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Hey Ladies, I was wondering if any of you had some tips on preventing mosquito bites? Whenever I go to Jamaica, I get eaten alive!!!!!! Last year was really bad...I get a reaction every time I get bitten, and the bite swells up, and starts to weep. I've used creams, but they don't make the bites disappear, they just relieve the itchiness. My big concern is, that my Wedding dress is tea-length and my legs will be showing, don't really want to have big red swollen legs. I'd really appreciate any advice on preventing mosquito bites, or how you can make them disappear fast!!! Thanks :-) :-) :-)
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Hi there I'm getting married in April 2016. in Montego Bay, Jamaica. I've chosen to have our wedding ceremony and reception at a private venue so we can add that personal touch. Plus since I have 50 guests travelling from around the world to stay with us, I thought getting everyone off resort would be a welcome change of scenery for everyone. We are all staying at the Royalton White Sands. BUT here's the issue - RWS are trying to charge us $450 for each outside vendor fee to bring our photographer and make up artists etc to our rooms. I really don't see how they can justify trying to charge us this when we are just paying guests. We are not using any of their wedding services so it's not as if it's a loss of earnings - they were never getting the business in the first place! I'm really annoyed as there's lots I could use the extra $1000 dollars on. Even with bringing 50 guests we are getting no discount so you'd think they might have some give here Have any other brides experienced this before? Any other brides got married off-resort? Comments very much welcome!! CK xx
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Hello future brides!! I've been reading all your posts, comments and reviews for months now! (I was engaged last April 2013) BUT My fiance and I were not ready yet to begin planning because of other great things happening in our lifes: house, new job, etc. NOW, we are ready! And I'm super duper excited to get started!! We always knew we would have a destination wedding so back when I was first engaged, I started to look up resorts... I came across the Royalton White Sands in Montego Bay. It just opened this November 2014. Well, we took a chance and booked our wedding despite them not being opened for that long! My date: November 17, 2014. YAY! Anyways, enough about me - the whole point is I can't find ANYTHING on this website for the Royalton White Sands SO I thought I would post what I have so far from the wedding planner in case any other brides need more info! Happy Planning ladies - wishing you all the best! Pam xo Royalton White Sands - Wedding Guide-4.pdf Royalton White Sands Legal Requirements.pdf Royalton White Sands Private Event Menus-1.pdf Royalton White Sands-Wedding Packages-1.pdf
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Hello, I'm new to this blog site and recently engaged this month. We have chosen, what we believe to be, a less stressful and the least expensive route of a cruise beach wedding. We are crushing Carnival Sensation Feb 2017. The cruise leaves out of Miami and docks in Ocho Rios, Jamaica and Grand Cayman. After speaking to Carnival the amount of money charged only covers a few things. A vendor, who is responsible for the decor and other essential items, charges a separate pricing for those items. We are looking to have 20 guest to sail with us. Has anyone cruised and participated or participating in an upcoming beach wedding offered by Carnival? What did you all do immediately after the beach wedding? Are there some things I need to watch out for or hidden costs or hiccups? What are your experiences? All feedback is welcomed.
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Hi ladies, Does anyone have the final details document from Loretto? We're not getting married until August but I don't feel like 2 months prior to the wedding is enough time to make decisions and come up with all the finishing touches. Thanks in advance Courtney
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I have my wedding scheduled for July 30, 2016 in the beautiful Ochos Rios, Jamaica. This website has been super helpful in helping me with ideas such as "what to put in welcome bags", "song lists" and resort information. Riu Ochos Rios - After extensive research on the subject I went with The Riu Ochos Rios. The wedding coordinator is Keisha and I haven't had a lot of questions but when I do she is quick to respond (even for Jamaica time) and has been very helpful! mtfloral - I purchased (fake) silk flowers from mtfloral on Etsy and she has been amazing. My flowers are absolutely gorgeous and match the colors I was going for. The flowers were 1 of 3 things that meant a lot to me! BEPHOTOGRAPHY - James has been by far the best part of this planning process. He is not only my photographer but my travel agent and he has been so great. He has given me such valuable information and has kept me up to date on everything! I couldn't have been happier to book with him and to book him as my photographer! Love and Lace Bridal Consignment - My mom and I decided to check this place out after having no luck at two of my previous appointments. Not only was our experience great (even with my SCREAMING newborn), but I found by far the most perfect dress! They even have an in house seamstress who does an excellent job. I plan to post a great review after the wedding but so far so good!
