I gotta stop freaking out ...

I freak out easily, especially when control of the situation is not in my hands but someone else's. In this case I'm talking about the travel agent. Since our wedding is in Hawaii and it was quite complicated to try and book our trip and those of others ourselves we decided to use a travel agent. We had gotten some recommendations from friends and my trusty travel book, Frommers, and in the end sided with Frommers and choose Liberty Travel.

Why LT you ask? I initially felt comfortable with them because they take ads out in newspapers all of the time, they are located everywhere (at least in NJ) and a popular travel guide recommended them. Our particular travel agent, Maria, has been very nice and pretty communicative since we started working with her over a month ago. As nice as Maria is I did encounter some issues (minor in my Fiance's opinion) but issues nonetheless. The issues were:

• Travel agents don't necessarily save you money in all situations
• We weren't told our hotel was actually a group of buildings and in order to be near the beach you needed to request a certain type of room (otherwise basic rooms are across the street)
• We weren't told our hotel charged a $25 daily resort fee
• We were told we'd save money if we paid everything up front, which is true, but if you do that you mess up "the package" or "group rate" which in the end still didn't make much sense to us
• LT didn't have a normal credit card machine, it was the "old school" rolling contraption that makes a card impression on carbon paper

I got over issues 1-5 but then last night I was going through my bills and noticed the charge for our airfare to and from Hawaii, it said:

1. EWR to PHX (Newark to Phoenix)
2. PHX to LIH (Phoenix to Lihue)
3. LIH to HNL (Lihue to Honolulu)
4. HNL to PHX (Honolulu to Phoenix)

Does that mean that we're not coming back to NJ and we'll be stuck in Phoenix after our wedding and honeymoon?! I wasn't surprised that there was another thing I had to call the travel agent about (I called about the 5 above). Last night I asked my wonderful Fiance to call because the travel agent somehow makes me dizzy with all the talk and then I freak out and need the Fiance to fix it anyway. So he called and supposedly our airline doesn't even fly from Lihue to Honolulu and according to her records we are returning on the path of HNL to PHX to EWR. and that it must've been an error of some sort.

If for whatever reasons you are considering LT or a travel agent in general, I highly recommend doing your research on the travel agency. The scariest part is finding out things after you've put down your deposit money and there's no turning back. Our issues are definitely minor and have warranted a, "Jenny don't freak out" from the Fiance. My other recommendations:

• Pay with a credit card because you can file a claim if something goes wrong (also some cards automaticially provide travel insurance)
• Research your trip (hotel, air) and come to the table with that information. The rates and stuff will be slightly different but you at least have an idea of the going rate if you were to book on your own.
• Take the booklets the travel agent gives you, they have a wealth of information that I couldn't or had a hard time finding online
• If you're unsure, call you travel agent, they are there to help you

Did you have any problems with a travel agent or booking through one? What happened? What did you do?