kerrij

My dress was actually so much cleaner after TTD the next day! The bottom gets so dirty from cruisin around all day night, but a swim in the pool, ocean, etc will clean it right up! or...a shower!

So here I am reading the first couple pages of responses...which started off as "Did you meet in a Bar"...I'm reading them and loving the stories wondering if I know anyone who married after meeting in a bar....DUH! ME!!! hahah This baby-brain is really something! so forgetful! Â DH and i met at a bar in Revelstoke BC (5 hrs from the city we both were living in!)...we were there for a ball tournament and he was there with his friends and I was there with my friends. He ended up buying me a drink and we hung out and chatted all night long! We went back to the same tourney for our one year anniversary with a bunch of friends and had to go party it up at the bar we met! For our two year anniversary we happened to be driving through the town so we stopped in the bar and let him "buy me a drink" and had lunch. It's a fun place to have met and enjoy going back occassionally! I'm the luckiest girl in the world to have found such a kind hearted loving man!

Hi....Wondering if any of you "brides to be" are still around the site at all?? how's married life? i can't believe it's been almost 6 months! 3 more months until our BABY is here!! hehehe Yes Jamaica was extra good to us! Â Hope all is well....

I did both...faxed and emailed. Â It WILL drive you crazy!! Once you book stop looking at prices! it made me mental too...but i did end up lucking out and (I got our group rates in Aug for our March wedding) the end of Nov i found that Nolitours (we booked sunquest or something) had the rates for about 1500 when our group rate was 1700 and online prices were about 2000....i was PO'd. i told my TA to get Nolitours group rate which was about 200 less!...we probably had 40 people booked at this point so i told my TA to tell sunquest that our group would leave (and loose our 200 deposit) and go to Nolitours (which would still have saved our peeps 200 even though they would loose 200) if they didn't do something about our price....so they gave everyone an extra 200 off to stay with them. so we stayed! so if you find a wicked saves like that...do what i did! Â we did ours during our dance and we chose our own music...but Beverly can set up a sound system (we didn't have one set up cause we had the steel drums) for the ceremony and she'll play your dance/garter/etc songs there. Â For your Birth Cert you need your original one...like the one that's about the size of a full size paper, not the wallet size one. if you don't have it you can order it from the provincial govt. DHs took about 2-3 weeks to get in and maybe $60. (For a BC one anyway). Beverly didn't seem to care about when we got the birth certs to her...i had to just send it cause i knew it was 30 days....a week before the wedding i asked her if she got our certificates and she said, she hasn't looked yet....so if you don't get it to her by the 30 days it's no biggie...just as long as you bring it to the resort. Â Welcome Deanna!!

Even though my wedding was 6 months ago, I'm still on this site often and I still rave about BDW! I refer all my DW friends to come here and check out the site. I HONESTLY could not have pulled off my wedding as perfectly and as beautifully as it was without BDW. All the girls who post their information, their DIY, their recommendations, ideas, suggestions, tips, everything was so awesome!! The moderators do an AMAZING job at keeping this site clean and organized. (with that said, I hope I am posting in the right spot!!) Now that I'm preggies I've been on the search for a similar website to this one, and I haven't been able to find one! Can you guys please start a Best Mama to Be site now please?! hehehe I'm serious! The site I go on the most now for babies is The Bump (the knot's baby site) and it's soooo bad!! there are a gazillion new threads started per day, not organized like this where you are supposed to search for your question and read and add to the existing thread...there, you just start a thread whenever you want and no one moderates it. also, the girls there are SO MEAN!! in probably half of the threads I read on there some girl has to make a hurtful or judgemental comment and it can get nasty and girls will gang up on the original thread starter and trash her!! I don't post on there very often because of that. I get my info i need and that's it. I miss my easy, happy, wonderful land of BDW...so please make a baby site  So thank you thank you thank you again for being here for me and all the other brides!! this IS THE BEST SITE EVER!!  thank you! xoxox