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Hello! Although I am not a blogger, I just had to make a post on this site to share and thank the people who were invaluable to me during my wedding planning by helping others. Planning a wedding is daunting, especially when it is in another country and you've never been there! After we got engaged, we decided to do something different and plan a destination wedding. We were the first of our friends and family. We got engaged in June 2012 and sent out the "save the dates" for our December 2013 wedding. We wanted to give people plenty of time (1.5 yrs) to save up and make plans to join. I think the extra time paid off because we had 65 people join us to celebrate! It also gave me plenty of time to do little projects for the wedding and make it stress free! RESORT: We chose Secrets: Wild Orchid which is actually connected to Secrets: St James in Montego Bay based on a friend who had been there's recommendation. They each have their own pools but share the restaurants, the spa, and entertainment. There is a boardwalk on the beach that runs the length of the 2 hotels. Secrets Wild Orchid (SWO) is a little newer and more modern and is closer to all the restaurants. You cannot go wrong at either and we had guests stay at St James (SJ) because SWO was sold out. Everyone was saying this was the nicest place they had ever been! One of our guests had the swimout room in the preferred club which was pretty cool during the day because we could hang out in the lazy river and be close to the room! PREFFERED CLUB: We stayed in the preferred club which was gorgeous. The best thing about it was that there was your own bar in the lobby filled with different tapas at all hours of the day, one night we didn't even go out, we just ate there! there also is a bar filled with grey goose, ciroc, crown royal etc - all top shelf liquors that you can make however you like! sometimes the fruity drinks become too much! Im not sure if it was 100% worth the extra money only because ALL the resort is soo nice. Some other brides I spoke with even said they were bumped up to it for free! TIPPING: One things I must note is how nice all the staff is. They are all kind and try to know you by name. They really really appreciate any tips so I recommend bringing as many $1s as you can. change is hard to come by and trust me you just want to tip these sweet people. $1 American is = $100 Jamaican dollars so your tips are really making a difference in their lives. LENGTH OF TRIP: We came down on Fri and our wedding was on Tues. We stayed until the following Sunday and I think 9 days was just the perfect amount of time. I wouldn't have wanted to leave any sooner! Monday we hosted a welcome bonfire in lieu of a rehearsal. We chose Tuesday for our wedding which seemed to work out the best because it is definiately the most fun leading up the big day! Most guests left Wednesday after the wedding (fri-wed). DRINKS: Our guests favorite cocktails were: dirty banana (kinda like a chocolate banana smoothie with alcohol), grasshopper (tastes like a thin mint cookie), espresso martini from the piano bar, all different flavors of mojitos, jamaican smile, purple rain, bob marley (that's the tri colored drink in pictures), and icebergs (red stripe draft beer with a floater of margarita on top) YUM-O!! FOOD: All the food was very good! For breakfast there is a buffet at the world café which has everything. There is also the coco café which is a coffee bar that is open all the time and serves hot and cold drinks including blue mountain coffee and some that have alcohol in them. That is how I started off all most everyday! My favorite lunch spot was the restaurant at the st. james pool. they had a nacho bar daily, and pizza, and many great dishes was a daily soup. the restaurant oceana at the wild orchid pool had different wraps that you could customize. there is also a snack bar in between each resort on the boardwalk that has soft pretzels, and the best little "meat pies' and Saratoga chips. This is all serve yourself which is great for a quick bite. Lastly there is staff that walks the boardwalk for 2 hrs each day and serve fresh fruit, jerk chicken, and fresh coconuts! (you can take them to the bar and they will add some rum too For dinner if your want to go to the Japanese restaurant, make a reservation as soon as your arrive. there was a 2 day wait for a table while we were there. It is delicious and you must try! The French restaurant Boudaeux has filet and lobster but make sure your hubby brings pants or else your cant get in! I would skip Portofino - the Italian restaurant. You can get much better food at all the others. El patio is the Mexican restaurant and was delicious. One thing to plan around is that Saturday night is all you can eat lobster night! YUMMY The Jamaican restaurant Blue Mountain was also very very good. The crab cakes and pumpkin soup are tasty and my husband loved the goat?! Our entire group probably wiped out the room service staff because we were all obsessed! the fried cheese triangles were to DIE FOR! they ran out multiple nights lol. The club sandwich was fab and the fish sandwich. It was such a luxury! we would order after dancing all night at DESIRES the nightclub! WELCOME BAGS: CEREMONY: We initially were going to have the ceremony at the big gazebo where the cocktail hour and reception was held but at