mimiq

We were interested in the same things and had Katya Nova. She was amazing!! Also someone asked earlier about the name tags? Mayte will definitely take care of that for you!

Yes! We got hard copies of the trailer and all the raw footage too! All for $500 I think? He posted or video in the fb page back in November if you want to search for it.

We used Florian at video punta cana and he was wonderful! We loved the trailer option because we found the chronological a little boring He made a custom option for us for a great price, stayed hours longer than he said he would, didn't make us do anything too cheesy like blowing a kiss at the camera (that's just not me!) And had it back to us before we left. You can search for my review for more details!

We used Florian at video punta cana and he was wonderful! We loved the trailer option because we found the chronological a little boring He made a custom option for us for a great price, stayed hours longer than he said he would, didn't make us do anything too cheesy like blowing a kiss at the camera (that's just not me!) And had it back to us before we left. You can search for my review for more details!

You can't take sparklers on the plane (checked or otherwise), but I know that matte purchased some for a previous bride. probably the easiest option!

I'm not sure... I think they have just run into trouble before when they have tried to charge more than $1000 to either visa or mc. Also remember to tell you CC company that you'll be out of the country! We did a late night buffet of nacho chips, guacamole, and fajitas and it was great! There was lots of food during the day, but people still found room for it. I think it was only about $4 or $5 per person - so glad we did it! Other people have done mac and cheese or various things. As always with the JF, just ask and Mayte will make it happen!

Important to note that if you are paying by credit card, it's best to use american express because there is no limit to the amount the jf can charge to that. For Visa and mc there is a $1000 limit.

Important to note that if you are paying by credit card, it's best to use american express because there is no limit to the amount the jf can charge to that. For Visa and mc there is a $1000 limit.

I actually never paid a deposit. Mayte confirmed the date with me and that was that!

aw, thanks!! We had 70 people and our ceremony decor was $650 and reception decor was $750 (or vice versa, i can't quite remember). That gets you so much more than the resort though! It's basically everything that you want. I even changed to fresh flowers on the tables at the end and Mayte didn't even change my quote. And that would have been unbelievably expensive at my resort (ME)! I wore a veil. It was a super last minute decision, but i was really happy that i did! It wasn't crazy windy that day, but it looks great blowing in the wind!

Our ceremony was at 4:00 and we had the guests meet the shuttle at 3:00 so they were there about 30 minutes before the ceremony or so... We reserved the entire restaurant (upstairs too) and were happy with that decision, but we had extra room in our budget. If it's tight, I would say it's not necessary, but I guess that depends on how many guests you will have. We had about 70 people and I think that would have filled the whole bottom floor regardless.

Thanks cinnagirl! And you will love k a t y a, she is amazing. Our guestbook was made through blurb.com and we loved it. It had a handful of our engagement pics and then the rest were pics of us and our guests over the years, and a few pages dedicated to matt and me growing up and whatnot. Our guests loved it too!

Oh, and I should take this time to say how absolutely wonderful ***** is. Matt and I just spent 3 hours watching our slide show (yup, it was a marathon session!) and the pics are just gorgeous. I don't love myself in pictures and I really wanted to have a handful of shots on my wedding day where I felt I looked amazing (you know how you nit pick at yourself way more than anyone else would, right?) and there are so many shots that I just love, it's amazing. I had always wanted a wedding photographer who would truly capture the candid moments and ***** totally delivered on this (and from past weddings that I have seen, this is a tough thing to deliver on!). Even the posed family shots have a candid nature to them. She and Rob were wonderful to work this and I would not hesitate to recommend them to anyone!

Yes! and they were more beautiful than I could have hoped for!! And *****'s blog is ready with a few of my pics! http://www.*****novablog.com/jellyfish-wedding-photographer-marissa-matt/comment-page-1/#comment-39727. I hope you ladies enjoy!!