Thanks guys!! Mekanbar, no dumb questions! But yes we danced in the gazebo. we had 50 guests and most people were dancing. It doesn't look super huge in the pictures but once you get a ton of people in there you'll see that it is plenty big enough! even if you had a 100 guests, not everyone will dance all the time...it's basically the size of a regular wedding dance floor...I'll post a pic of us dancing...ok it's below.... see there are about 20 of us girls dancing to this song and look at how much room there is still! and there is another level a step down (where at the ceremony we had our parents sit) where my BM is in yellow, it is about 5-7 ft wide all the way around, so perfect for the non-dancers to hang out. we even brought some chairs up for people to sit and chat on that 2nd level and as well as down where the chairs are at the ceremony lots of people mingled there and that is where the bar was too. Unfortunately the sand down by the gazebo is very coarse and you wouldn't want to dance on it...i was excited for dancing barefoot in the sand and was so diappointed when i found out it wouldn't happen, but the gazebo worked out even BETTER!! and was perfect for the bouquet and garter toss! There are lights down there, in the gazebo and down the walk way (see in pic above of walk way a couple light stands, def gives off enough light so you can see where you are walking. lol  StephAli when is your wedding date?! it's going to be here before we both know it!! I would talk to Beverly about blue flowers, i'm sure she can get them for you! she'll do whatever you want, seriously!

We didn't register and we didn't expect gifts cause it was a DW but we did want money if we were to get anything Just to help pay for our wedding....mainly from the ILs...they gave the other son lots of moola, and we got nada! haha so the wedding cost us more out of our own pocket then we expected it would. Â Have you regretted your decision at all as to who you asked to be your BMs/MOH?

Well if you are supposed to get them in 2 days they didn't tell me that! Would have been nice to go home with the pics...but considering i never even got to speak to the photog before or after, how would i know when to get them. hahaha Infact i didn't think that he even showed up for the wedding until later when i said to DH that I'm glad we didn't go with the hotel photog cause he didn't even show up...but apparently he did, just for the ceremony. But Beverly told me a month after our wedding that she'd get him to send me the disk of pics...and still nothing yet. so i emailed her again today. hopefully i get them!! Â I'm sure you won't have a prob finding someon for $750 if you just want a few hours of pics. Â so funny...call jamaica, call canada...thanks guys! hahah but i did confirm it is fully legal worldwide Yay!

Oh boo! it didn't include my comments of each pic!  TTD!! soooo fun! my dress was more clean after all the swimming and playing in the sand we did! and I got the entire wedding party to join in too!  My welcome letter which included the wedding ceremony info, time, BMs GMs, locations etc...and a list of all our guests and how they were related to us, a thank you, a resort map, and details for the games i planned for our guests. Put these in the OOT bags that we handed out on the bus.  we didn't pay extra for flowers for the guys or girls. the girls had parasols for the walk down the aisle and fans for in the gazebo! was so cheap and looked awesome!  So pretty and didn't even add any extra decorations other than what was included.  Steel drums! a must! i joined in for a little jam session! lol  Our cake included in the package! you get to pick the colors and flavors when you get there.  Look at how far out the gazebo is from all the half naked people! haha this is what sold me on the resort!  Nice long walk down the aisle  Oops and my bouquet pic didn't go through...this is my bouquet that was included in the package!! LOVED IT!