the last moment switched to being on the actual water. I truly think it is even more private because the beach front gazebo is on the walkway between the resorts and closer to the public while the beach location is in the corner of the resort next to the preferred club beach. This was the best decision by far! The wedding coordinator, Rocio picked me up from my room with a golf cart and drove me over so I didn't sweat! Many other guests at the resort watched the wedding and every time I went out afterwards, someone would come up to me and tell me how beautiful it was or that they liked my dress! haha it was very sweet. Instead of having bridemaids I asked all my girls to wear purple dresses to the wedding. I wanted to save them money since they were already traveling to come to my wedding and it looked beautiful in all the photos! COCKTAIL HOUR: During the cocktail hour, we upgraded from the Jamaican Trio to the Steel Drum Band which was $200. They were absolutely fabulous!! All the guests were impressed. The Secrets Ultimate Wedding package included a photographer so I utilized him to take photos of all the guests during the hour while we were with Misha Earle (our photographer) This worked out perfectly and we got to chose 50 5x7 photos and they placed them in an album. The resort photographer pics were surprisingly gorgeous!! I love the album. The wedding package also included a 30 min DVD of the ceremony, clips of the cocktail hr, cutting of the cake, and the first dance. This was priceless! I am soooo happy we got this package and all the extras. The DVD is my favorite! We had a viewing party back at home with family and friends and every thought it was great. They truly did amazing. You even get to pick the songs featured in the video. Both items are treasured memories. DECORATIONS: From home I lugged the table runners and chair sashes that I ordered from weddinglinensdirect.com. I brought candles and center piece rings, I made table numbers in little frames I purchased from the dollar store, and I sprinkled blue and purple crystals along the tables. The resort provided tea lights on the tables and cocktail tables as well. I also brought some purple and turquoise tulle that was wrapped around the gazebo. From the resort we purchased the Chinese lanterns ($390) that were strung across dinner. It gave such a beautiful ambiance and I felt was worth the splurge! We rented 12 tiki torches that $8 each which had double duty. We used them to line the aisle at the ceremony and then the staff moved them around the dance floor and reception tables after the ceremony! I ordered shell and starfish frosted glass drink coasters from favorwarehouse.com. Each seat got 2 so a couple would get 4! People were even asking me for extra. One thing about these was that they were very heavy so I had to spread them out among guests to bring to Jamaica! Thanks you everyone! lol Got them on labor day sale so there was free shipping - great deal on them in bulk too. My friend Danielle made us the programs which we had on each seat at the ceremony. It was pretty warm so everyone was using them to fan themselves! great idea... CAKE: We chose the vanilla cake which was delicious - moist and we got a lot of compliments. We had a 2 tier cake and wanted one chocolate and one vanilla but that was a $50 upcharge so we declined. I purchased the cake topper off of etsy and got the butterflies at joann fabrics. Adding this on was no extra cost and it looked gorgeous! We also had the welcome sign on the cake table: GUEST MAP: In place of a guest book I will never look at again, we ordered a vintage map of Jamaica on Amazon and brought gold sharpies for every one to sign! We now have it framed in the basement! GLOWSTICKS: I ordered glow sticks in purple and blue. I got 2 cases of necklaces and bracelets. I placed them in sand pails I got at the dollar store and filled them with crystals from the dollar store so they would hold them up. This was the best idea for sure! All the guest loved them and even the staff at the wedding was weaing them! I made a sign that said "you've made our future bright, now lets so the same for tonight! grab a glow stick and light up the dance floor" I made a couple of my friends pack them and bring them to Jamaica and they were not happy with me haha but after the wedding they said it was totally worth it!! PRIVATE CANDLELIGHT DINNER: This is a must! It is included in the honeymoon package if you stay as the resort for 7 nights. You can also purchase if not and use some of the resort coupons. It was ~$350 for the lowest package. On our last day there, we had a romantic day at the spa with the hydrotherapy circuit and a couples massage. The spa is very high class. Later, we went to the barracuda bar and waited for our private waiter to get us and take us to our table. It was set up on the ocean at sunset. It was absolutely breathtaking. He served us a 3 course meal of the best food we had the entire time we were there with a bottle of champagne. This was the perfect way to end our trip! All in all, the wedding concierge has done this many many times before. They will eventually respond - don't forget they are on island time. There is no need to stress because it will all be amazing, so relax and enjoy every moment. After all, you are in paradise. <3 I will post more and the trash the dress shoot when I get my professional pictures back!
