AngelaandTrevor

Originally Posted by AngRiggs 

 

 

Hi Angela.

I am getting married there this fall. I am also hoping to get the piscis restaurant. What did you do for decorations? Brought your own? I have seem those paper lanterns on some people's pictures.

Thanks

Ang

We brought our own, we ordered a bunch of shells and candles and shooter glasses, we also bought 120 sky lanterns! That was a really big hit!

If you go to u-tube we are on there " angela and trevor wedding " sorry I didn't see this till now!

Hi Andrea, I just got married at the Gran Bahia Principe, I used Devon Shaw as my photographer, he is amazing! I'll put my slide show up so you can see his work! when it comes up just scroll down to wedding photos. We used him for three hours and he charged us $1300.00. We got a slide show for everyone to see our pictures and a beautiful album with about 200 pictures in it! And he sent us a disk of all the pictures he took! Almost every picture he took was amazing! Good luck on your wedding!

 Angela and Trevor

Hi girls! Good luck on all your weddings! I went with Devon Shaw from jamaican wedding photos, he is located in Montego Bay. He charged us $1300.00 for 3 hrs. He went above and beyond as far as pictures go. I put a link up in my first reply, if you click on it and scroll down to our wedding photos there is 6 slide shows! It was well worth the money! The resort we got married in gave 10 free pictures but they weren't near the quality of what Devon did. I wasn't going to get him because of the extra expense but now that I look back I am so happy I did! I wish you all the best in your up coming marriages! Xo Angela

Originally Posted by Trinigrl25 

 

Hi There,

 

I'm getting married on May 1, 2013.  I'm so excited. We're going with the Unforgettable package and hoping to have around 50 guests present.  I'm hoping that someone can help me with a couple of questions:

 

- did anyone get married on the beach? If so, can you please post a picture?

- Did anyone have their reception a the Piscis? If so what what was on the menu?  My fiance and I are thinking of booking the Piscis but not sure if to go with the Italian or Garden Grill menu? Also, do you know it there's an additional cost for the menu andd open bar?

- what about the flowers, boutnieers etc...

 

I know my wedding is a year away but I'm the type of person that wants to know what my options in advance. So any help or advice you can offer will be greatly appreciated.

 

Talk Soon!

 

 

I just had my reception at the Pisces! It was an awesome place and would do it again. The only menu that comes with it is the Italian, which the food was above and beyond! Everyone loved it and we had 72 guests. I paid 1700.00 and it included the dj. They only serve beer and wine and you have to request that they continue to serve after dinner and they will free of charge. If you want hard liquor it extra, what I did was i got everyone to get it at duty free and they will serve it for you, they do charge a corkage fee but its still cheaper and better liquor. And they never charged me but I did tip them well! They stayed open an hour longer than they had to. It was amazing!

Angela and Trevor

Originally Posted by AliandPreston 

 

Hi Angela,

 

I just went through your photos and they are beautiful! I was just wondering where you had your reception? It looks like its on a patio but I thought I read somewhere else that wasn't allowed due to health regulations or something!

Hi Ali, I had it at the Pisces restaurant which is a outside patio, I am so glad I had it there, it was perfect! It was 1700.00 to close it down and have a private party for 4 hrs but the manager let us go for about an hour longer! Food was awesome! Can't say one bad thing about it!

Angela

Originally Posted by belledame 

 

Congratulations Angela,

Your pictures are stunning!! Is the photographer a vendor of the resort?

May I have his name please?

Not sure if your asking me or the other Angela! I used Devon Shaw from Jamaican Wedding Photos, The resort gave me 10 pictures for free, but none of them were very good! I found the resort photographer was following my photographer to learn some shots. And the $250.00 that Chandlyn is asking everybody for "new charge" I refused to pay, as nothing was ever mentioned before I went to the resort. They slipped a note under my door telling me to bring it in cash for my meeting in the morning with Chandlyn. If you complain about all the hidden charges that they have to the manager they will give you discounts.