Hi Brides!! Wow I just got caught up on the last 14 pages of posts! oy! good thing it's quite at work today! heheheh  I'm so excited for everyone! i was just looking at my aunts disk of pics of our wedding week...you guys are going to LOVE IT!!!  I've said this before and i'm going to say it again and I want you all to live by this....NO WORRIES!!! No problem! Just RELAX!! seriously, you don't need to worry about anything for your wedding day! If you really want to go all out and do center pieces and extra decorations and stuff, you're just going to stress yourself out! I wanted a relaxing easy beach wedding, one i wouldn't stress about (because really, if you do all that stuff that you would normally do at home you're going to stress yourself out because not knowing every detail of the venues and not being able to talk to Beverly any time you want, will kill you and make this so much harder!!) and that's what i got... i didn't worry about anything (other than preping the OOT bags and a couple games i organized for our group) and the wedding was honestly more beautiful and special than i could imagine! I also did write our own ceremony script cause the one that Rev Owen Watson has was awful and he's totally willing to do whatever you want.  Poster above was worried about the horrible wedding bouquet pic....i'm positive that is just one of the many choices you can have! (I'll see if i can post a pic of my bouquet now that it's this new website) my FREE bouquet was amazing! full of red roses and purple orchids. which happened to match my 33 yr old flower girls dress perfectly! there were probably 15 styles to choose from, from the long cascading 80s style bouquets to just a beautfiul handful of flowers. So before you go outside...confirm with Beverly that she still has the cataloque of choices...which i'm sure she still does.  It's been almost 6 months since my wedding and i STILL don't have my pics from the photographer that was included in my package and i still haven't recieved my wedding certificate....BUT you do get a copy of your certificate at the wedding (or after if you don't want to worry about it) that you can use to change your name legally, etc. For the Alberta bride who was wondering about if it's legal here...yes it is...it's just not registered but that didn't matter to us. it's LEGAL and that's what matters....it's the same as if you got married in BC, it's legal, and it's registered in BC, but not registered in AB. Just call the govt or embassy and they'll fill you in!  There were some worries about your wedding dress on the plane...we flew with Air Transat and they didn't have anywhere for us to put my dress and we were in first class...we had to store it in the overhead bins! I had to fold mine in half and lay it up top. ugh! but the dress was fine i wasn't worried about it! But a bride in the regular part of the plane was NOT allowed to put her dress up front. silly! but i guess they get so many brides that they can't accommodate all dresses. they should figure that out!  GBP only had ONE wedding per day when we were there 6 months ago....and not even everyday...there were 3 the whole week we were there....and the funniest part, all 3 of us brides were named Kerri and our color was yellow! hahah sure made you feel more special being one of a few weddings taking place where most resorts have 3 weddings per day!  So please just relax....don't worry about extra decor or center peices or programs or anything of that (fans are prob a nice touch for the ceremony but there is pretty much always a light breeze anyway) you are in Jamaica and it's so beautfiul you should just let that be your decor...we didn't do any decorations at all and everyone said it was the most beautiful wedding they've been too.  I'll try to be back more to see if there is anything i can help you guys with but being almost 6 months preggers I'm on baby websites these days....yup, do that math, that means Weddingmoon Baby! we call him/her our Rasta Bean. heheh  Good luck!!

Love these! giggling the entire time! my worst gift would prob have to be our wedding gift from DH's Mom and step dad who we are pretty close with...we got an oval shaped painted pottery plate from mexico with a mexican wedding on it...it was so ugly and had nothing to do with us, other than we were getting married...but in Jamaica! and 2 champagne glasses that are so tall they don't fit in our cupboards. it was a bit of a shock considering just 2 years prior they gave his brother 10k for his wedding gift! and we get about $30 spent on us. at least round it up to $50! HAHA gee thanks guys! my mom keeps saying, oh no they will give you a real gift...no mom, they won't! lol

Again Karla...great job on this thread! I have about 5 new recipes i'm about to print off and try over the next few weeks! thank you for sharing everyone! Quote: Originally Posted by Tammy Host this is part of my 5 ingredients or less recipes...super easy and fool proof: Tammy's Culinary Adventures Blog Archive Crispy 5 Spice Chicken Drumsticks I'm going to try this one with chicken wings! i love homemade wings and this looks awesome!

I would have had been lost without BDW!!! major kudos to all the members and moderators. My wedding wouldn't have been nearly as amazing as it was without it! thank youuuu! what do you think of your new last name? IF you are even changing it...are you?

Karla I love this thread!! this will be my new fav as i'm ALWAYS trying to think of new dinner ideas. I'll post better recipes later....but this is one i love and is so easy and it's always in my house...Ground beef all cooked up with a sprinkle of Lawreys seasoning salt. mix a can of condensed mushroom soup with 3/4 can milk with the beef...mix up good and heat...can add onion and celery too. Cook up rice pasta or potatoes and serve the mush/beef on top of the rice/pasta/pots! yummy and easy to make.

