downtownlagirl

You should be able do do it with Ustream or similar as long as you have a webcam at the wedding, or a videographer with a web feed. Should be pretty easy and you can set it up yourself.

I got my heart set on including sarongs in our welcome bags and I searched searched searched for good-quality sarongs at a decent price. Best I could get even with bulk buys online was around $9-10 each and as our guest list swelled my heart was dropping! One of my bridesmaids and I took a walk to the downtown fashion district. There's a store on the northeast corner of Santee and Olympic- on Santee one shop away from Olympic- I bought 35 sarongs for $3.50 each!!! They are $6 individually but you can bargain. They are really good quality- certainly as good or better than the $10-$15 ones online! They will set a chic tone for the bags. Thought I'd pay it forward

As soon as I know what we are shipping down I will post it and find out how long the hotel will hold. Then maybe anything that's in demand could be passed on from BDW bride to bride!

We are well over (like 20%) what I had set as our budget - and well under what FI expected!! I had a panic attack/meltdown and he actually said "Oh, that's way less than I thought we'd end up spending!" So I guess that's all good But we DO have more people than we thought- I thought 40-48 and it's 60. So that is part of it.

Mrsrice11, that's awesome. I will keep you updated on exactly what we do have and how long the hotel will hold it. I am still 50/50 on whether we are doing parasols.

Hi ladies, We are bringing down a number of decor items for our April 30 wedding in Montego Bay. Most of this is NOT coming home with us. We had considered donating it but so far haven't gotten recommendations on how to do this from our WC. Right now it looks as though we will have: enough clean (sanitized, no surprises!) driftwood to run down the center of a 35 foot long table; 24-48 mercury glass candle holders, globes and votives; 75 good-quality black napkins; ten white feather pomanders with black ribbon; and possibly a whole bunch of white paper parasols. If our florist does not take it all in trade, which she may, I am happy to donate to another bride who could pick it up at our hotel after the wedding. I don't know how long they will be happy to hold it, so it's probably best for an early May bride. This is "pay it forward" time...of course if you want to chip in that is much appreciated, but mainly I do not want it all to go to waste if it could make someone else happy!

Astef, it's totally doable. We are doing the whole thing at a very nice resort with no great deals for $25K for 60 guests not including our attire - on which we went overboard so no need to discuss ;-) But I could cut $5k in open bar, flowers, and photography without too much pain. You will be fine!

Unfortunately there is no way to take fireworks on a commercial airplane. It's against federal law. I am not sure about private planes.

We decided we prefer to do our legal ceremony in Jamaica if at all possible - but we need a rabbi in that case. I searched the threads and nothing recent. I've heard rumors that there is a rabbi in Kingston but have found no information.... We know one in St. Thomas but he officiated at my FIL's funeral, so I think that will be a sad association, plus of course it is expensive to fly him. Anyone? Bueller?

My planner has worked with him and likes him but honestly, I was not a fan of his portfolio. The price is not that crazy low, though - you should be able to get that price from a number of on-island photogs. I know Sandy May quoted me around that. I actually sent Alain's website and Sandy's website to all my bridesmaids, told them one was my fave and one was my planner's fave (but did NOT say which) and asked them to choose. It was unanimous on Sandy. (I ended up flying in a photographer from Chicago.) But...if you love Alain's work.....there are a ton of shots on his website so you should be able to get a good idea! Good luck.

I think it's sparklers for us! But did you ship them directly to Jamaica?

DizzyDiamond, that is so funny....one of my bridesmaids (we don't really have them, but she will be helping me dress etc) lives in one of those buildings! Small world. I am further east in the Arts District. We are getting married at Round Hill in Montego Bay on April 30. Any good wedding finds in DTLA yet? I need sarongs ;-) Catererbride, I personally wouldn't risk that on a commercial airplane...but if you have any guests flying in private...well....

You can do it but the fireworks need to be imported three months in advance minimum - that is what I was told by our hotel. I REALLY want fireworks! The costs I was given range from $5000 for five minutes to $8,500 for three minutes, which is too high for our budget. If ANYBODY has gotten a lower quote I'd love to know about it. (Although I am now within the three month rage - OMG!)

We aren't doing a deposit for rooms - we have 25 rooms held for three nights each and if we don't release 60 days before we owe a portion (that is a LOT of money!) - but we are for sure releasing 60 days before! I don't like the upfront deposit unless you aren't paying any deposit for the venue or food.