To be honest, I waited for about a week and a half when I was less than a week away from leaving. I wasn't too stressed about it until I realized that we hadn't actually set up our meeting! She was super busy for the month of November with 23 weddings (and I think that's just the start of the busy season), so know that she's definitely not ignoring you. She's just insanely busy. I tried to make use of this forum for any advice/questions that I had and leave only the really specific stuff for emails to Mayte. I know there are some things that only she can answer though. There was a period about 3 weeks out from the wedding when I heard from hear within about 48 hours a few times, but then she got swamped again and that's when I didn't hear from her for about a week and a half. You will hear from her eventually! I'm not sure if that puts your mind at ease at all, but try not to stress! It will all be amazing (although it's harder to believe when you haven't been through it yet!). If I can help at all, just ask! PM me if that's better for you question

My pleasure! The one thing I will say is that the restaurant is smaller than it appears to be in the pictures! Hmmm, based on our numbers, I would think that 100 people and 8 kids might be a bit tight downstairs, but I think I read somewhere that the max capacity is 100. I'm not positive though. If Mayte says she can do it, believe her. I know that most people don't rent out the whole restaurant and it doesn't usually seem to be a big deal. It was important to my fiance and we had some extra room in our budget, so we ended up renting the whole thing out. We were happy with that decision, but it's definitely not a necessity.

Oops! realized I missed one of your questions! We had our dancefloor outside in the sand and it was great! I changed into a shorter dress for that portion and am quite glad I did because I would have been HOT otherwise, even being outside! I think if we had had the dancefloor inside, they definitely would have had to move tables out of the way and it might have been a bit too hot! Hope to have some pics soon to show everyone! We brought about 3lbs each of orange and blue 'big feet" gummies (you know, they're usually red?), two 3lb bags of salt water taffy, two 5lb bags of fruit sours, and two boxes of lollipops (48 in each, ~1.5"). The big feet we got at Bulk Barn (canadian bulk food store) and the remainder we got at Candy.com (but we live close to the border so we shipped it to the US. Pretty sure they ship to Canada, but it was cheaper this way). At one point in the night I was worried that all the candy wouldn't get eaten, but at the end of the night, Mayte had little bags made up so it was easy for everyone to grab one on the way out and snack on the bus! She's great! Oh, we bought little candy bags (8oz i think with white dots) from creativebag.com (cheapest I could find and cute!) and we had small round stickers made with vistaprint to close the bags. And the buffet looked soo cute (if i do say so myself )

Thanks Lala! yeah, the fire dancers were a lot of fun and our guests enjoyed it for sure! It was $350 for about a 10-15 minute show.

We asked Mayte for some suggestions and she gave us 3 choices (I'm sure you can specify what you want though!) and there was a $3/person, $4/person, and a $5/person option. We went with the middle one! As for the musty smell, I didn't really experience that and I tend to be quite sensitive to smells. We brought a scented candle with us, but never had to use it. A couple of our guests changed rooms because the musty scent was strong in their room, but the second room they were given was fine. I wouldn't worry about it! There might have been a slight scent in our room, but you didn't notice it after you actually walked in. Our price for menu 1 (with the adjustments) was $32/person. We did our first dance right after being introduced into the reception. Then we did the cake cutting about 10 or 15 minutes later? Mayte didn't want to have the whole cake out in the heat, so the bottom 2 tiers were fake and we just cut the top layer (i had no idea the bottom tiers were fake until Rob told me!) and then Mayte cut the cake to be served while people were dancing and people wandered back in to grab a slice! Yup, we brought all the candy down with us. We did have some slight issues with melting... nothing that totally wrecked it, but i wouldn't say that it wasn't an issue at all. We had a sand aisle and I wore barefoot sandals and it was great! There are pictures on the facebook group though of a nice looking wooden aisle that would be fine for heels! I was worried about being hot on the big day (i'm actually not great in the heat!), but I was actually pretty good! It was a hot day with a few clouds in the sky, but I wasn't overly hot in my dress. When we sat for dinner, I was a little hot (all the running around probably!) and when we started the dancing I changed into a short reception dress that I had bought specifically for that reason (and that was a great idea!). I don't think it was super windy on our day (honestly can't remember!). It wasn't still either... somewhere nicely in the middle? Feel free to ask whatever else you need to!

Glad you found the review helpful! Yes, we paid extra to change the salad and fries. We paid $32/person for our menu. Oh, and we also added a dessert of ice cream and fruit - forgot that in my review! I'll post some pics as soon as I get them! Might get my professional pics before Christmas, but that's not for sure!

