blueskadoobob

I think you are better off opening a new bank account and putting the money aside in that account so that you have the full payment ready by the time the wedding comes. BBPD is pretty rigid when it comes to rules and policies, so in my experience, they don't handle special considerations or circumstances outside their rulebook well.

Call Issac (the Jellyfish contact) at 954-2815592 ext 1. Or you can call the restaurant directly at 809-868-3040. The owner (Gabriel) almost always answers the line. Have you sent an e-mail to jellyfishrestaurant@@gmail.com yet? We are having our wedding there in 9 days and they have been VERY responsive with us ever since we first found out about this fiasco. Mayte is trying to bring you over to one of her restaurants, so if you are looking to leave Jellyfish, you should call and e-mail her asap. If you think you want to stay at jellyfish, make sure you call/email them to get and stay on their radar.

I don't know about the flowers, but it seems that everyone seems to reccomend Rick York for english language ceremonies. You can find his e-mail on the facebook group. When he is not available, there is another guy that people use. If you are just doing symbolic ceremony however, anybody can officiate. My step-father will be officiating our ceremony.

Its just for the restaurant. Jellyfish is on a public beach so they can't really kick people off of it. Although, some of the restaurant is located on sand - so they would be able to do crowd control on that part of the property.

Just heard back from the resort. No animals of any kind, even service animals, are allowed on resort. bummer.

Hey all, I'm getting married off-resort, but my FI and I decided to have all of our guests stay at BBPD. Our big day is on May 24 and we are so pumped! I have a quick question that i have been having trouble getting answered from BBPD and was wondering if any of you knew the answer. My parents have a small (about 10lb) service dog. I imagine pets are not allowed on the resort, but does any one know the policy for service animals? or do you have suggestions on who I can contact for an answer? thanks!

When my fiance and I first got engaged, I was a bit overwhelmed by the whole wedding planning thing, so he initiated our wedding research. He also read through most of this forum and mentioned to me one day, "Babe, its just me and the brides out there!" It's one of my favorite quotes from this entire wedding planning process. I'm pretty sure you are not the only groom though... just one of the first to post as there are a ton of lurkers. The only e-mail we have for Mayte is the jellyfishenterprise one. If you decide to visit Jellyfish before your wedding and let her know in an e-mail, she will respond and set up a time to meet you. Other than that, she will likely only write you if you wedding is on the horizon. AR- dream wedding's outline is a great starting point for your preparation with mayte. I would say it has even more details than you need for a first conversation. As long as you have a vision, she'll be able to take that, add to it, and make it come alive for the actual wedding day. Congrats and welcome!

There was a guy on the facebook group (from Jellyfish) that was responding to Bridal concerns right after Mayte's tragedy. Perhaps contact him?

When I visited the JF, mayte gave me a quote, but it was literally the same #s as are seen in the price list multiplied by the number of people we thought we would have, so if you have the pricelist, you should pop some of those numbers in Excel and you will have a great idea of the costs.

Quote: Originally Posted by mroesler Hello Ladies, Do any of you know if Jellyfish charges a vendor fees? I am thinking of using Katya as our photgrapher, so I just want to know if I need to budget in the vendor fee or not. Thanks a bunch. No vendor fees at Jellyfish. Especially not with Katya, she practically owns the wedding photography business at Jellyfish. Lots of the brides seem to go with her.

Quote: Originally Posted by Dania97 Hello everyone! I am planing a wedding for March 2015 at the Jellyfish. I wanted to know if anyone has been able to negotiate their overall pricing at this venue? I've been able to negotiate with photographers as well as videographers but wanted to see if it would be possible at the Jellyfish as well. If so, did you speak with Mayte or the restaurant manager? What were you able to negotiate exactly? We're on a tight budget and anything we can save is a big help! I think you should definitely try to negotiate - I mean when it has to do with weddings, you have to try. The jellyfish has so much demand you may not get a crazy discount in terms of dollars, but I would be surprised if you weren't able to work something out in terms of value/services. Every wedding vendor I have spoken to was willing to work compromise there.

Quote: Originally Posted by Dania97 I do have another question for the group. Has anyone else had any issues communicating with Mayte? It seems when you ask her two or three questions she may answer one of your questions in one sentence and leaves the rest unanswered...lol. I understand she's amazing and will make things work somehow but I would like to know that what I want as far as decor is possible or any other questions I may have. I would rather write one email with all my concerns in hopes to get a long reply back that way I won't have to bother her as often. I heard a while back of a spreadsheet that was going around and it seemed rather helpful to communicate all concerns to Mayte. Can someone forward this to me? Or recommend the best way to get all my answers from Mayte? My email is [email protected] Just from reading this forum over the last year, it sounds like this is Mayte's way of handling all of the e-mails she gets (even before she had her recent tragedy). From what others have posted it sounds like she reads your entire e-mail, but will probably only answer the 1 or 2 questions that are easy to respond to. Later, when you meet her in person, she will have a folder with all of the communication between you and her. I don't know if she is taking calls, but if you are able to get her on the phone, you will probably be able to have her answer all of your questions.

AR-Dreamwedding, Your invites sounds SOO cool! I'm sure they got everyone geared up and excited to go. I espescially love the RSVP card! Awesome! We decided to go digital with the invites so we did a Save the Date video and are going to send e-vites with our website. It's saving some money, but much more time consuming than I thought.