To the girl with the flower girl worry...what about asking one of your friends to do be your grown up flower girl and then you don't have to worry about it at all! hehehe my Flower Girl was 33! and i was sooooo glad that i had asked her because shortly after on of the GM decided they would bring their 15 months beauuutiful daughter, but i didn't want a baby in my wedding, so i was sooo relieved to have a good excuse, I already had a flower girl! Confession: I bought a 4 pack of McCann's mini pizza's the other day and went home and ate the whole box before my DH got home from work!! lol When he came home I wasn't hungry for dinner but couldn't tell him why! oooh the cravings you get when you're preg. ...Mmmm...i want some mini pizza's please!

Thanks!!!!!!

I told Beverly she really should have the hotel put up a wedding website for her for the GBP and have all this information on there so she doesn't have a million brides asking a zillion questions. it would be sooooo helpful!

Quote: Originally Posted by soontobemrsdow Kerrij thanks so much for coming back to us wondering brides here and congrats on your wedding! lol...I've had a hard time keeping in touch with beverly but since we're still so far out I'm not too worried but maybe you can answer my question then about the gazebo reception i hear everyone talking about. How exactly does it work? You have to pay extra for it and extra to bring some booze down there? Also i saw everyones bringing their own ipods which I plan on doing but how did it turn out for your ceremony music? I'm worried they wont change the songs when needed/they'll play the wrong ones, you know. Not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things but still important. ya i had a hard time getting contact from Beverly too. at first she was really good at responding but then she just quit. i ended up just making a list of Qs and calling and talking to DeshonJay/the assistant. The gazebo...you get it for 2 hours, i forget the price, $400 maybe? including the DJ. to have booze there you need to hire the bartender, which you do through beverly when you sit down with her at the resort. (so exciting just thinking about it!) i think it is like $15-20/person...but worth it because the bars are waaaaay too far from the gazebo. but i wonder if you can just buy a couple bottles of booze and some pop and take it down? Ipod for ceremony music...i just hired the steel drum band which in my mind is THE way to go! you're in jamaica...why not make it feel even more like jamaica...i even chose the song i wanted them to play, they can play so many. i had pachelbel canon d for me walking down the aisle and One Love by BobMarley for our signing song (we had One Love engraved in our wedding bands) it was worth every dime! i think $400? but i do believe you can request beverly have a speaker system for your ipod...there is something there already because they use a mic for the ceremony. and maybe ask a friend just to keep an eye on the ipod and have them change songs as needed? Sorry guys i would LOOOOVE to post more pics of the wedding...but i am only ever on the computer at work and our work just blocked us from all the best websites, including ones like photobucket, so i can't post pics now. If you want to check out all my pics...feel free to look for me on FB...let me know you're from here and i'll accept your friend req, and you can go look at ALL my wedding pics and of the resort and stuff! kerri jones mccrady Beverly IS WONDERFUL!! and i know it's so hard not hearing from her...but once you get there everything is done in like 20 mins and you'll be wondering to yourself, why did i even worry about any of this before?!! she'll do pretty much ANYTHING you want!