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I was married on 10/2/2015 at Secrets Montego Bay. I'd like to provide comments and/or answer any questions for all you anxious Montego Bay Brides to be. First of all the wedding coordinators at Wild Orchid at very good at what they do. My wedding turned out to be better than I imagined and/or planned. So I had planned to have my ceremony, cocktail hour, and reception outside on the beach using the Beach Casita area. On the morning of my wedding it rained like crazy!!! At that point I had prayed more than I could, worried more than I should and I figured there was nothing else left to do. So I just was like "Oh Well" Anyway as the morning went on it cleared up a bit with a slight overcast. My wedding was scheduled for 4pm, and at able 130 or 2pm, Samone the wedding coordinator called me to tell me that the wedding ceremony would still be at the casita, however, my ceremony is being moved to the Seaside restaurant/grill because of the weather. As some of you might know, their policy is that they will not and can not close a restaurant just to host your reception. Well they did for me. And it was perfect!!!!! So many of you on this site told me to trust their wedding coordinators and you were right. Although at times there is lack of communication and/or understanding they really seem to know what they are doing. In addition to the live band that came with the cocktail hour, I added the DJ. It was DJ BLUE. He was the best!!! It was just perfect. He conducted the whole reception and it was perfect ( and cute!!!) LOL.. I will add that I also used their sound system for the ceremony. I don't think that was worth it. The coordinators did tell me that because I was getting the DJ for the ceremony, they would let me use the sound system for the ceremony. Well their sound system didn't have a microphone, and my bro in law operated it and he said his karaoke machine at home worked better than that. However, it did allow me to come down the aisle on my selections. That's the one down side of my ceremony, while the officiant was talking and making us laugh throughout the ceremony. My guests say they couldn't hear anything at all. So sometime today, I'm going to try upload some pics on here. I used their photographer and videographer. And I'm satisfied with their work. Of course compared to some pics I've seen on here, they didn't match up to them, However, the pics does capture the moments, I'd like to remember with decent quality. So I'll just say for the price for SECRETS Ultimate package, I think I got my money worth and am satisfied. I opted not to do a lot of additions with décor, because I felt their prices were ridiculous!!! I purchased a roll of violet studded material at a clearance rate, and I purchased a lot of peacock feathers, which I intended to be my theme décor. (I hadn't known that there were peacocks roaming the resort). So the wedding team at NO extra cost added my pieces to the table and even put a few feathers on the cake and a few places on the table, being creative. And they did well!!!! That's all I can think of right now. But shoot out the questions, if you have any. ** I want to try to upload the DVD onto youtube. Does anyone have any experience with that? It's approximately 35 minutes long.
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I am staying at Secrets Wild Orchid and having my wedding there on Feb 2nd and since it suddenly just became only the two of us I would like to arrange a special candlelight dinner on the beach after our ceremony. I've heard that the Seawinds Beach Club and Calypso Restaurant next door to the resort does this but I can't find a website with any details. Have any Jamaica brides on here had experience with this? I have also reached out to SWO about having a candlelight dinner at the resort on the beach or one of the gazebos but they still haven't replied to me with pricing or menus to chose from and I don't want to leave it to chance until we get there since we want to have the dinner on a specific day.
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Hey ladies! I was wondering if anyone has gotten married recently at this beautiful resort? I have soooo many question! My groom and I got engaged in December 2014, and we are thinking about getting married in Feb 2017. I wanted to know if anyone could share their experience with this resort to help us with this crucial decision. Also, there are a lot of conflicting reviews about this resort. Any weather, price, items to bring, color schemes, photographers, and make-up and hair tips would be greatly appreciated!
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Even since I got engaged this past January I've been playing around with different ideas for my invitations. After many hours I finally came up with a design that met my vision. I decided to go with a pocket style invitation and use an embossing technique for the images. I probably invested close to 75 hours into my invitations but most of that time was because I kept changing my mind . Once I committed to a design I would say the whole process from designing the layouts in Photoshop to putting the last postage stamp on the outer envelope took me 7 hours to make 25 invitations. For those of you interested in my fonts, I downloaded them for free from http://1001freefonts.com. I used: Last names on invite & headings for inserts: Castellar First names on invites and other "scrolly" text on the RSVP card: Edwardian Script ITC Most test on invite & inserts: Champagne & Limousines After I worked out my wording for the invite and inserts I started by designing an image of sea coral in Photoshop then converted it to a vector using Illustrator. The original image was used