CTI Weddingmoon Review August 23-30th

[SunshineandFire]

All I can say is, we had a blast. CTI was simply amazing. We absolutely loved the resort. It was laid out well, had loads of activities, the food was marvelous, and the staff was so friendly.

I must say, we’ve read a LOT of reviews while counting down for our trip. We were bummed each time we read something negative because it affected our perception of how our trip would go. For us, having never been to Jamaica or Couples, we had no expectations other than what we read on the message board. So in this review, we did our best to post only pertinent information that Couples staff should be aware of. In other words…don’t sweat the small stuff… You know? 

MUST DO’s include: Snorkeling, Catamaran Cruise, Dunn’s River, Sweet Potato Chips & Hummus at the veggie bar, Swim up bar, Buddha Pool, Couples Massage, and the dinner on the beach.
Don’t forget: Go to Dunn’s River on Sunday (no cruise ships!), book the Catamaran Cruise EARLY, and book your dinner on the beach for Friday if you like Lobster!

The food was incredible. I think there were only two things we didn’t like during a meal and those were soups. No biggie. Everything else was fabulous. We loved Eight Rivers but our candlelit dinner on the beach was the most amazing meal ever. Surf and Turf to die for!

The drinks were great too! We immediately fell in love with the Jamaican Smile, Dirt Banana, Rum Runner, and the Red Stripe beer. We had Bob Marley shots two separate nights. That’s an experience you just gotta do! We videoed our reactions and those were totally hilarious.

The Wedding:
The staff took such great care of us. Latoya and Chaudin had everything well managed. The minister was very well spoken and professional. The beach setting was PERFECT even with the speedboat in the background. We had a big crowd gathered to watch and even some new friends we made came to the ceremony. We went to the garden gazebo in the shade to do the toast and cake cutting. It was all marvelous.
We had Sheldon as our photographer and he was wonderful. I took some pictures from magazines that I liked the look of and he NAILED them all.
I think giving him the examples really helped. We bought the deluxe package that included 36 pictures, the album and the video. It was the BEST deal. We ended up buying an additional 5 photos, for a total of $50 extra.

FUTURE BRIDES—if you have any questions please email me directly! I’ll try to ease your worries! I was nervous about planning things via email, but it was absolute perfection! I’ll email you our wedding pictures as well if you’d like to see them.
K9sarchick@yahoo.com

Photoshop:
We picked an additional 8 photos from our dinners, catamaran cruise, swimming and a special sunset session as well. Beautiful photos as well, most of them taken by Kamar. He was great. The extra 8 pictures plus an 8x10 wood Couples frame rang in at $100. I think the photoshop prices are high, but I expected that.

Things we couldn’t live without:
Flashlight for walking the beach at night, dryer sheets in the drawers, a small beach bag, Ziploc baggies, good water shoes for Dunn’s River, a clip on watch for the beach bag, Febreeze, First Aid kit, and extra memory & batteries for our cameras.

Things that only took up extra room in our luggage:
Chair clips, ketchup packets, sun hat, bendy straws, EmergenC packets, the 3 inch high heels & the extra pair of Flip Flops.

Sun Protection:
We used 50 SPF sunscreen before the wedding then went to 30 SPF. We had 5 bottles total and could have managed with 3.

Visit to Sans Souci:
We did take a quick trip over to Sans Souci just to check it out. We honestly didn’t like it at all. Compared to CTI, the lack of the ocean view was the big bummer. It reminded us of a college campus of sorts with lots of buildings spread out all over.
There were not many people walking around at all. CTI was like a major party in comparison. The stairs everywhere would have been an issue for my husband’s parents who traveled to CTI for our wedding. We are so glad we picked CTI.
But this of course was just our preference. A coworker of my husband went to SS last year and totally loved it.

Gifts:
We gave out chocolates to our favorite staff to say thank you. But we gotta say, if possible they would have preferred cash. They all work really long hours and we felt terrible for them. We did tip cash to at least one staffer who went above and beyond for us. It was money very well spent.

The only complaints we could have, but these most certainly did NOT ruin our trip:
--There was a water main break that stopped our cold water and the ability to flush the toilets for about 10 hours. It could have been handled a lot better by the staff in our opinion. I am just SO thankful that this happened right AFTER our wedding.

--We had a $25 gift certificate as part of our honeymoon package and we spent at least an hour and a half at the front desk total time trying to get this applied to our account. So it turned out not being worth all that effort. It was finally fixed though.

--On the way to the Taj Mahal Shopping Center our Jata Tour driver stopped at a ‘Flea Market.’ It was extremely pushy people who separated us all out into 1 couple per guide. They then took us to only their shop and didn’t let us look around at any other shops. For our first shopping experience, it was totally frightening. If you are taken to a flea market, our best advice is to keep your butt on the bus instead!

Thank You's:
We didn’t get a comment card to complete when we checked out, so I hope someone from Couples reads our Thank Yous!!

Special thanks to Shawna for getting us on the Catamaran cruise that was so very popular.
Thanks to Latoya and the wedding coordination staff for making our wedding unforgettable.
Thanks to bellman Byron for always making us smile.
Thanks to Gary who took us to Dunn’s River that told us how to avoid exiting through the Craft Market.
And thanks to servers Francine, Antoinette, Sean and Shawn, Adriane, Romaine, Chaudin, and Dane for taking such good care of us.

There were so many staffers that truly made our trip memorable. We'd love to provide more info to Couples staff if they'd like to send us a comment card!

Couples Tower Isle is an amazing place where you will make fabulous memories that will stay with you forever. We are already planning our return trip HOME.

Feel free to email us any questions if we haven't covered them in our review. K9sarchick@yahoo.com

Until Next Time CTI...

Love

Danielle & Tim

[SunshineandFire]

Forgot to mention....
We did wear bug spray the night of our beach dinner. But all in all, we came home with maybe 1 bug bite each.

[slewis]

agreed bugs werent bad at all! It was so great meeting you and Tim! Thanks for sharing in one of the most special days of our lives We too are already planning another trip for our one year

[Chell00]

congrats on the wedding... We missed seeing it (we arrived on the day of the water outage), but i was the gal with the short red hair and my husband was the tall jamaican who sang air supply at the karoke

i'm with you on CSS.... we headed over there on our way back to pick up our son up in the hills and both thought that while it was a beautiful property, CTI was more to our liking.. just a different vibe, and with everything being so new and fresh after the rennovations at CTI (and the constant maintainence, didn't see a day where someone wasnt painting something), CSS just seemed to need a bit of TLC to bring it up to par for us....

i'll agree the bugs weren't too bad... i got stung by a bee one day and my foot is still itchy and red but other that that, all the bug bites i got were from our time up in the hills during our two nights with family....

can't wait to return to CTI and bite the bullet and do the private dinner on the island realized after the fact that we can use resort credit towards it, so now it's on my must do list