Angela and Trevor

Originally Posted by IrieBride 

 

Hi Angela - congrats on your wedding! It looked amazing. Can I ask - how much did they charge you to rent Pisces, and was there a min/max # of guests? Did you pay extra for the DJ? Thanks! Sarah

Hi Sarah! I paid 1700.00 for the Pisces the dj was included, I had 72 guests at the wedding!

The rest of the pictures are now downloaded unto the slide show! Angela and Trevor

I am using Devon from Jamaicaweddingphotos.com as well! I've booked him for 3hrs and his price was $1300.00. Devon has been in constant contact with me regarding the wedding! I can't wait for our big day! And to see his amazing work!

Angela

Hi there! I am using Devon from Jamaica Wedding Photos! He is awesome and prices are very reasonable! I am paying $1300.00 for 3 hrs and includes so much! Here is my wedding site that will take you to his web site as well! www.angelaandtrevor.jamaicaweddingphotos.com This is the link that will take you to our wedding pictures. It will be on the web site for one year!

Angela

There is only one place that does the swimming with the horses in Orcho Rios. My email is [email protected] This site won't let me send any attachments. But I have the full list of all activities and pictures of it that I cant send you! They even had my daughter standing bare back on the horse in the water! It was the best experience that we had!

Angela

My family did the horse back/swim on the beach in Orcho Rios last year! It was the best thing we ever did! All the guides are great! Would definately do it again!

What a great review! I am so happy everything went great for you! The pictures are awesome! I can't wait to get married now! You have put my mind at ease! Thank you Angela
 

Originally Posted by futurejohnson 

Hi everybody!!

 

I’m finally married and back from the GBPJ!!  I had the best week of my life so far, and for all you ladies who will be getting married at GBPJ, you made a great choice!

 

I’ve received a lot of helpful information from BDW over the past year, so I will do my best in providing a thorough review in the hopes of “paying it forwardâ€.  So this might be kinda long lol. 

 

Wedding Planner: We dealt with Donnalee for the last few months leading up to the wedding, and we also met with Donnalee the day we arrived at the resort.  Throughout my entire experience with Donnalee, I never had any issues with her being rude, or unhelpful, etc.  On the contrary…she was always very nice and polite, and always had a smile on her face.  So it’s unfortunate that other brides have had issues with her….she was great with us!  There were 2 weddings on my wedding day, so I think Chandlyn was more involved with the other wedding, whereas Donnalee was more involved with mine.  Donnalee was very helpful and ensured that all of my requests were met.  Since I brought my own flowers, she gave me a centrepiece for the head table free-of-charge.  I didn’t bring any decorations for the gazebo or any chair ties, but since my colour was bright pink, the resort had pink tulle on hand and Donnalee ensured that the gazebo and chairs were decorated nicely.  (We originally weren’t planning on doing chair ties, but I’m glad we opted to pay the $2.50/tie because it really made a difference in the pictures.)  Also, we had 4 surprise guests on our wedding day, so even though we hadn’t accounted for them, Donnalee made sure that they were included in our wedding dinner.  (Sidenote: I don’t think she even charged me for the 4 extra people afterwards!)

 

Weather: If you’ve been to the resort, you’ll know that it rains for about 10 minutes every afternoon….no biggy, the grey clouds come and go.  Plus it’s super windy out by the gazebo, so it keeps you cool.  However, 2 hours before our ceremony, it started thunderstorming and it proceeded to downpour for about 1.5 hours.  Totally freaked me out, because I really didn’t want to get married in the lobby.  Chandlyn called me 45 minutes before the ceremony and asked whether to move the wedding to the lobby, so I begged her to wait another half hour because I finally started to see some blue sky in the distance.  Thank goodness I waited, because 10 minutes later, the rain stopped.  Chandlyn and Donnalee quickly set up the chairs by the gazebo, and everything turned out perfect.  Only downside is that the wind stopped dead after the storm, so it was extremely hot and humid.  I stuffed a handkerchief into my wedding bouquet and used it as a sweat napkin throughout the ceremony LOL. 