for my invitations. I then cropped a section of the original image and saved it in a separate vector file for the inserts, rsvp, and, "one love" square on the outside of the pocket. Once the images were ready I contacted Dominion Stamps & Engraving (based out of Calgary, Alberta) http://www.dominionstamps.com and had them turn my custom images into 2 rubber stamps. I must say this company is fantastic to deal with and I highly recommend them. From the time I first contacted them to the time I received my stamps was less than 5 days and I live on the other side of Canada! I decided to cheat a little in the DIY process and ordered my paper and pockets from Cards and Pockets http://www.cardsandpockets.com . Again they were fantastic to deal with. Pocket invitations and outer envelope: Imperial Blue Inner envelope and invitation/rsvp/inserts: Snow white RSVP envelope and invitation mat: Turquoise With my invitations and enclosures all printed I was ready to start adding my custom images. I purchased my ink pads and embossing powder from Michael's. I used the Brilliance line of pigment ink in Rocket Red Gold color and Recollections embossing powder in clear. For the back of the RSVP envelope I used a heart stamp I found the clearance bin at Micheal's with ColorBox pigment ink in Robin's Egg and the same clear embossing powder used for my other images. It took a bit of practice to get the exact positioning of my images down but once I did my FI and I were off the races with our embossing assembly line (me stamping and dusting with embossing powder, him "cooking" the embossing powder with the heat gun). The embossing process is dead easy, even for amateur DIYers out there. The attached pics are of the end result. I'm happy with how they turned out but as a tip to other budget conscience Canadian brides, make a mock-up of your final product and take it to the post office. Because of my inserts and jute ribbon on the outside of the pocket (purchased from Michael's) my invitations were overweight and oversized so I ended up having to spend about $60 on postage stamps
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Hi ladies!! My Fiance and I are getting married at the IRHB on January 17, 2017! I have seen some photos of the different ceremony locations but mostly of the Beach ceremony. Has anyone been married on the terrace or in the gardens with photos? I would love to see them as my fiance and I dont feel like stomping around in the sand but want the romance of the gardens perhaps.... Also, we are opting on a private restaurant for dinner and the pictures I have seen are also very difficult to tell what sort of decorations I could bring / use without the place looking silly. Is there enough room for a dance floor and DJ as well as all of the guests and dinner tables!? I am beginning to stress as I just want to be able to see what everything looks like set up!!
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Hey Guys, I always meant to write a review of my wedding but just never got around to it. So instead I thought I'd offer a couple pics (some are iPhone pics, so ignore the quality) and a video a friend made for us while we were there, and see if anyone had any questions that I could answer. Video: Let me know if you have any questions! We had the best time and I would HIGHLY recommend this location to anyone! -Cora
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Hello hoping to find a bride that got married at Beaches Ocho Rio and is willing to share your photos. I am in need of photos of reception . I can't find them anywhere !
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Hi! I'm very new to this site, I am newly engaged and my fiance and I are planning a destination wedding in the Iberostar Rose hall, Jamaica in May 2016!! We were wondering if anyone has been there before, done their wedding there, seen anything or has any suggestions! We are so excited and there is so much to do! Any help would be appreciated!! Thanks! Danielle
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Hi all! Pretty new to this site and I have already really appreciated all the tips and ideas everyone shares in these forums. I am just getting started with planning and getting vendors lined up. The most critical one at this point (and the one that I seem stuck on) is the travel agent. I have seen bits and pieces from other folks about travel agents embedded in posts about other topics but I hoped to solicit some specific feedback about your experience finding one and working with them. Did you look for a TA that specialized in your wedding location? And do they provide you a quote based upon average amount per person or a certain time of year or what did you evaluate them based upon? Did you do phone interviews with them? What kinds of perks/incentives are typical? Sorry so many questions, just really have no idea start and while all the other vendor planning seemed very straight-forward. This one is giving me pause...HELP
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I'm planning a renewal at Grand Palladium and need to find someone to do my floral design on the beach also a great DJ
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Hi everyone! Has anyone worked with a wedding planner known as Wedding Belles Jamaica? There is barely any independent reviews on this company, however they claim to be executive producers of te Jamaican bridal expo, which is apparently a big deal in Jamaica? I've been corresponding with the owner of Wedding Belles Jamaica named Jo-Anne. I wanted read more reviews before deciding whether or not I should use this wedding planner. If anyone has an input/reviews on this wedding planning company, please share. Thank you in advance for your help!