Ok ladies, I have finished my review... and it's pretty ridiculously long! I will attach it here and copy it below for those who can't get attachments yet. I'm a bit embarrassed to though be it is so long! Hopefully there will be some useful information for some of you though and it won't just be the ramblings of an excited newlywed Jellyfish Wedding/Reception Review – Nov. 21, 2012 Hi All! Well, my now husband, Matt, and I got married at the Jellyfish a few weeks ago and I wanted to write a review because the experience was so amazing! The wedding day was perfect and I wanted to share J. I tend to be a details person, so this review might be crazy long, but hopefully you’ll find some tidbits of useful information too! I know I loved reading everyone’s reviews and craved to hear all the info I could! To start off, we had about 62 adults and 8 kids, ranging in age from 8 months to 7 years old, attend the wedding. We stayed at the Majestic Elegance for our first week and then moved over to Sanctuary Cap Cana for our honeymoon week. The Majestic was great! If anyone is interested in a review of that (especially when you’re not doing the wedding there!) check out the Colonial/Elegance facebook groups because I plan to post a review there as well. We did both our ceremony and reception at the JF and, as everyone says, it was the best decision we ever made! I didn’t actually see that many weddings at the ME (probably because we were soooo busy trying to spend quality time with all of our guests), but nothing could have wowed me like what Mayte was able to put together. It was the quality and presentation of a wedding at home, but it was in the tropics. Amazing. Planning One thing I wanted to note about the planning stage was that we never got around to getting a deposit to Mayte. She didn’t insist on it (in fact, she never even brought it up!). We felt comfortable that our date was reserved because she had confirmed it with us and a few months later when another bride enquired about the same date, she double checked with me to be sure we still wanted it (only because I hadn’t really been planning much and hadn’t really been in contact for a few months so I think she just wanted to be sure) and it was no problem. The wire transfer seemed to be a bit of a hassle and it wouldn’t really mean that we’d take less cash down with us, so we decided to skip it. OOT bags As we had about 60 adults and the whole reason we had a destination wedding was to reduce stress, we decided to be careful about what we put together for our OOT bags. Most of our guests are well travelled and I couldn’t imagine anyone not bringing pepto, immodium, sunscreen, lipbalm and the like so we decided to skip those type of things. We had heard that travel mugs would be really useful at the resort so we simply made those and put them in a canvas beach bag for all of our guests. Both of these seemed to be quite useful throughout the week and everyone appreciate them. We got our mugs from Dollarama ($2 each) and they were clear, double-walled cups with a lid and a straw. We then designed a logo and name tag and printed these up on large window decals from Vistaprint. They worked perfectly and are totally waterproof, removable, and inexpensive. Our meeting We met with Mayte a couple of days before the wedding and she had all of the decor pics, etc that I had sent her during the planning stages. Oh, and we just took a cab from the ME (ordered it at the front desk) and it took about 25 minutes and cost $22US. We went through the menu we had chosen and tasted everything (it was so much food!), tried 6 different cocktails that matched our colour theme and picked three of them to be served on the day (1 welcome drink and 2 for the cocktail hour after the ceremony). All were great!! We then went through all of the smaller details with Mayte (what the setup would look like, name tags, etc, etc) and she had everything just as we had asked. We settled on cake flavours then and gave her the things we had brought down for the wedding (candy for the buffet, cake topper, guestbook, a here comes the bride/happily ever after sign and thank you parasol – both of which I left for her if you want to use them!). We went over the invoice and everything looked great and we paid cash for the cash portion of the bill. Everything was exactly as we expected and there were no surprises. Hair – Krystie Ann Up until the evening before the wedding I had planned to get our hair done at the resort spa, but then my photographer emailed about a hair stylist/makeup artist that I had heard of and I decided that if is she was available, I’d switch to her, even though it was very last minute! I’m sure the ladies at the spa would have done a great job, but I was worried about communication because my Spanish isn’t great. Krystie Ann did a great job and she was so sweet. As she was finishing up, she wanted me to check out the bangs to see if I was happy. Before I looked, I let her know that I’m not great about saying what I really think and she encouraged me to be honest and said that the most important thing was for me to be happy and I really believed her. I had wanted the hair to be a bit looser, more tousled looking and she immediately said how she could do that and set about to doing it. Ten minutes later, it was perfect. She was wonderful, put me at ease, and really cared that I was honestly happy with it. She is also very reasonably priced and my only regret is possibly that I didn’t get her to do my makeup too! I did it myself and haven’t seen my pics yet, but am slightly wondering if I shouldn’t have just gotten her to do that too! Videographer: Florian Koetter of Video Punta Cana Florian was awesome! He’s a German videographer who now lives in Punta Cana. We found his work and reviews online and were super happy with all of our communication. At first we only wanted a video of the ceremony because we felt that that was the most important part and wanted that documented. However, when I found videos that only covered the ceremony, start to finish basically, we actually found them kinda boring. I liked the idea of some of the words being overlaid with images throughout the day – like the trailers that a lot of people get as part of their packages. We asked Florian for a custom package that would essentially be an extended version of a trailer (about 10 minutes in length) and he did it for a very reasonable price. He was set up to only be there for 3 hours, but must have stayed for about 5 or 6 and even filmed our fire dancers. Matt told him that he was free to go whenever he wanted, but he said not to worry. He doesn’t follow the clock as closely as they do in North America J. He cut us a video within 3 days and met with us at our honeymoon resort to show it to us and