 

Hair Salon: Loved my hair!  I didn’t even have to show the salon a picture, but they did a great job and the hairspray/freezing spray they used was so crazy heavy-duty, nothing moved all day/night.  

 

Ceremony: We wrote our ceremony script ahead of time, so I sent it down to Donnalee a few days before we left and she gave a copy to the minister.  The minister was awesome and everything turned out perfect, except for a couple things:  1) This is pretty ridiculous, but they don’t stop the poolside entertainment during your ceremony, so throughout my ceremony, I could hear club beats and guys on microphones coming from the pool.  I tuned it out and was off in my own little world, but I know a lot of my guests complained about this afterwards.  I wrote this in my comment card after the wedding, but I’m not sure if this will change in the future. 2) Some stupid kid was snorkeling by the wedding gazebo and at one point, started yelling “SHARK!  SHARK!† Again, I was off in my own little world and didn’t even notice, but a bunch of guests told me afterwards.  Other than those 2 issues, everything was great.  Our ceremony was at 3:15pm (originally 3pm, but there was a slight rain delay), which gave us enough time to take pictures before the sun started setting.  (Sun started setting around 5:15-5:30pm….it was pretty dark by 6pm.) 

 

Cake: Delicious!  We added an extra layer for $40, and we’re so glad we did since we had 65 guests with us.  We chose vanilla, vanilla raspberry, and coconut.  Everybody told us it was delicious.  Downside: We didn’t get any of the extra cake afterwards, which we didn’t care too much about, but it would have been nice to try the other flavours.  I spoke with Donnalee about this a few days later and she felt really bad…she had instructed them to leave it in my fridge after the wedding, but they never did.  Oh well.  If you care about saving the cake, I suggest you bring your own container and have somebody scoop it up for you. 

 

Steel Drum Band: They were awesome!  They played for the entire hour after our ceremony and really added to the Caribbean setting.

 

Dinner: We had our dinner at the Dolce Vita and the menu we chose was: caesar salad with chicken, roasted thyme and squash soup, stuffed chicken and risotto, and tiramisu.  Not many people liked the Caesar salad, so I’d probably avoid ordering that.  Everybody loved the soup, and the chicken was also really good!  Our dinner was supposed to be at the Garden Grill, but when we got to the resort, we found out that the Garden Grill was under renovation so both weddings were held in the Dolce Vita.  Since our wedding group was larger, we were in the main room while the other bride was in the circular room off to the side.  It was a little awkward having 2 weddings in the same restaurant and I felt really bad because our wedding group was a little loud.  We originally planned to do all our wedding speeches at the gazebo after dinner, but the best man brought a bunch of Bristol boards with him with pictures on them, so he asked to do his speech at the restaurant since the lighting was better.  So it was a little awkward because the other wedding probably heard his entire speech, and all the hootin’ and hollerin’ from the pictures. 

 

Reception at the Gazebo:  AMAZING!!!  So so glad we booked out the gazebo and hired the DJ.  We didn’t pay for the bar set-up because I thought it was ridiculous to pay $1,800 for liquor at an all-inclusive resort.  So instead, we just asked Donnalee for a table to be set up in the gazebo with ice and cups, and our groomsmen left the dinner 15 minutes early to set everything up.  We brought our own inflatable palm tree cooler (http://amazingpartystore.com/storefront/productdetail.aspx?idproduct=33301&idcat=2597) which we filled with ice and bottles of pop/mix.  For the liquor, the gift shop sells 26ers for $20USD, which is pretty expensive considering you’re in Jamaica, so one of our groomsmen spoke with a bartender the day before and managed to get 1L bottles of vodka, rum, and whisky for $10/bottle!  Ended up spending $60 on 6 litres of liquor, another $25 on bottles of pop/mix (which we just got at the gift shop), and we had around 60 cans of Caribe beer, which the groomsmen got from the maids since they stocked the mini fridges daily with Caribe.  I think they left her $5USD and a note asking for their fridge to be stocked with beer instead of pop/water.  Worked like a charm!  As for the music, we had an entire playlist prepared on our iPod, but the DJ was awesome so we never even used our playlist!  He played all the newer top 40 hits, and a few requests that we had on our iPod.  The gazebo rental was supposed to be from 8:45-10:45, but our groomsmen kept slipping him money for more music, and we ended up having the gazebo until almost 11:30-11:45!  Everybody had a blast at the gazebo and kept saying it was their favourite part of the night. 