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This hotel is beautiful and the staff make it worth the money. My wedding was fantastic. I want to give a huge thanks to Chandlyn, Jodi Ann, Paul from the wedding department, Timroy and Stacey Ann Lewis my butlers during my stay and Peter Brown the Bell man. Oh and Kamal Simms for a wonderful experience at the Royalton. From the moment I arrived they took great care of me and my now husband. Our server Dr. Love, lol; who took care of our romantic beach dinner was fantastic. Overall the ground staff was great. My wedding was beautiful. The spa was accommodating and I looked gorgeous. Trust me when I say once you arrive the staff in Jamaica provide a excellent service. The resort is beautiful. My only complaint would be dealing with Stacey Ingram in reservations and Laura Erikson the wedding coordinator in Canada. Laura did not provide accurate information and therefore we overspent. Contact the hotel directly, if you can future brides. Don't listen to what wedding agency tell you over the phone. They don't know what the hotel provides. Every single last person from the groom to ALL the guests were furious with her service. She didn't respond to requests for room reservations and mis calculated the cost of wedding reservations on several occasions. We had to correct her. We emailed the general manager Mr. Pizzuti and the wedding department staff and special thanks to them for my day memorable. Stacey and Laura literally had me in tears due to the poor service provided. I want to say special thanks to Elite Media Concepts for providing such great service! They provided DJ and Cinematography services. They were well organized and accommodating! They emailed a few questionnaires for song selections, genre of music, etc. The questionnaires were great didn't expect it. They got a chance to know our likes and dislikes. Any questions or concern I had, they were a call/email away and someone replied right way. On the the day of the wedding... They arrived early introduced themselves, go over pretty much everything we told them we wanted to capture and any last min. changes. I was very impress with the team. A+ all around! The DJ's were fantastic, they made our guests dance and enjoyed our reception. My husband deejay part time and he's very selective when it comes on to DJ's. He didn't stop talking about their setup and music selection and how they had ALL our guests on the dance floor. GREAT JOB ELITE MEDIA CONCEPTS!!! The wedding planning started off rocky with with lack of communication and incorrect info from the royalton coordinators, but the staff at the hotel was great and made our stay unforgettable. Our reception was fantastic thanks to Elite media.
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Our past photographer at Decordova Photography will be covering my friends wedding in Jamaica this October, and is offering his packages at a discount to other couples having a wedding in Jamaica on October 16 or October 17. I don't think it matters which resort as she is already bringing him down. You can arrange those details with him. That package is around $1100 total in Canadian dollars. Hope someone makes use of the savings. You can message him on his website www.decordova.ca. or info@decordova.ca. Please reference my name Emma or my friend Nikki. Love Emma
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I'm looking to hire a DJ for my wedding and reception in Montego Bay. I'm thinking that outside DJs might save me some money. Help please. Any recommendations or suggestions??
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Although I didn’t post any threads while planning my wedding, I did use BDW on several occasions and feel as though I owe it back to post this thread as a review of my wedding and some things I would or wouldn’t change. Just FYI- it’s a long thread! I hope this helps some of you in your planning! Dress: I loved my dress. It was purchased on clearance at David’s Bridal- a choice I made knowing that I would be “trashing” it after the wedding. Still… it’s really not that trashed, and I still really love it. So win-win! There were no closets to hang this in on the airplane so I ended up laying it across the luggage stored overhead and it was totally fine. Secrets steamed the dress and my grooms outfit so I assume any wrinkles from travel would have been removed regardless. Bridesmaids: I had 5 bridesmaids, 4 of which came to Jamaica (one had a baby!). I told them to find any coral dress they wanted and it worked out perfectly. I’d be lying if I said waiting to see if the colors matched didn’t give me any anxiety though. It worked out great in the end! I made them monogrammed beach bags and filled these with a flower for their hair, sunglasses, a necklace and earrings in a travel jewelry roll, and I made them a jewelry dish, passport and luggage tag holders, and barefoot sandals. I also paid for half of their hairstyles at the resort. My girls are awesome! small DIY items: I am an art teacher and I had a lot of time and materials available to me. I did not want to pay the ridiculous prices for décor from the resort, so most of our details were made by me. These fans were purchased from Michael’s and put on each seat for the reception. I also bought these paper straws and made the little tags for them (not all of these on one straw!)