would’ve been useful here, but if you have flippers on, then it won’t bother you. On the way back we stopped in shallow water and had a few more drinks and did a toast. The sunset cruise was great, the crew taught us how to dance a few dances and led us in group dances all night long. The sun was fogged over, but the moon was an incredible view. Again, everyone had a fabulous time, but I suggest a long dress or shorts for this one as my light dress kept getting blown in the wind! The resort was NOT happy that I booked with Seavis because they tend to charge much more and tried to talk me out of it, saying it wasn’t safe, etc etc… they’re really just looking to make money, so don’t let them bother you. Overall the wedding and vacation was fantastic and all of our guests had a great time. You’re in paradise with all your loved ones, so don’t sweat the small stuff and just enjoy your time down there. Hope that’s everything… pm me if you have any questions! Here are a few pics courtesy of HDC:

Hi ladies! Just wanted to check in and say Hello from DLR! Its so much more amazing here than I could've imagined and everyone is having a blast. Although I'm excited for the big day tomorrow, it's really funny how as soon as I got here, the last thing I felt like doing is more wedding planning, so after my meeting and rehearsal with Tiara, I am just going with the flow and I'm sure it'll all turn out fine! And if it doesn't... I'm not going to sweat the small stuff After all, we're in paradise with all our loved ones and will soon be married! (oh and we finally got upgraded to our suite, so we're VERY happy today)!!

GREAT planning thread! We got engaged on the same day and are getting married on the same day, how funny!! I love your bouquet and centrepieces, now I'm wishing I did that too! Oh and the 'guestbook' is awesome! So unique!!

hehehe I think there should be a sticky thread on MIL stories.. (maybe there is?) I'm sure we could all share a story or two... Luckily I hardly see my dear FMIL as she lives in another province, but the first time I went to visit and meet her, we were all sitting around the dinner table playing cards and FI said, 'So what do you think of Amy?' Most normal people would just lie regardless how they felt... but she says: 'Well, to be honest... she's too quiet for my liking'. :-0 I was too quiet because the entire trip I was trying to hide in our room with the windows open to escape from the nasty cigarette smoke that filled their entire house, that they tried to cover up with industrial sized airfreshners in every room that sprayed on you every 30 seconds... I should've told her what I thought of her right back!

Quote: Originally Posted by GEM Hey Amy! Your journal looks great! We actually have a lot of similar tastes for our weddings:) I love all the DIY things you did...I was also thinking of making little survival kits for my girls...I got them Coach wristlets yesterday ($30 at the outlet store!) but wanted to do something else. I might also make them Bridesmaid t-shirts. Your dress is beautiful! And, I also want to do my hair in a similar way. The bubbles are a great idea! And your shoes are great! I was planning on getting turquoise ones from David's Bridal but I am gonna definitely check out zappos, first. Oh, I was also planning on doing the mug thing! My fiance and I went to DR last year and we saw all these people with Bubba Kegs....so last summer when we went to Mexico we brought some with us and they are great! Plus, everyone knows why you are there which I love:) Where did you get yours from? I have been looking online and can only seem to find ones for companies. Thank you so much and I hope you have an amazing time!!! xo Thanks, Gem! I got my mugs from DiscountMugs.com. They were the best price I could find, even though I had to pay duties to ship to Canada. But - order extras because I was short on my shipment and they would only refund the difference, not give me more mugs I got the bags from Old Navy last year... I stupidly didn't get myself one and they didn't make them this year... booooo... Heather - I have no idea where I found all the time! LOL It's seriously been like a part time job doing this... what will I do with all my spare time when it's done hahaha I am really looking forward to giving up the TA part of this whole experience... and trust me, my guests better not come to me with all their little issues when we're at the resort. I am going to lose it if that happens.