We are doing really nice OOT bags so no favors - it doesn't make sense to me because everyone's going back to a hotel room right on property - not like they will take a souvenir home that night - and I don't want to give them anything extra to pack. beaches - I was thinking about tattoos too! A lot of our guests are from our Burning Man camp and we often do tattoos for that....so it would be a kind of fun thing. Let me know if you find a resource! TIA!

Welcome! I'm getting married April 30 in MoBay so we are both in the countdown time!!

Yes he is!!!

This is great! Could I have your opinions please re OOT bags- which is more eco-friendly - palm leaf bags or naturaln cotton totes that will be reusable (we have planned a design that you could carry in the supermarket and no-one would know it was a wedding bag). I just don't know which is the greener choice. TIA!

So am I! We would walk together but he wants the "big reveal".

We are using our website for all the complex info with the added benefit of having an FAQ (and we attached a Facebook group so people can get to know one another beforehand). We DID do invitations but we used tree-free paper (cotton paper made from recycled garments- it looks perfect, not at all "recycly") printed by I kid you not WIND-POWERED letterpress.....we're being as conscious as we can of "trinkets" that will just become landfill for our guests...we are launching wish lanterns that are totally biodegradable. We have thought about purchasing carbon offsets or using them as favors, but we need to choose a company that actually really does offset your carbon footprint (reviews of many are not great). I was going to go all the way and put a carbon footprint calculator on the website, but I realized that in all honesty, there is no way we can come close to effectively offsetting the wedding travel, so it would be a bit hypocritical. I think mostly we are going to stay conscious of the environment in our whole lives, not just our wedding, and that is probably the most meaningful thing we can do.

Catererbride, I was having a hard time finding any information on weddings at my venue, and I was getting a bit nervous as the hotel WC was really unresponsive...then I ran miraculously into a bride who had married there and had a very cool, different event. It is her planner I am using and she is setting it all up from a distance. She has done multiple weddings at the venue, knows the WC is difficult, has done many, many weddings in Jamaica overall and has it wired. Knows all the vendors. But I was hoping to also have someone like pussbackfoot to be here for the day and maybe provide flowers and rentals. Now I need to assess whether I can rely on the distant planner and the WC. It must be hard to be an event pro and deal with all the flaky people for your own event. I run a marketing company and I know it amazes me that people don't get back swiftly. I've spent so many nights up late finishing proposals in order to respond quickly and get the business!

I found a website called reggaetreats.com that will ship or deliver to your hotel. My planner has used them before. Probably a little more expensive than the supermarket but if you're not going to have time to get to one, might be a good option.

We are finally close to finalizing all our vendors, but we are stumped on music. Step by step we have tried to avoid the "beach wedding " cliches 9they are beautiful, just not for us). My FI loves classical and jazz and I would REALLY like to find a great classical soloist, duo, or trio for the ceremony, and a jazz band or brass band for the reception. I know they exist - there is a Jamaica Symphony Orchestra and there are schools- but they don't have a referral service. Has anyone booked "different" music for their big day/ TIA!!

Hello destination brides - just a quick note that we are flying in our AMAZING photographers for our April 30, 2011 wedding in Montego Bay. They have a unique style - modern aesthetic, vintage sensibility, with saturation and interesting color treatments - it might not be for everyone- but if your date is close to ours and you love them as much as we do and want to split their airfare - let me know very soon. Their website is www.chennergy.com . Right now we are just flying them in on Friday and out on Monday or Tuesday but we haven't finalized the tickets. There are 2 photographers and they can share a room. Thought it was worth mentioning!

Here is my pussbackfoot experience: I was really excited to find pussbackfoot - they seemed to be the "only game in town" with a truly high bar for design. Aiesha seems great, fun and personable and has lovely taste, but unfortunately it took a very, very long time to get a quote from her - actually, a proposal- I never did get a quote. I let her know that we were in a time crunch and needed to decide on a planner (this was December - the wedding was in 4 1/2 months!). Finally I told her I needed to decide right after Christmas (this was like a week before Xmas). I got an amazing proposal from her on New Year's Eve. The proposal, which I had waited a month for, had absolutely no pricing attached. She had a copy of our budget - she knew we were in a time crunch - and not even a mention of $. I asked if this would fit in the budget and she said "it would probably go over". At that point I hired a planner in NY to work at a distance. In retrospect if she had just told me it would take so long, or warned me that there would not even be pricing information for her services, I would have gone ahead with someone else and would have saved some time. I still think the pussbackfoot aesthetic is great, but I asked for costings in case we wanted to hire them as planners on the ground or for decor - and I have heard absolutely nothing since. I get "island time", but not when my wedding date is four months away.