Westin Los Cabos brides post here! - Page 11

marip123 · 05-16-2008, 02:37 PM

Hi Sassybride! When is your wedding?

As far as noise, they told me 10:00, so I asked for 10:30, and now I see they will let you go until 11? hmmm..... I was so excited when she told me we could extend to 10:30.

Maura, you should ask and see if you can take your party inside. Because you have a rooming contract, you should be able to without a location fee, or all the other charges they like to give me. I did inquire about bringing our party inside, but the prices were way too outrageous, but like I said, since you have a rooming contract, they should be more willing to accomodate!

marip123 · 05-16-2008, 02:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sassybride

omg, they keep changing prices on us lol like if we say it's too expensive all of a sudden the price goes down! I'm keeping everythign for proof!

Right, so they quoted me $5.00/slice for our cake. I got our final food & beverage resume, and she was charging me $8.00/slice! So, I send her the email with her original quote, and she doesn't even say anything about it, she just quietly went and changed it to $5.00. It was like an overcharge of $100.00!

Maura · 05-16-2008, 02:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by marip123

Hi Sassybride! When is your wedding?

As far as noise, they told me 10:00, so I asked for 10:30, and now I see they will let you go until 11? hmmm..... I was so excited when she told me we could extend to 10:30.

Maura, you should ask and see if you can take your party inside. Because you have a rooming contract, you should be able to without a location fee, or all the other charges they like to give me. I did inquire about bringing our party inside, but the prices were way too outrageous, but like I said, since you have a rooming contract, they should be more willing to accomodate!

we're already going to be inside basically because we are in the restaurant la playa. i am wondering if that will change the rules for us at all. in mexico, normally weddings go until like 4 am the next day -- so jose is really pissed at the mention of us having to cut our reception short at all. (jose's best friend's wedding last year, we stayed until 6 am the next morning and when we left people were still dancing and drinking!) i am going to talk to jose's mom this weekend and ask her to address the reception ending time issue with them and let me know what the outcome is.

krista, how much are you paying for DJ Ricardo?

sassybride · 05-17-2008, 07:37 PM

Hi Maura! DJ I think is charing 225$/hour which I think is wayy too much so were prob only going to have him for 3 hours after dinner and do the ipod for cocktail hour and dinner.

sassybride · 05-17-2008, 07:40 PM

MARIP123: My wedding will be in October of this year.

sassybride · 05-17-2008, 08:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Maura

we're already going to be inside basically because we are in the restaurant la playa. i am wondering if that will change the rules for us at all. in mexico, normally weddings go until like 4 am the next day -- so jose is really pissed at the mention of us having to cut our reception short at all. (jose's best friend's wedding last year, we stayed until 6 am the next morning and when we left people were still dancing and drinking!) i am going to talk to jose's mom this weekend and ask her to address the reception ending time issue with them and let me know what the outcome is.

krista, how much are you paying for DJ Ricardo?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Maura

There seems to be a growing number of us Westin Los Cabos brides on here lately, so I think we need a thread to share what everyone is up to!
Post your date and as many details as you have!

WEDDING DATE:August 9, 2008

WHY WE CHOSE LOS CABOS/THE WESTIN
We chose Los Cabos because almost my whole family is from Chicago, and almost his whole family is from Mexico City. No matter what, someone's family was going to have to travel far, so we decided on doing a destination wedding to a place we wanted to go. We aren't into huge traditional weddings which is what we felt we'd be obligated to have if we married in either of our home towns. I'm an anxious person anyway and am not comfortable with tons of attention, so we also figured that by having our wedding out of town we could cut down on the number of people who "have" to be invited. Since my FI is from Mexico originally, we wanted to get married in Mexico and Los Cabos was one of the few places he deemed acceptable.

For some reason, my FI doesn't like AI resorts. So, we wanted to pick a place that was private, not gargantuan in size and that would give us a guarantee that we would be the only wedding held on our date so we could have the full attention of the WC and the staff for whatever we need. We absolutely loved photos we saw of the Westin and from other weddings held there and knew it was the place for us. The mix of the modern architecture plus the colors make for very dramatic scenery, which we loved. We also love the fact that it has a timeshare section of the hotel, the Regina Club, in case any of our family members want to spend the whole preceding week vacationing with us.

