WE'RE BACK! Review and non pro pics

[monicabrandon2008]

Thank you everyone for all of your ideas. I couldn't have had such a great wedding without this forum!

It was our Dream wedding and we are so happy how everything went. We just got back last night. ugh, we are so tired and trying to catch up.

 

My review J Long and unorganized J EVERYTHING WAS PERFECT AND WE MISS IT SOOO MUCH!

 

Transportation:

We flew American and everything was great. Got to Cancun Airport at 12:10, customs was slow but got through it. Our transportation which Tammy arranged for us with VI Travel was there and we were on the road at 1:30. The ride was a straight shot and not a whole lot to look at. It flies by though. We arrived at Dreams Tulum an hour and a half later at 3:00. We didn’t mind it being an hour and a half away from the airport. We loved being far away from the touristy stuff and feeling like we were on a secluded beach J You can’t see any resorts around while on the beach. LOVED it! Ok -We were welcomed with cold washcloths and champagne. Check in was a breeze. We booked the Hacienda garden view room but were upgraded for free to a Dreams Jr. suite. My family and friends that arrived with us got the hacienda garden view rooms and weren’t upgraded for free. Also, their rooms weren’t available until 5:00pm. That was fine-the front desk kept their luggage and we all went and had lunch at the Seaside Grill and then swam at the pool.

 

The Rooms:

We LOVED our room. 8235 was our room number. It was right by the Seaside Grill and wedding site. Beautiful view from there! The AC worked great, the safe, hot water, fridge, everything worked great.

I did check out the garden view rooms and they were nice also. They were a bit away from everything but nothing would have stopped my guests from having a great time. Some did mention that the water didn’t get very hot and that the AC wasn’t very cool but they all kept the room they were assigned and were happy.

We always had our room cleaned before 5 PM, not sure exactly what time because we were always gone. Our guests that stayed in the garden view rooms did say it was 5 or 6 before the maid came on some days. All they had to do was make one call to the front desk and it was taken care of if they needed anything.

 

The Food:

We thought everything was delicious! We ate at every single restaurant. Our favorite for dinner was probably Portofino- Italian or Seaside Grill which is where we had our reception. The steak, fried calamari and caesar salad was YUMMY! My guests loved it!

We had room service, Seaside Grill and buffet for breakfast and the buffet was our favorite because there is a wide selection. For lunch everything was great, buffet, Seaside Grill(burgers and club sandwich were no bueno), El Patio or room service. I miss the guacamole and chips!

I can’t say enough about the food. I’ve been to handful of other AI’s and Dreams Tulum’s food is excellent!

We had the buffet for dinner our first night there and it was okay. Our server asked us if we wanted Tequila boom booms and we all said SURE. He put napkins on our heads shaped like ears J and they slam the tequila shot on the table, take the shot and they shake your head. It was lots of fun and the staff gets a kick out of it. I even got our server to take a shot, he looked around twice and then snuck the shot in J

Throughout our stay we had something different every night, Portofino- Italian, Bordeoux-French, Sushi, Asian, Seaside Grill.

The only negative experience I had was El Patio for dinner. Bugs, I think they were sand fleas invaded our table. All of us were killing them left and right. It was disgusting! My friend got up and unscrewed the light bulbs by our table and it helped some. I noticed everyone around us getting up and turning off their lights too. I ordered the fish and would not recommend it but my hubby ordered the chicken and it was really good. All in all though the food was excellent.

 

Activities:

They really keep you busy there if you aren’t interested in laying around or what they call being lazy J My hubby went up on stage for the comedian show LOL that was funny and SO not like him. We played beach and water volleyball. We watched most of the shows at night. The best was the Mayan Show- DON’T MISS THAT SHOW- it is great!!! They really do a great job there. We did go to the disco a couple of nights. It’s fun if you like dancing to 80’s music J which we do when we have a few drinks J Our wedding night a few of us partied there and it was actually packed so we had lots of fun!! Danced on stage and did the train LOL

We went to the Tulum Ruins- absolutely beautiful!!! We went at 9 AM, took a taxi for $7 each way. Paid 48 pesos a piece to get in without a tour guide. We walked straight to the biggest temple and stopped at others along the way but you can’t go in the temples so we just hurried and got to the beautiful beach!! It was hot so we were ready to jump in. As we were leaving it was packed so we were happy we went early.

 

About 10 of us did the snorkeling tour the dive shack offers for $35 a person. They take you out on a small boat about a mile off the resort out to the coral reefs. It was stunning, saw a stingray, a lobster, bright blue fish J, held a starfish, got a sand dollar. I used a life jacket and thank god I did because the water was rough when trying to swim to each reef. My DH didn’t get one being the manly man that he is and swallowed lots of salt water and ended up getting sick. He swam back to shore and walked to the resort LOL He didn’t want to wait on the boat till the tour was over. Everyone else loved it though.