 

All in all, even though there were a few minor hiccups, we had an amazing wedding and our guests kept telling us it was the most beautiful wedding they’d ever been to.  Yes, there were a few things that could have been changed, and I could have complained about a lot of stuff…. (ie. not getting the leftover cake, not getting a room upgrade, or robe/slippers, or a welcome fruit basket, having 2 weddings in the same restaurant, etc), but in the end, that stuff didn’t matter to us.  The resort was beautiful and everything turned out perfect! 

 

Just one tip: Bring Tide-to-Go and make sure you have it handy on the wedding day!!!  I got a bleeding nose when I was back in my room changing for the gazebo reception, and two long streaks of blood fell down my wedding dress.  I quickly took the dress off and used Tide-to-Go, and not one trace of blood is left on my dress.  Amazing!!!  Plus one of my groomsmen spilled red wine on his linen pants, and again, Tide-to-Go erased everything!! 

 

Anyways, I’ll attach a few pictures that our photographer gave to us….we flew him down with us and he took over 6,000 pictures during the entire week.  He edited around 200 while in Jamaica and gave them to us as a teaser, and will be giving us another 1,000 pictures shortly. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jamaica weddings is doing mine the gentlemens name is Devon, their work looks stunning!

Originally Posted by Kristo 

So, I'm in need of a new photographer for my TTD session.  We had hoped to use Merrick, but I left him hanging for too long and he booked another wedding.  Anyone have any suggestions or recommendations on a good photographer?

 

Thanks!

Congrats! You ordered the same meal as I did! I'm glad it was good, I was a little worried now I'm not! Thank you Ladies for letting us all know about your experiences, it really helps out! And calms the nerves. Can't wait to see more pictures! Angela
 

Originally Posted by toesinsand30 

Hi All

 

Just got back the same time as Ann , it was great seeing her down there and getting married very beautiful and touching to say the least.

 

As for my review I will keep it very short and sweet

 

 

 

When we arrived we were part of the 3 buses that came in unfortunately we didnt have golden club so we had to wait in the line up.  We arrived around 1:30pm and our rooms werent ready (no biggy as check in in really 3pm) we rec'd our room after we were finished eating lunch along with the 60 people who we came with for our wedding.  Some rooms were a disaster as it had rained really hard that day and some rooms were flooded due to this, again no biggy as they moved those people to another room as fast as they could (jamaica time remember) so after the first day everyone was safe and sound in their rooms phew !!

 

I met with Chandlyn Sunday at 11am and it took all but 30 minutes to plan the wedding she had all my information in file and in order she was super sweet and knew exactly what she was doing (as she has done I dont know how many weddings) I also spoke with Donelee another day and she was super sweet too, she wasnt rude to any of us and was very helpful when i asked her for information or with questions.

 

Tuesday October 18 was our wedding

and all i can say about it is that it was PERFECT !! i wouldnt change a thing, if i had to pick because of our large group i would have got married at 2pm rather than 3pm but no biggy

 

we hired the steel drum band to play at the ceremony and i had written vows for the minister to read and it was PERFECT

 

We also did our cutting of the cake and had it with the champagne, along with our first dance and parents dances as well.  After that we took tons of photos (done by Marcia and Chris Rose)

 

I need to say something about Marcia and Chris !!! THEY WERE AMAZING !! Lovely people and they were sooo much fun i would highly recommend them in a heart beat.  They took well over 1000 pics on the wedding day and probably well over 1000 pics at trash the dress (the next day) both of us felt like superstars

 

the reception we had at the Dolce Vita, and it was PERFECT no one had complaints about the food and the food came out piping HOT.  We had the minestrone soup, pasta rigatta, chicken and risotto and tiramisu YUMMMMMMY it was my best meal the whole trip (well apart from the jerk chicken hut)

 

after the reception we all went dancing in the disco ! perfect ending

 

oh ya and flowers were done by tai Flora, awesome job !!!! they were just what i wanted !!