be sure that we liked it. He seemed to genuinely care that we were happy with the end result. Our package also included all the raw footage he shot, which is amazing because we now have everything and can edit some more footage if we want. Florian really listened to what we wanted and when Matt realized that he didn’t want the letters that we had written each other to be read out in their entirety, Florian cut it down so that the more personal stuff was left out. Matt didn’t want everyone who saw the video (family, friends, strangers on facebook J) to hear the whole thing and that was a something I hadn’t considered! We also didn’t have to do anything super cheesy for Florian to get the shots he needed. No blowing kisses to the camera (that’s not my style) and I was happy for that! We were thrilled and it was money well spent! Pastor Rick York We had Rick York perform a non-religious ceremony and he sent us a script beforehand. To be honest, we were a little surprised by the number of times “God†was said in a non-religious ceremony (not a ton, but more than I would have thought) and so we edited some of the phrases out. I wasn’t sure how he would take that, but he was just fine about our edits and said a lot of people do the same. His computer had crashed a few days before our wedding, so he had actually lost the changes we had made to the script, but luckily Matt looked it over before the ceremony and noticed and quickly made the updates. We had him do a reading of “These Hands†which we both really loved and had a friend read “I will be here†by Stephen Curtis Chapman (it’s really beautiful and the one part of the ceremony when Matt almost lost it! http://www.gagirl.com/poetry/poetry6.html). He gave a really lovely ceremony and had everyone in tears, but laughing too. Oh, one slight annoyance – he actually spelled Matt’s last name wrong on the certificate we signed (he put an e at the end of his last name). A little annoying because it’s on the wedding video and probably our pictures too. But overall, we were really happy to have Pastor York officiate for us. Symbolic Ceremony We had originally planned on doing a civil ceremony because we really only wanted to say our vows once, but a few things we discovered during the planning had caused us to waiver on that. When we read the script that the judge would read it seemed a little impersonal. Even if we added a sand ceremony or other things, we still didn’t really love it. When we heard that the judge is not great about confirming timing, we realized that it was one stress we didn’t need. When we really thought about it, it’s the words that are said during a wedding that are the important part and it didn’t sit right with us to have a cold ceremony just to ensure that it was legal. When we learned we didn’t have to exchange ring or vows to make a ceremony legal in Canada, in fact you hardly have to say anything, we decided to go for the symbolic. We did the paperwork a few weeks before we left, at our kitchen table while wearing jeans and t-shirts. No family present, just a couple of friends to witness it. It was actually really fun to be “secret married†for a few weeks before the wedding and definitely made things less stressful. I was actually thrilled with our decision and it was totally right for us. As for people who worry about their guests and having a ‘fake’ wedding, if we consider our wedding day to be our Punta Cana ceremony day, why would anyone else consider it to be a different day? The day that we did the paperwork (as we call it), didn’t really feel like anything but a brief special moment. The wedding day in the DR had all the butterflies and excitement of a true wedding day and it was perfect. Decor & Flowers Our wedding colours were turquoise and tangerine and I had sent Mayte a bunch of pictures (in a pdf file) over the months. I didn’t think it was possible, but she exceeded all my expectations. It looked perfect! As for my bouquet, I had spent a bunch of time googling different things to try to find a picture of what I was looking for and the first time I saw it was when Mayte showed me my bouquet. It couldn’t have been more perfect and the only thing I was disappointed about was that I wouldn’t be able to take them home! I knew when I saw that bouquet that Mayte had nailed the whole thing and when I saw the restaurant and ceremony site a few minutes later, that was confirmed! When we had a bit of unexpected room in our budget I wanted to see what it would cost to have fresh flowers in our decor instead of fake ones (or at least a mixture of the two). Mayte suggested that the ones we used at the ceremony site should be fake because otherwise they’d wilt in the hot sun, but the ones at the tables were all fresh and looked beautiful. Even with this upgrade, we didn’t see a change in the reception decor quote! It totally seems like the resort just nickel and dimes you and there is just no way that they would have done anything like that. Just one small reason that we were reassured that we’d made the right choice. She used gerbers, roses, and carnations I think and the effect was great. Individually those might not be my favourite flowers, but the way she put them together, it looked awesome. Entertainment – Fire Dancers & Cigar Roller At the last minute we realized that we had some extra room in our budget (a nice problem to have!) and decided to add the cigar roller and fire dancer show. Both were awesome and our guests loved them. Would highly recommend and the price was super reasonable (especially when we realized we got them both for about the same price that the chair sashes would have cost us at our resort – and who ever remembers chair sashes?! J) Babysitters I had never heard of anyone using Mayte’s babysitters before, so we didn’t really know what to expect, but we weren’t too worried considering Mayte is associated with it! And they were awesome! Three ladies came during the dinner portion and they were dressed up in fun costumes. Mayte had reserved a small area of the restaurant for the kids table and had laid out some cushions and pillows for the kids to play on. The babysitters made amazing balloon hats for the kiddies (my nephews/nieces were in heaven!) and played games, juggled, basically just kept them entertained. It was perfect and meant that the parents actually had a chance to eat! Our youngest baby was only 8 months and they even kept him enthralled. Highly recommend this too! Food Our guests had the option of the seabass, chicken, or pasta of menu 1 with the rice and grilled veggies. We also had the caprese salad and chorizo sausage as appis. During our cocktail hour we had mozza sticks, hot pockets, ceviche, and bacon wrapped shrimp. Everything was great!! The portion sizes are quite large though so