Quote: Originally Posted by jandl2013 Hello fellow past and future brides. I'm a bit late posting this but better late than never! My fh and I had or tasting at Jellyfish on September 14th during our site visit at Iberostar that weekend. Mayte, as you all may know, was not there but her assistant Raluca was there to go over everything with my fh and I. Raluca was great...she was very nice and very professional. She took us on the tour and went over everything with us. This was the BEST tasting ever! We were able to pick out the potential drinks and menu for our cocktail hour and reception dinner. They made everything, and let me just say the food was wonderful! There was one pasta dish my fh and I weren't too excited about considering our families tastebuds and we were able to change it and then that new dish was made for us. The level of service and the quality of the food was definitely great. The service, view of the beach, and the atmosphere of the restaurant was definitely way better than what we would have had at the resort so we are VERY happy and looking forward to the wedding day. I'm happy my fh was finally able to actually see the vision we talked about because he is now VERY excited and actually told me "Babe, you did real good" once we were there! SUCCESS!! We have sent out the save the dates, (i'm going to post them in another thread soon) and the invitations will go out very soon. We have quite a few family members and friends that are saying they are coming, but we'll see once the dust clears! We could have anywhere between 35 to just short of 100 people. I'm still working on the photographer, but our videographer is all set! We can't wait to have our Jellyfish wedding next May! This is great news! Thanks for posting! I'm especially relieved since we are on a similar timeline. My wedding is the day after yours.

Quote: Originally Posted by Madso Hey ladies, Did anyone who stood or is planning to stay at the paradisus Palma real have issues receiving group rates. I was waiting on the room block contract and suddenly Cecilia hits me with "we changed policies and the romance department is no longer able to give group rates to offsite weddings".... You should try contacting the "groups" department or go through a travel agent. When I was talking directly to the hotels, none of the romance departments were interested in helping me, since our wedding is off-site, but the groups peopel were helpful. I would hope that the groups department has similar rates as romance.

Glosite seems pretty cool! I was wondering what others on this forum have used for their wedding website, aside from wedding channel or the knot. I know my FI and I are planning to do a wedding app with appy couple, but we have to get our website together too and have been a bit slow to so... time to put the pedal to the metal.

I think I previously read on this forum that Mayte can help you get these kinds of favors. Perhaps with her contacts she can even get a nice bulk discount.

Happy Birthday to Ms. Katya Nova! Since she is always providing us with so much guidance on this forum, I thought she deserved a special shout out! Happy Birthday Lady!

Your save-the-dates are great! I love that they are in 2 languages. We're going to refer our guests to our website for their actual invitations as well. I've seen it done a few ways and it can be quite elegant depending on what you are going for.

First of all, Congratulations on your date! Second of all, your travel agent sounds misinformed. Today, the area's economy and most of the population depends on tourism and they protect it fiercely. Every business has security and wants to make sure that people feel safe. On top of that the DR has 3 police forces one of which is strictly to protect tourists. Its called the PoliTur (or something like that). You can expect people to come up to you at public beaches to sell you necklaces and cigars and stuff, but petty theft is not excessive and if anyone is causing real trouble there is security and police all over them. Added to that, Jellyfish offers a service to pick up and dropoff guests to and from the resort, so your guests will never have to venture out on their own. I'm not saying that you and your guests should flaunt their possessions and be irresponsible, but having visited punta cana a few times in that past couple of years i would say they should act as they would in any city and they will be fine. You'll find detailed answers to your other questions in the forum history, generally, Mayte likes to receive a PDF doc of your inspiration pictures a couple of weeks/months before your wedding. She can also provide you with a list of prices so that you get an idea of how much things will cost. I think she gives people a quote closer to the wedding.

My fiance and I are holding a cocktail event at Huracan, the night before the wedding. The owners of Huracan are from Bologna, Italy (which is where my fiance and I met , so we took that as a sign and are very excited about the event. The team there is super nice, has great food, and beautiful design aesthetic, so I doubt you would be disappointed. Fun fact: The owner, Giacomo Zatti, was actually a super famous basketball player in Italy in the 80s and 90s. We confirmed the date with them in the first week of March (for may 2014) and have tried to get something in writing or pay a deposit, but we haven't gotten the information to do so yet. We've emailed with the staff and they have assured us that they have us on the books, but its a bit concerning that nothing is officially in writing. Someone on here said they are slower to respond than Mayte, and based on my experience, I would say that is probably about right. They do more than just weddings however, so they are also pretty busy with a bunch of different events. Some comments: - This venue is really cool looking and absolutely beautiful, but the indoor portion is much MUCH smaller than the jellyfish. If you have a seated dinner there (and want to keep everyone indoors) I don't think you could fit more than 50 people (and that is pushing it). If you are using the outdoor space too, you can fit alot more people. - Another thing to note is that there is a pirate cruise excursion thing in Punta Cana which uses a huge touristy pirate ship. The dock for this pirate ship is in front of the Huracan cafe. (It's supposed to be next to the cafe, but its big and very hard to miss when you look out from the restaurant) This can be fun and cool if it fits into your theme, but if you don't want to see the pirate ship on your wedding day, I don't know how you would be able to manage that unless you contracted the ship to sail out for the duration of your party. - One other cool thing is that there is a cigar shop next to the restaurant that stays open during events, so that can be a perk for guests. Hope that is helpful for people.

This made me double check the deposit I sent. I sent my bank confirmation to Mayte and she responded saying my date was confirmed and that her boss would also confirm with us. That was on May 2nd and I have not heard from the boss. But as someone else mentioned, as long as you keep your bank details handy, there shouldn't be any future issues with this.

So the Bridal dressing room is complete?! That is incredibly exciting. ...especially because those vendor fees are ridiculous! Does anyone have pictures of the dressing room?

I think Mayte rents whatever she doesnt have. but it seems like if you are looking for something super specific, its best to bring it yourself.

This is such an exciting time for you! congrats!