- we put them at the bar and had the bartender put one in each drink. Being the art teacher I wanted to have paint brushes there. I kept seeing cute ones saying something about brushing away sand, which inspired our escort cards. Our favor for the wedding was a magnet. The photo on the front is a print of a painting I made from one of our photos of a past Secrets trip. Flowers: I stalked Hobby Lobby until their RealTouch flowers were 50% and bought all of my florals from there. It cost me $90 for my entire bouquet and 5 bridesmaids bouquets. That was the cost of ONE bouquet from the resort! And you wouldn’t be able to bring it home with you. I had these in my carry on and they travelled really well. Now they are in my living room. I really just grabbed a bunch that I liked and put them together. Love them! We did get a real rose boutonnière for my husband because I didn’t like the way mine came out. Oh well. It was $40 just for that though! Yikes. We used the florals included in the wedding package to decorate around the reception area. I added little charms to the girls’ bouquets with their initials and wrapped mine with a broach that I wore for my sister’s wedding. Centerpieces: Since we only had 3 tables and a sweet heart table, I decided to use the bridesmaid bouquets as the flowers in the centerpieces. This worked out AWESOME. I wrapped gray ribbon around a clean spaghetti jar and added the sand dollar with coral ribbon. I used a gold paint pen to write the table numbers. I made four of these and numbered 1-3, I left the last one blank incase one broke, but none did so I drew a heart on it and used it at our sweet heart table instead. Once there, we filled them with a little bit of sand at the bottom to help hold the flowers upright. I bought handkerchiefs for the centerpiece to sit on since everything the resort provides is white. We used fake tea lights because real ones would blow out on the beach, and instead of using glass votives I made little coral paper mache cups that were way less heavy. I made turquoise tiles stamped with starfish for the jar to sit on… these said Montego Bay on the back, and were scoffed up pretty quickly by our guests as the end of the night. Lastly, some pink gems and additional starfish/sand dollars were added for decoration. I put all of the candles in the mason jars and then wrapped them in bubble wrap in my carry on. Again, no problems at all! Nothing broke. We also didn’t bring any of this home except one jar. Welcome Bags: We brought all of this with us and assembled once we got there. The following were included: Welcome sign/door knocker, bookmark, tissues, suntan lotion and aloe packets, sweedish fish, hand sanitizer bandaids, gym, instagram signs, a note with when to be at the wedding, a mix CD of island songs, and granola bars. I found the welcome/door hanger signs somewhere online and recreated similar ones in Word. We didn’t include any drinks and not much food because it was an all-inclusive resort, but everyone seemed to really like the bags and appreciated the thought. We gave the bags to people as we saw them instead of paying the $4 fee per room delivery fee that the resort charges. Secrets Resort: This resort is absolutely beautiful. We were there on vacation in 2012 and decided that if we got married it would be there. Fast forward two years later, we got engaged and booked our wedding without further discussions. We used a travel agent to handle our trip because it was a group of 27 people! I highly suggest someone to handle all of the details for you so you have less to worry about. We were also upgraded to the preferred side of Wild Orchid when we arrived.The view from our room was incredible. Aside from the beauty of the resort, they are not incredibly easy to work with. I understand the whole concept of email taking a while to respond, but I was made to feel like a crazy bride pulling out all of the stuff we brought with us (or maybe I just really was a crazy bride???). There was also a very strict schedule the day of the wedding. The ceremony started at 5 but guests had to be in their seats by 4:30. There was a fee for every little thing. The only thing we rented from the resort were tiki torches. They do provide lights that look like lamp posts (but don’t tell you about it) so you probably don’t need the 12 we got. They were really good about setting everything up- it looked just how I had imagined it- and never charged us a set up fee at all. We had both the ceremony and the reception at the barracuda beach which is by the volley ball courts. Our photographer was amazing and covered the vendor fee, but we had to pay for her to have a guest pass to come back the next day to do a one hour trash the dress session. It was just a feeling of being nickel and dimed for every little thing when you were bringing the resort a ton of money with a group of people and a wedding. They did give us an extra room the night before the wedding for the groom to stay in. We decided to stay together anyway, so I used the extra room the next day to get ready in with my girl since it didn’t have the luggage clutter and he got ready with the groomsmen in our room since they didn’t really care. It worked out nicely. Myself and four girls used the resort spa for our hair and I also had my make up done because it was included in my package. This was all fine until we got out on the beach and it was super windy. The extensions started to come out. Luckily my mom is a retired hair dresser and was able to remove them and pin up what was left before the ceremony started. The make up was nice and stayed all night- a few weird things were: they lined my lips on the outside of them… making them look huge, they added black to my already dark eyebrows and I felt like Frida Kahlo, and they lined my eyes with eyeshadow instead of pencil. The brows they fixed right away by seeing my reaction, the other things were fine, just different. I wiped off the extra lips and lined my own eyes when we got back to the room. Our Photographer: By far, we spent the most amount of money in this area and it was 100% worth every penny. Misha Earle was incredible. She was so flexible creating the photo package that we wanted and our photos are stunning. I can’t stop looking at them! She kept us laughing all day long and was everything you could want in your wedding photographer. I highly recommend her to anyone looking for a photographer in Jamaica. I did a lot of research before choosing her, and don’t regret it one bit. We did get photographs from the resort included in our package—and they are fine. But not comparable to Misha’s photos at all! (There was also a video included with our package… if not included, it would not have been worth the money. The quality is terrible and graphics are quite tacky.) Within 2.5 weeks of our wedding we could view the photos online and within a month we had our photos on a flash drive at our door. I can’t say enough great things about her! Cocktail Hour: We upgrade to the steel drum band for $200. From what I