CEREMONY
**UPDATE**
Ceremony is now for sure at the Westin. Padre Juvencio gave away our ceremony time so we are doing a private quickie church thing with our parents to make it "legal" in the eyes of the church, and then doing our big thing with the guests at the westin.

RECEPTION
We were given two options: Restaurante La Playa or the pool deck.
We are heavily leaning toward La Playa because both locations have equally beautiful views of the ocean, but La Playa has a roof over it. The sides of the restaurant are open air though. I have some photos I will post later today to show the difference between the two. End of August begins the rainy season, so we shouldn't need to worry too much about rain in the beginning of August but you can never be too careful. If we do it on the pool deck and it rains, they would move us indoors and we don't like the indoor options. I also had spoken with another BDW member, KarlaV, who had her reception on the pool deck, and she told me that if she had to do it over again, she would've picked a more private location at the Westin because there were other hotel guests walking by throughout the night.

MENU
We will be doing some kind of cocktails between the ceremony and the beginning of the reception so that we can sneak off for some photos of just the two of us. We have still not decided our menu selections yet, as we have a bit still before we have to do so. We do know for sure it will be a plated dinner served to the guests. Amazingly, one of FI's best friends owns a wine/tequila importing and exporting company and has generously offered to provide the wine and tequila for the evening as a gift.

WEDDING COORDINATOR UPDATED 3/2/08
We still dont have one. Been dealing with Karina Jajan who is the general sales manager and Maira Gallegos who is the group reservations coordinator. They answer emails fairly quickly but seem to be trying my patience a lot lately.

PHOTOGRAPHER Bradley Fraser. We booked Bradley for 5 hours based on many wonderful examples of his work as well as recommendations from other clients.

NEW!
VIDEOGRAPHER Enrique Diaz from Baja Video Productions. Very excited about this because I wanted a video and originally couldn't afford it, but they gave me a great price so I reworked my budget to fit it in and I am so happy I was able to!

I can't think of anything else right now...

Welcome to all the Westin Brides out there(and anyone thinking about becoming a Westin bride)!

Share your details and experiences with the Westin here!

Maura, I really want a videographer but they seem to be very expensive. Do you mind me asking you how much you are paying yours and for how many hours. Thanks,

Maura · 05-18-2008, 08:59 AM

I had to go back and read my contract to be sure, but I chose their ceremony only package, which includes 30 mins prior to the ceremony, the entire ceremony, and then a sunset beach walk just after the ceremony. This was $500, with a 20% ($100) deposit, which I paid back in February. So I still owe $400. My contract also gives me the option of adding an additional hour on for my cocktail hour at the rate of $150 (which was a special rate I got for being directed to them by another client). Not sure yet if we will do the extra hour, but my contract says that we dont have to decide until the wedding day. Videography did not originally fit into my budget, I had to reorganize some finances to fit it. It was one of those things that after seeing a bunch of other people's I knew I would regret not having one.

Maura · 05-18-2008, 09:58 AM

here are some photos of some centerpieces that maira suggested to me. i personally hate them and they are not my style at all, i hate stuff with mirrors, but i thought id post them so you know another option available.

sassybride · 05-18-2008, 10:17 AM

Ya I'm not a mirror person either. I like simple modern things. I'm having high cylinder vases with orchids attached to horse tail. I can't find the pic but it will look kinda like the medium vase but with green orchids instead of yellow.

http://images.theknot.com/ImageStage...arge_image.JPG

Maura · 05-18-2008, 02:17 PM

ok here's what i came up with for my first trial. i would really like to get the mini starfish like these to sprinkle in with the shells:

but here's what i came up with. i will also do the heat transfer w/tissue paper with our names and wedding monogram on it on all the candles.

i am going to send these photos to maira and see if they have anything like this that they can provide otherwise i will bring everything down with me.