msredbird51

Quote: Originally Posted by sungoddess_08 I got some really bad news today My grandmother has breast cancer and needs to get her breast removed.( So sorry to hear that. My thoughts and prayers to you and our family. Don't stress the small wedding stuff too much, concentrate on helping your grandmother through this. Your fiance and family will help you pull everything for the wedding together.

Hi. Congrats! I'm still pretty new myself, but I can give some insight on how my fiance decided on our location. We knew we wanted Caribbean, so that first step was easy. We each named three or four islands/countries we were interested, highlighting our top two. Being that those two matched for us, it was pretty easy to pick from there--ease of legal requirements and which destination would be more affordable for our guests.

Hey everyone. I'm still wondering if you ladies can remember how long it was from the time you asked Carolina about the availability of your wedding date and when she got back to you. It's been two weeks since we sent her an email asking that question. I've heard from her once saying she just needed to talk to the judge to confirm. Also, a travel agent who is working with us and is trying to get our business has called Carolina twice. Both times she's told the TA that she just had to talk to the judge and "it would be tomorrow or the next day" when she would do that. Did it take this long for you all to get confirmation of the wedding date availability? We'd book literally right now if we could just get this confirmation. My fiance and I are both getting really frustrated. So much so that this weekend we began looking at other options in the DR, as well as other countries altogether. The Grand Palladium is by far our first choice though, so I just don't know what to do.

Quote: Originally Posted by rgonzalez_83 Welcome!! Great to have another mid-westerner going to Punta Cana. And I appreciate that u are a Cardinals fan-I HATE THE CUBS!! and the cardinals are their biggest rival (and I have a crush on Pujols Okay, focusing now.... I would suggest that you get the date confirmed first, there are a limited # of weddings per day. The travel is very easy to coordinate once you have a date. I would also recommend using Apple Vacations or Funjet to help with a group discount rate and arrange for different #of day packaages for your guests. I am using Apple through a TA and it's been great. They arrange for the airfare, hotel, and bus to and from the hotel (no need to worry about taxis). Rebecca lol, I'm Glad to see another Cubs hater here, too! Ready for the season to start. Go Cards! Thanks for the welcome and advice. We've got a couple of agents pricing quotes for us and I've advised them all to use Apple, so I'm glad to hear someone else recommends them. We're still waiting to hear from Carolina with a confirmation of the wedding date. How long did girls have to wait for that?

Just wanted to pop in and tell everyone how much I love this program! All my life I was so not a runner. I couldn't run 30 seconds without getting winded and giving up. The elliptical, now she was my friend, but running, she hated me! However, I've always had this pipe dream to become a "runner". So last summer I started this program exactly nine weeks before a 5K--exactly the length of the program, how handy, lol. The ramping up of the running in intervals really worked for me. Not only did I complete the program AND my first 5K (at a 10 minute mile pace, my ultimate goal , but I also kept running after the program and 5K were over. I got up to around 4-5 miles per session. I was also in by far the best shape of my life. That was true by the end of week 5. Running kicks your body into shape faster than anything! Late fall I seriously strained my hip flexor using some machine at the gym and had to take a very long time off. That was right before the holidays and winter, and well, I just lost motivation to starting pounding the pavement again. I've finally found my motivation and figured I don't want to push it, so I'm starting with the Couch to 5K again. Feeling good already! Not sure if anyone uses it, but I love the podcasts here. Pump you up music, that counts down the change from walk to run and changes music at each interval. Makes it no thinking involved! I just put the podcasts on my iPod and use it with my Nike+ for iPod, which tracks mileage, time and calories burned. Perfect! If you start this program, stick with it. You'll see great results. Good luck ladies!

Quote: Originally Posted by caribbeanLover I am not sure if I welcomed you, I am terrible sorry. Congrats on the big engagment, it's so exciting!!! It's def important to wait for that, what she is mostly likely doing is waiting from the judge for a confirmation of date. Good luck on getting your dateKeep us posted!! Thanks for the congrats and warm welcome! I did get an email from Carolina today saying she is waiting to hear from the judge. I just hope she hears in the next two or three days. I really want to get this booked this week! lol, I am not a good person in waiting!

Thanks, ladies. I figured waiting for the confirmation from Carolina was the way to go. It's just hard to wait though, especially when we're so excited and ready to book! I really hope she gets back to me tomorrow!

Hi girls. Let me first start off by introducing myself. I'm Dana, from St. Louis. My fiance, Mike, and I got engaged two weeks. We knew long before we ever got engaged that a destination wedding was what we wanted to do. So we were researching and trying to pick out a spot within 24 hours of our engagement (That's how long it took to spread the word to our parents and siblings and make sure they were officially onboard. Otherwise, it would've been immediately, lol.). We decided on Punta Cana in November 2010 rather quickly. Once we made that decision we researched resorts and fell in love with the Grand Palladium. So I think that's what we've decided on. Along with perusing other threads on this site, I've read back through every single post and page in this thread, and I can't tell you how helpful this thread has already been to me! However, we have not booked yet because we have one question. Well, we have many, many questions, which I'll post at a later date. Our most pressing question though is if we can/should book the travel before we have confirmation that our target date, or a date within 1-2 days of it, is available to get married. I have a HUGE fear of booking all of this travel and then being told, "sorry, no times are available then". I sent an email to Carolina at PC on Friday with this question (asking if we book travel first and if our date(s) are available) and have not heard back from yet. Reading through this thread I see that sometimes it can take her awhile to get back to you with answers to your emails. So I'm waiting, but also wonder how long to wait. So I'm wondering......did you girls book your travel first, and then hope the wedding date would be available, or did you get confirmation on wedding date availability first? Thanks! Dana

Thanks again for the welcomes everyone! Has any anyone else had/is having troubles with travel agents taking awhile to get quotes and information to you? I've talked to several TAs so far and only had one get back to me, and the prices she quoted me are ridiculously high. I've found them for almost half of her prices doing my own research. It's been a couple of days now since I originally spoke with some of them and I've still yet to hear anything. I'm trying to figure out if I'm just impatient, or if it really does take this long.

Thanks so much for the warm welcome and congratulations. It's really appreciated!

Thanks so much for the welcome ladies! I will certainly be using this site a lot. I'm finding that figuring out where and how to start planning this is a bit overwhelming. I'm currently trying very hard to find a travel agent who I can trust to just take it over for me. Here's to hoping that goes well.

Hello everyone! Just wanted to say hi. I'm Dana. My fiance (Mike) and I just got engaged last weekend. I couldn't be more excited, still glowing, actually. But we're so excited and are already diving in on the planning. Well, attempting to dive in. We're planning (or rather hoping to plan) a destination wedding in the Dominican, Punta Cana area, for the week before Thanksgiving. Our target wedding date is November 16, 2010. Hopefully, all goes according to plan, because my mind is so overwhelmed with the "ahhhhhh, where do I start with this?" emotions. lol At any rate, hello and mucho congrats to the other brides out there!