I don’t think that most people made it through their meals! We also had a late night snack buffet of fajitas, chips and guacamole, and one other thing that I can’t quite remember! It was all delicious and although I was worried that it wouldn’t get eaten (we served it at about 10:30 or 11:00), people definitely enjoyed having something to snack on. It was a super reasonable price and we were really glad that we added it. DJ/MC We used the DJ and MC (who are two separate people) that Mayte works with and they were great. We also had my brothers MC the speeches to add a personal touch, but the MC took care of the restaurant details (ie. calling everyone to dinner, announcing the cake cutting, cigar rollers, and fire dancers, etc, etc.). The MC was great. He spoke English very well and totally knew what he was doing. Right after the post ceremony photos finished up, he grabbed Matt and I and asked us what our order of events was, the names of our wedding party, how we wanted to be introduced, etc. and took all these notes on his ipad. He already had our list of songs printed up and was totally on the ball. The DJ was also great! There’s a Toronto band that was popular in the 90s that is pretty obscure (for most people at least), but they have a place in my sibling’s and my hearts and when I asked the DJ if he had them and (surprise surprise!) they didn’t, he immediately set about to finding one of their songs on the net and downloaded it! Pretty sweet! Now it might have been just because I was the bride (my brother in law tried that with a different song a few minutes later and didn’t get the same response), but I was thrilled. We had meant to bring a flash drive with a handful of songs that we didn’t expect them to have, but wanted to hear, but we just didn’t get around to it. Kinda wish we had, but that’s okay. The music they played was really good. Maybe a few tunes that didn’t have everyone dancing and I wished they’d have changed it up a little bit, but again, if we’d given them a list of a bunch of songs that we wanted played that would have solved that. I don’t think it’s necessary to come up with a complete list and an order and everything, but maybe a handful of the songs you really want to hear. We had everyone up dancing though and it was really really good, minus a few songs that kinda missed the mark. I could have gone up and asked them to switch it up, but I’m not great at that kind of thing J Oh, he was super accommodating to any requests though if he had the music (and he had tonnes!). Transportation I had been a little curious about what the road to the JF would actually be like and I actually didn’t find it to be too bad! Not much worse than a cottage road with potholes in cottage country Ontario! It’s not very long at least – maybe a km? The restaurant is actually a little smaller than the pictures make it seem, but I loved the feel of the place and it was the perfect size for our group. Mayte has a large, air conditioned office and that’s where I actually got ready on the big day. She actually has plans to do some renos and create a bride’s room in there because she’s getting more and more requests from people wanting to get hair and makeup done at the JF to avoid the crazy fees of the resorts. I think that would be awesome! One slight mishap that did happen was that the driver for me and my sisters didn’t actually know where the JF was! Luckily I had paid attention to the various resorts/buildings when our taxi took us to our pre-meeting with Mayte. I speak a (very) little Spanish and had to break it out when I saw him trying to pull into the wrong resort. He got on the phone a couple of times, but still didn’t seem to know where he was going and I had to tell him a couple of different times when he again pulled into wrong resorts! I was actually pretty calm about the whole thing and knew that it would only make us maybe 15 minutes late, but I can see that it might have driven some people over the edge! Luckily I knew the words for “next to/near the Melia Caribeâ€! I don’t think any of the other shuttles had any issues though! The return shuttles were something we wished we had put a little more thought into and had discussed with Mayte a bit more. We needed 2 shuttles because we couldn’t get all of our guests into one shuttle so we figured we’d have 2 main runs and just pay for taxis for anyone who wanted to go hope in between the main runs. It didn’t run quite as smoothly as that on the actual night. We had a number of guests with little ones and once the dancing began (about 9:30) there were about 10 adults who needed to head back. It took a while for the shuttle to arrive (probably 25 to 30 minutes) and that was a bit of a long wait for those who needed to get back. I wish that we had anticipated that some guest would need to head back early and had asked Mayte to either call a couple of cabs or arrange a shuttle run when she could see that the main events were finishing up. If we had, we could have avoided some of the delays. We had planned to have one shuttle at about 10pm, but that was basically just a few minutes after the first run so nobody wanted it, except for one couple and they wouldn’t make a run for just two people, so they ended up getting a cab. We had chosen to have 3 hours of open bar and liked the idea that we could stay late if we wanted to. We figured that we would somehow be notified when our 3 hours was up and had planned to just switch to a la carte at that point, but I realize now that I never really communicated that to Mayte. She had arranged for a shuttle to arrive at midnight, so we all cleared out at about 12:30. I wished that we had left that last shuttle timing a little more up in the air. We hadn’t discussed a time for it and I think she figured with the bar closing that the timing made sense. Again, should have given this a little more thought and it would have been smoother, so hopefully someone can benefit from this piece of advice! We probably wouldn’t have stayed that much longer (maybe an hour or so), so it was fine. And the bus ride home was super fun and totally memorable as everyone was still up for partying. Some of our guests continued the party back at the resort, but we headed off to bed J Okay, that is just about all that I can think of! If any of you are still reading – nice work! I hope it hasn’t been too boring and that you found at least a couple of things to be useful. I know I can be longwinded, but the day was so great I just wanted to share it! If there is anything that I haven’t covered (if that’s possible!), please feel free to comment or PM me. I’d love to help! Congratulations on your upcoming big day and relax – it’s going to be amazing! Marissa (aka Mimi – my fake facebook account name J) Jellyfish Wedding.pdf

