Wearing Ihram before Jeddah?

Salam! We just came to Jeddah from Canada with intention to perform Umrah tonight We were not in Ihram The taxi driver informed us that we should be in ihram before coming to Jeddah if we were coming with intention for Umrah

We thought we could go to hotel and then do Masjid Ayesha and do our Ihram and niyaat from there for Umrah

He said it is not allowed to do that for us since we came specifically for umrah intention so we must do qurbaani/dum now by giving money for goat or something FIRST and then go do our Umrah

Does this sound right to you all? We genuinely did not know this and honestly came a while ago and had done the Masjid Ayesha ihraam then too

Thanks!