 

so for all the future GBPJ brides please i repeat please dont sweat as everything will be perfect just the way you imagined it ! just relax and have fun

 

Here are some pics from the resort photog, cant wait to get Marcia's pics though

 

 

 

Congrats! I am so happy everything went well for you! Your pictures are beautiful! 
 

Originally Posted by acw271011 

thanks everyone for the best wishes. I will say this... after all of our stress I really am glad it's all done even though I really enjoyed our experience there. now we just have to get through our reception on nov 5th and then life can, hopefully, return to a little bit of normal!  lol maybe we can start planning our return trip to GBPJ!!

 

thank you too everyone for all of the support over the last 8 months. I probably couldn't have got through without this site. reading the reviews of the brides and the questions, etc of the "soon to be's" was truly helpful for me and it let me know some of what I was in for before we arrived in Jamaica. and it also helped me keep my sanity when everything was falling apart. I want to wish all of you the very best for your upcoming weddings. I will definitely watch for your reviews to see how you get on but after being at GBPJ I know you'll have a wonderful experience and a wedding that you'll never forget. and to all the newlyweds wishes for happy lives with your new husbands!

Hi Jodiann! I haven't heard anything else about it. I belive they will set it up according to how you want it. The Dj is included in the $1700.00 if you privitize it. You can also request that they continue to serve wine, beer soda and juice for the full 4hrs, for free! otherwise they will shut that down after 2hrs. You can bring your own liquor for the reception but they do charge a $15 corkage fee per bottle which is still cheaper. The food menu is from the Doycle Vita, all Italian. And its right by the ocean so there is a constant breeze flowing through. You don't have to privitize the restaurant but then you only have 2hrs for your dinner. I booked it because i liked the idea of being by the ocean. I also ordered 90 skylights to let off into the sky after the reception. I don't think you really have to have a minimum of guests. Hope this helps.

Angela
 

Originally Posted by Jodiann 

Hi Angela, I was wondering if you found out any other info about the Picsis? Like a min of guests, how they set it up, or anything really? I am thinking of renting this out also. I just like the idea of having everyone in the same place the entire time. Its just so hard to pick and choose when your not there to see any of it

Here is something you ladies might be interested in! When you privatize a restaurant they only serve beer, wine, soda and juice for dinner only 2hrs! After that you can request free of charge that they keep the beer, wine, soda and juice for an additional 2hrs! If you wish to bring in your own hard liquor to avoid the $23 pp for 2hrs open bar fee, you can they do however charge $15 corkage fee per bottle! I'm thinking 4 66 oz'ers are cheaper! Just an idea if anyone is interested! I just got a confirmation email from Chandlyn confirming this!

Angela

I have 70 plus people going and have rented out the Pisces restaurant for the dinner reception and dance for $1700.00. The menu for the Pisces is the same as the Doylce restaurant. The $1700.00 includes the Dj, wine, beer, soda and juice only, you can request that the drinks continue after the dinner for 4hrs otherwise they will stop all beer wine soda and juice, this is free of charge! If you want hard liquor it is called an open bar it is $23 pp for 2hrs. Hope this helps! If you need anymore info let me know!

Angela
 

Originally Posted by BusyBee123 

Has anyone else heard any details about The Pieces having a minimum number of guests? When I first inquired about an outdoor option, I was told this was not possible.  Also, does anyone know if you can just rent it out for the dance instead of the gazebo?  

Originally Posted by treesa 

 

For the ladies who are from the 'Toronto' area, who did you do you booking with? We want this resort for July 2012 and can't seem to find anything reasonable. PLEASE HELP!!!!!!