WOW!! there are so many GBP brides now!! Sorry i've been MIA for a while...but i do check back and try to help answer questions...i know it's hard when you don't know what to expect and no one who's been married there is around to answer...so i try to come back often!! So excited for you girls! i want to come to all of your weddings!!! heck, i wanna move there! lol Quote: Originally Posted by StephAli Hi Mekanabr, I decided on the sunshine package b/c its not much different then the blissful and is cheaper. I went through a travel agent to book everything and what we did was increase the price by $35per person so that it helps cover the additional plates...after all the flights are paid for the travel agent will refund me the "extra" money and I will bring that with me to the resort and give that money to Beverly....or put it on my credit card....I also confirmed that the date I wanted was available first, b/c I knew we wanted the specific date. Once she said that it was available I told the travel agent(s) what resort I wanted and then waited for them to get back to me...then I went with the best price! Hope this helps! Good Luck with the move!!!! Hmmm...I'm not sure if charging your guests an extra $35 is wrong/sneaky or if it's absolutely BRILLIANT!?! hahah i kinda wish i had thought of that because you don't really get any wedding gifts yet you still have to pay for all the guests meals, which im sure 99% of them don't even know that we pay out of our pocket for them still. but i prob would have felt bad doing it...unless i told them all that that extra charge was goign on there. Quote: Originally Posted by jennypenny23 StephAli- What is your ceremony date?? I have Feb 1st @ 3 pm booked with Beverly The thing that I am wondering about now (and maybe kerrij, you can clarify) is the thing about the "Gold Club" bracelets... I have a friend who went to this resort last year and she was saying that there are WAY more benefits if you upgrade to "gold"... I heard that you are then guaranteed the ala carte reservations, get the room safe for free, and room service?? I don't know if there is anything else or even if it is worth upgrading... We are planning on asking TA about this... Also- we really hope we get to stay in a really nice room!! Did any other GBP Jamaica brides have room upgrades? And how did you go about securing or 'requesting' them I read after this post that someone said absolutely upgrade....i fully DISAGREE!! soooo not worth the extra money! (IMO i've always been a penny pincher too though) Bride/Groom get upgraded to Gold upon arrival, or after meeting Beverly...but we didn't even get use of our package, so i'm gald we didn't apy for it. yes you get an extra dinner reservation and you get your dinners prebooked BUT we didn't go to any of them...we always joined in with other people from our group. or we hit up the awesome buffet. the room isn't an upgrade other than up higher and ocean view, but you can get that anyway if you just ask. all rooms have ocean view, some are just partial though. the room themselves apparently are all the same, no suites or anyting which i was sooooo disappointed with. the one thing i did like was room service...which we used once. it's a super limited menu...was nice to have the option though but not worth $120/person or wahtever it was, i'd rather put that money towards first class which was the same price, and that's what we did for our flights! and the lounge thing was just free internet in a room...who wants the real wordl when you are in JAMAICA!! hahah aaahhhh!!! oh and your own area of the resort for gold members??!! never saw that or heard about it...no idea where it would be. but you'll want to be with your guests anyway! Quote: Originally Posted by jennypenny23 I am so excited about how many GBP Runaway bay Bride-to-be's there are now!!! Looking forward to sharing plans with everyone over the next couple of mths!! Our group rate is secured until June 16th so we will have our full guest list by then!! woohoo!! Congrats!!! Quote: Originally Posted by sunchick31 So I've just returned from our wedding at GBP and this place is absolutely amazing! I am so sad that it's over because I would go back and do it again in a heartbeat! Beverly, the WC, is amazing and an absolute sweetheart! She took care of everything for us! The day couldn't have been more perfect and it's all thanks to her! We had a beautiful, sunny day and she was there with us every step of the way. We had our supper at the Grill Restaurant & the food was delicious! Everyone loved it! We also decided on the reception in the Gazebo where we got married and I would highly recommend that! It is definitely worth it! We brought all of our own music and had the place rockin'! All of our guests said it was the best wedding they have ever attended. I will recommend bringing your own photographer if possible. We didn't do that but luckily we had a few friends with professional cameras. I would have been rather upset if we didn't as the resort photographer didn't show up until the ceremony was over and then he only spent maybe a half hour with us! Luckily we also had a friend with a video camera who captured all our special moments. This resort is absolutely beautiful & spotless! Our room was overlooking the pool & the ocean as were most of our wedding guests' rooms. We couldn't have gotten better treatment! All in all, I would recommend this resort to anyone who is looking for a place to get married! I was so sad to leave it & cannot wait to return for our anniversary. Good Luck to all you future GBP brides! You are in for a treat! Hi Congrats!!!!!!!!!!!! soooo excitign for you!!! wasn't it just the BEST!!! i loved our wedding too!!!!!! And YES the disco music was awful! people even still say how bad it was! we took our own ipod and had a play list and plugged it into the DJs system.