hear, they were awesome. We were off taking pictures with Misha so we only caught the very end of it. We did a first look before the ceremony (my favorite part of the day) so all of our bridal party could enjoy happy hour. DJ: We used the house DJ- I don’t actually know what his name is, but he was pretty good. We didn’t have a choice of who we wanted. He played all of the songs that we requested ahead of time and kept us dancing all night. I only wish we had met him ahead of time to go over the order of when things were happening. My brother in law sang and played our first dance song for us and he didn’t know he was about to play until he was announced. Minor details, but would have been nice to know ahead of time. He did bring a mic/stand and made sure he had the right guitar plug ins for us though, as requested through the weddings manager. The food was really good in the buffet. Some brides say that they don’t have time to eat at their wedding but we didn’t have any problems with that. J They gave us a personal waiter who made us plates from the buffet. We got chocolate for our cake flavor and that was really good. They wrap up the top of your cake and give it to room service so you can order it whenever you want for the rest of your trip. Our last night, we took the cake and a bottle of champagne to the beach and enjoyed what we could before we left! I made the wire cake topper, and we brought the ribbon (left over from my bouquet) with us which they added to the cake. We never got the cake topper back, but then again I never asked. The flowers pictures are the ones included from the hotel. ***********having trouble with the photo uploader... guess you'll have to visit Misha's website to see the cake! Welcome Party and Rehearsal: We didn’t do one, technically. I watched some other Secrets weddings on YouTube and basically just paired people up so they knew who to walk with. I walked with both of my parents and we had 4 girls, 6 guys so that was the only coordinating we really had to do. I tried to make reservations for the whole group ahead of time at hibachi. They wanted to charge us $30 a person to book this (at one of the resort restaurants, nothing private). So we didn’t book it. Once we were there we tried again with our hotel concierge and they made the reservation for 27 with no additional charge. Because it was hibachi the tables seated 10 each so it was a little divided, but it was nice to have everyone together this first night. I’m sure there are other things I’m forgetting, so feel free to ask away. You can see a feature of our photos from Misha at http://mishaearlephotography.com/#!/images/featured-weddings/courtney-matt-secrets-wild-orchid/ and if you click on slideshows the rest of them are there. I’ll post a few, just so you can get an idea of how seriously incredible she really is!
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I can't believe we're leaving in 3 days from now and our wedding is one week from today! Today is my last day in the office. I am prone to anxiety and my entire goal through this whole planning process was to put in the time and energy well in advance so that I wasn't completely panicking and stressing this final week and the first few days in Jamaica. I have to say, wedding wise, I'm in great shape!! My fiance is finishing up some final coordination/logistics details for a couple excursions we have planned, but I'm leaving all that to him and he has it under control. I did hope I would be 95% packed by now, but work has kept that from happening. Try as hard as I could, but 3 big projects I thought were wrapping up came back around to be very needy in the last couple weeks! Even if I wasn't preparing to be off it would have been a tough couple of weeks, so it is extra crazy. I've had to work over the last few weekends, which is when I normally would have been packing. Hopefully I can pull it all together and keep my calm through take off! Thanks to everyone for your support, ideas and advice over the last year! I'll post a recap thread when I get back since I didn't do a planning thread and share my stuff in case it is useful to those in the trenches of planning
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Hello all, My fiance and I are planning our destination wedding hopefully early next summer. We were looking into Jamaica and there are some really nice places. Currently, we looked into Round Hill and the Rockhouse. We plan on inviting around 90 people (big Italian family), but realistically think that only half will show. There maybe a child or two, but adult only venues are plausible. Also, we prefer almost anywhere in the Caribbean, Jamaica is not a make or break deal. Our budget is for around 20-25k. Roundhouse quoted us for 35k and we never got an accurate quote from Rockhouse. My question is can anyone provide a place where I can get the most out of our money? Your responses are greatly appreciated! Thank you!!! Mike
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I really wanted to do a welcome bag for my guest list of 18 that's going to Jamaica and a Oh Sh%t kit. However bags are costly then I feel like u need enough items to fill the bags. Which will include items they don't really need and wasted space in my luggage. I also live 15 hours from my family so I can't get others to carrier them or hand them out earlier. So next best thing is to do miniature canvas bags and use iron-ons to complete the look. They turned out great!!! No bag will have the same contents. Everyone will get the "airline ticket" of the weeks plans, q-tips, hand sanitizer, band-aids, floss, wedding party koozie. I found some cheap baggies that self sealed to put everything in. Then others will also get a flask, and joke gifts that the person who receives will understand. Like a PT test, condoms and so on. Each item will have a sticker with a funny note to them. That's what the bags look like as u can tell they are not that big. Perfect for an Oh Sh%t kit. That's what the bagged items look like. One thing I like about them is the fact that they are not zip lock bags. And here are what the stickers will look like. I haven't picked up the sticker paper yet so it's printed on normal paper.