Review of our Wedding at Sandals Negril

This is an old review from Trip Advisor (pre blog days)

My husband and I just returned from our wedding at Sandals Negril and we absolutely loved it. The resort is very nice (although, as others have said, the rooms could use some updating—which I think they are scheduled for). We traveled with some family and friends for the first five days and then had the weekend to ourselves. It was great for both the group and just us. I will break down this review into different categories.

Wedding: We had very good interactions with the stateside wedding planner as well as the planners on the property. On our second day at the resort, we met with Charmaine and Lea who helped us choose our locations for the wedding and the reception. We got married in the beach gazebo at 4pm and it was perfect. We brought an iPod to play music and didn’t decorate the gazebo at all. It was absolutely beautiful without any embellishments. You can’t really beat the ocean as a backdrop! The reception in the gardens was kind of like a formality, more than anything. The back of the property is very narrow so the traffic behind the resort was right there—only a few trees and a chain-link fence (thankfully hidden by bushes) separated us from the road. It was SO HOT back there as it’s rather secluded and there is not a breeze. So, basically we did the cake cutting and a few pictures and headed back to the beach. Overall, everything was great and we wouldn’t have changed anything about it.

Restaurants: We never went hungry at Sandals Negril. We especially liked Cucina Romano. We ate there with family and friends the night of our wedding. Our server, Christopher, was fantastic. He even made a special trip to get my mom ice cream when she joked with him that it was all she wanted for dessert.  My husband and I went back there on our last night at the resort because we liked it so much. We also loved Kimonos. While the food was mostly your basic hibachi grill food (although the second time he cooked up the tuna my husband caught on his fishing trip), the chef we had was totally worth a second trip back! His name was Gion (I’m not sure about the spelling). He sang the WHOLE time! He was incredible. We went back another night and came to find that his presentation was not a routine but an improv session. He was so entertaining and very friendly. If you go, request him as your chef! The other restaurants were fine although the service at the Sundowner takes FOREVER. If you get room service, I’d suggest ordering the night before so you don’t have to wait as long at breakfast time.

Butlers: We decided to go all out on this vacation since it was our wedding and honeymoon, so we reserved a butler suite. We had Daron and Baisil as our butlers and they were awesome! They would surprise us with lunch and drinks when we least expected it; Daron met us as we got off the snorkeling boat, took our fins and handed us drinks. They reserved seats on the beach for us each day, reserved tables for dinner and escorted us to the restaurants to seat us. We really appreciated their friendly service. It was very clear that Daron, especially, actually enjoys his work but both of them were pleasant and helpful.

Suggestions: If you are there for the beach party, make sure to attend it! The food was fantastic and the entertainment was pretty cool. Also, on Sunday nights they have a steel-drum band from Kingston and they were phenomenal!

Complaints: the sidewalks are slippery as heck when it rains!!! Not much they can do about it but I nearly wiped out (and did once) on several occasions. The sand fleas (or flies) are terrible! Bring bug spray and anti-itch stuff. If we had had those two necessities, we wouldn’t have a complaint. Our “wedding” dinner at the Barefoot by the Sea restaurant was rather terrible. We chose our menu at our wedding planning meeting and our dinner was at 6:30 on Saturday after all of our guests had headed home. We were walked to a beautiful table by Basil, but that’s pretty much where the good stuff ended. It seemed that no one really knew were coming and the chef wasn’t prepared to make our meal. We waited a while for our appetizers but got the soup and salad in a decent amount of time. After that we had to wait over an hour for our entrée. We kept being told that “it was coming” and “it was on its way”…but it was not. We got our entree around 8pm. We told them to cancel our dessert as we didn’t feel like waiting any longer. This was truly the only real “problem” we faced on our stay.

We HIGHLY recommend Sandals Negril. We enjoyed it so much, we’ve already booked another trip to Sandals next year, although this time we are trying La Toc in St. Lucia.
https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g147313-d214225-r169524892-Sandals_Negril_Beach_Resort_Spa-Negril_Westmoreland_Parish_Jamaica.html#