ncake: I’m pissed that the Melia had only a 2pm or a 4pm time slot for us to choose from, then someone booked the 4pm one by the time we responded that day… buggers! 2pm is way too early for my liking, I have my travel agent trying to weasel them into letting us do it at like 6pm instead. I’m a very calm person, but I might pitch a fit if they aren’t willing to even think about it, as it seems so far. We’re doing 2 weddings in our week there too, our friends are having theirs 2 days before ours and they’re having their reception at the Melia so far, but that might change. I would rather they didn’t have theirs at Jellyfish, as I want our venue to be different (besides, it was MY discovery… haha, jk)
Hamilton: you will not pay THAT much less having it at the Jellyfish, but rest assured that you will get WAY more value for your $$ by having it at the Jellyfish rather than the Melia.
Basically, I told the Melia to “get bent” and I’m using their ‘free wedding’ which is the Melia package… it’s good for up to 12 people. What I’ve done is told them to scrap the dinner (because obviously it’s useless to us) and instead, I’m just taking all the freebies and told them to do NO extra work than they’d do for 12 people. Our guests can stand, family can sit – it’ll be what, 15 minutes anyways?? No one in our group would mind. If there’s only enough champage for the families to toast with, big whoop – we’ll all head over to one of the nicer lounges for some celebratory drinks (free ones, too… lol) before heading to the Jellyfish. Everything you want to do costs extra with the Melia, per person and per hour. It’s ridiculous unless your group has less than 24 people in it. We have an infant travelling with one of our wedding guests, everyone else is 19+. The Jellyfish is about a 15 min. walk down the beach from the Melia apparently, but the gazebo is quite a ways from the beach too… apparently if you ask the Jellyfish owners, they’ll help arrange a bus to transport your guests to the Jellyfish then back to the Melia at the end of the night, and it’s not expensive. I’m going to look into that myself.
I’m sooooo choked at the fact that the Melia charges for alcohol for weddings, it makes me sick. However, the Jellyfish does as well but their rates are better I find. I’m hoping to drink t the Melia for about an hour, then head to Jellyfish at 7:30, dinner at 8. I’m also hoping to bring wine for the dinner if they’ll let me, then open the bar for like 3 hours after dinner… it’s still very expensive for a few hours to host a bar there, but not as much as the Melia and I’d never ask my guests to shell out $$ for drinks after they’ve paid almost $1800 per person for a 7 day stay at an all-inclusive, so we’re just going to have to suck it up and pay for it ourselves.
My mom’s a florist so besides my free bouquet and Curt’s free boutinnere, we’re going to make the other bouquets and boutinneres… so hopefully I can buy flowers somewhere or I’ll be skulking around the resort late-night all in black with scissors and a basket… haha. My free wedding comes with a cake, which they will allow to be taken over to the Jellyfish (the owners are more than happy to go get it in the daytime for you).
So yeah, I’m stickin’ it to them. They run an insulting money-grab of a business with their wedding packages, it’s not worth it. Our wedding was going to start running us near ten grand, and that was with JUST the basics, for like 85 people. Brutal! Feel free to ask me whatever, I’m full of info after fighting with the Melia for months now… haha. My email is carlymclaughlin@shaw.ca