I never gave it a moments thought! I wear mine all the time (except when applying sunscreen, but i just put them in the lid of the sunscreen so i would be sure to remember to put them back on). I never felt even a moments hesitation to wear them at the resort and felt perfectly safe! Do what makes you feel best though!! Good!

Thanks! And I'm glad I've been helpful! I felt totally comfortable leaving the cash in the safe. I found out near the end of our week that one of our guests' room was broken into. A few items were stolen, but they weren't locked away in the safe when they probably should have been. I think everyone kept it from me so i wouldn't feel badly/stress. Even with that though, I still felt comfortable with the safe. Just be sure to use it! As for trip advisor reviews, I had a strict policy to not look at it after we made our resort choice. We had already made the decision and paid the money and there was no going back and only stress to be had so I avoided it entirely (which was difficult because I'm such a researcher!). I suggest banning yourself from it right now! You can never please everyone and it's a large resort with lots of guests so some people will surely encounter issues. And those with negative experiences are more likely to complain!

Just thought I'd comment on the payment part I was hesitant to travel with that much cash as well, but it wasn't actually that bad. DH and I just split it up between us and each carried a money belt on the plane, then put it in the safe as soon as we arrived. The biggest part of our bill was for the food and booze and we paid that by an american express because you can't charge more than $1000 to visa or mastercard at the JF (we were in the ballpark of $10 000 on AMEX and it was fine!). You should also be aware that if you travel with more than $10 000 in cash, you'll have to declare that when you enter the country. We were under that so it was okay, but I'd have hated to have to declare - I can imagine it would be a hassle!

Ha! Well get ready - I'm at 2.5 pages already and haven't really gotten to the wedding details yet! (photographer, videographer, etc, etc) I know that I craved all the small details too