Quote: Originally Posted by Kymbelina Hi Girls! For those that are getting married at the Gran Bahia Principe or have gotten married there, how did you pick your wedding menu? The wedding coordinator gave me menu options, but they are so limited! Either my guests have all chicken, all beef, or all seafood. How do they expect all my guests to agree on ONE dish? Some of my guests like beef, while others like chicken. Picking ONE dish to choose is CRAZY! I'm so stressed! Hey, that's just the way it is with most dinner functions, you get one dinner option, it's really not a big deal. everyone likes chicken...and if they don't...too bad or get a veg dish. we chose all our meals when we got there. i think we got beef for everyone as we are Alberta beef lovers, but i wanted seafood so Beverly ordered me a seafood dish and beef for everyone else. and vegetarian for those who were. I have organized so many functions where i have to choose the menu for 100+ people many times, and no one ever complains. so don't let the menu of all things stress you out! no one will remember afterwards...all they remember is how fun it was! and really if people absolutely hate their meal (which they won't) it's an AI they can run and grab a burger after! no problem!! lol

Quote: Originally Posted by khomac At least you got to enjoy your day. I was throwing up in the room during the dinner and reception. I missed everything except the 20 minute ceremony and pictures. So I know how you feel. I look at everyone's pictures of them toasting, cutting the cake, first dance, father daughter dance, partying on the beach with drinks in hand, sand between their toes, and palm trees in the background and I just cry. Weddings never go exactly as planned. Your friends definitely didn't desert you. They traveled to be there with you on your wedding day! I have 7 VERY close friends and only 1 came! What's done is done. I'll just have to plan an AHR (which I WASN'T going to do because I couldn't afford it) so that I can do it all over again! Kelly, the EXACT same thing happened with my brother at his DW in Dominican. He got food poisoning the night before. He spent the night in my room with me and woke up at 4am barfing all morning, he ended up getting an IV and was in the doc office at the resort until leaving for the ceremony with barf on his undershirt, not even being able to brush his teeth. the doc had to tie his tie. it was awful. he was literally green during the ceremony and went straight to bed after a couple of pictures. he missed the dinner, dance, everything. i spent the night with him and missed most of everythign too, but the bride drank her sorrows away and showed up at 1am back to their room. they were already planning an AHR which was sooooo great because then he got to experience everything and she got to have her groom with her. in a few years, it will be a good story to tell, especially if you have the AHR and get to do all the special stuff. sorry your day was spent in your room shitty, i know.

Quote: Originally Posted by bsf&jpg I have a few... 1) I dont LOVE my wedd dress. I got it because my family liked it, and it was sord of cheap. But whenever I watch "say yes to the dress" and the brides get all teary because ITS THE ONE, I get bummed out because mine isn't. 2) the FSIL did NOT show up to my bridal shower and I bet its because she's jealous 3) the FSIL is NOT going to the wedding either. And that hurts me because it hurts my FI 4) some of my bestfriends wont go to the wedding because they were not responsible enough to save $75 a month for a couple of months. losers! My mom still to this day,and they've been married almost 40 years, will still say she didn't love her dress...she regrets not getting a dress she loved. if it's not to late...splurge and get yourself that dream dress!! you want to feel absolutely beautiful and you may not if yo udon't love your dress!

Eeek! ok this is my first confession! how did i not see this thread months and months ago?! lol 1: i can't stand my BILs girlfriend...she's is soooo cutesy and annoying and talks like a baby and is even worse when the ILs are around, yet my M&FIL LOVE her and tell me everytime they seem me what an angel she is..so annoying!! can't stand her...and after my DW neither can any of my family or friends stand to be around her. now shes coming to stay with us for 2 nights in a few weeks...exact same days that M&FIL are coming to stay...so you know it will be full on cuteness with that girl! soooo annoying!! 2: i'm scared to see my FIL in a few weeks...haven't talked to him since my DW...he yelled at me 2 days after the wedding (and i still get upset when i think about it 3 months later) cause he was hobbling around on crutches (and had been for 5 months) the entire week and didn't get a wheel chair and yelled at me basiccally because i didnt have it arranged for him....like i didn't have 50 other people and a wedding to attend too. when we saw all of our guests off and were leaving on our honeymoon week...he wouldn't even say goodbye to me, i had to go up to him and he just said...oh right dear, bye. from everyone else it was big hugs and loves and congrats and have funs...from him i didn't even get a 2 armed hug. now he has to come to MY house for a few nights...BOO HOOO!! oh hum!!

Oooh i like the Guess How Big Mommy is!! that is funny! i wouldn't even have an idea of what i am now...imagine how hard it would be when you're full grown! well i guess that only works if you have a prebaby shower!