 

DH and I did a couples massage at the Spa. It was amazing!!! The whole experience was great. We had the couples massage and then relaxed at the spa in the hot tub and layed on the beds with cucumbers on our eyes. REFRESHING!!

 

The Service:

Everyone is extremely friendly and spoke English well. My DH and bro in law speak Spanish pretty well and they just loved that! The service is outstanding!! We will definitely go to another Dreams Resort, not Tulum because we like to try new places but I can’t say enough about the Dreams staff! Constantly working hard at everything. We tipped pretty much everywhere because they honestly deserve some extra cash with how hard they work with a smile on their face. We spoke to a few staff that live there and some live 2 hours away and Dreams pays for their transportation everyday to get to and from work. They work long hours so I’m sure they don’t get much sleep or family time. The grounds are beautiful! Gosh the more I write in this review the more I miss it!

Oh, my sister, her husband and my niece left a few days before us. Well we came into our room one afternoon after swimming all day and had a message from my bro in law that he left his wedding ring in the room!!! He said he was going to tell the front desk to give it to me. He said he didn’t know if that was a good idea to say hey I left my really expensive ring in the room can you give it to my sis?! LOL About that time I got a call from the concierge letting me know they have the ring and I went a picked it up. WHEW! We were all thrilled they were so honest.

We left this afternoon and my DH was out front taking pics when he noticed the American flag was upside down. Being in the military he couldn’t just let the day go on with the flag upside down. He’s very proud of our country as we all should be. Anyways, he told the concierge, not rude or anything just hey man the American flag is upside down. They guy jumped up and ran outside and said oh no I’m so sorry- he seemed shocked. He said sorry that the guys didn’t know it was upside down. No big deal J We just wanted to let him know and they fixed it. They are just so great at taking care of anything and everything to please the guests at the resort.

 

The Wedding:

What you have all been waiting for!! J Okay, where to start. I brought pictures of everything that I wanted, my hair inspiration, my ceremony set-up, my flower bouquet inspiration. I met with LIZET (yes, there is yet another new assistant) I guess Lizet is Landy’s assistant. Okay, I met Lizet the day before the wedding to go over details and I brought all my decorations to give her. We went over the dinner menu, flowers, ceremony set-up, gave her my ceremony I made and printed up, etc. EVERYTHING. This was at 10AM. Also, at this time I thought she was Landy, I never noticed her name tag -oops.

Well, we met her again at 6PM to sign the contract and pay. At this time she handed us the contract and I realized it was more expensive than I thought it would be. The reason why is because we had a party of 14 and had the reception by the pool by the Seaside Grill. Well, I told her I wanted the menu that cost $18 per person and she handed me the Silver Menu instead of the Seaside Grill menu. So, it was worked up as $45 per person. Anyways, not too big of a deal but I made her bring me the other menu so I could change it. I called her Landy when I spoke to her and she got snappy and said I’m Lizet!!! I was sincerely surprised I had NO idea there was a Lizet. Anyways, it got fixed and we paid next to nothing to have our Dream wedding.

This same day, day before the wedding I called the spa to set up a pedicure and my hair appt. They also came to pick up our clothes for steaming but not till late after me calling them over and over telling them to come get it! I wanted my dress out of our room because I didn’t want Brandon to accidentally see it. Lizet set up for DH to get a complimentary room for that night also. BTW- SO glad we did this. I was lonely that night and missed him the next day but it was so fun having that tradition in a non-tradition type of way J

 

The wedding day went off without a hitch. It was perfect and beautiful!! I woke up that morning and ordered room service. I had about 2 hours to myself before my sister and Mom came to join me in my room. I gave my Mom a photo book that I made her of all sorts of photos from when I was a baby till now and pics of me and her with mother- child quotes. She teared up and loved it! It was so sweet. We went to the spa at 12 and it took about 30 min. for her to do my pedicure. She did an okay job definitely not worth what I paid which was like $50!! Get a pedi before you go. I showed her a pic of the hair I wanted and she did it to a T. It was great except the curls fell a great deal before the ceremony L BUT it did rain for 2 days straight before the wedding. YES I was freaking out but I woke up Friday morning and it was sunny! The humidity made it unbearably hot though. It really was bad for my hair and for us when taking pics. We were literally dripping sweat and I don’t sweat easily.

 

Okay, back on track, my dress, the flowers and my photog showed up on time J Lizet came and got me. As soon as I saw my DH and how beautiful they set the ceremony up just like I wanted I got all choked up. Lizet kept telling me walk slowly but I couldn’t help it I hurried to get next to Brandon J He was so handsome and I just couldn’t wait to get next to him to hold his hand. I wore wedges and walked just fine, they put down a neutral color rug so that helped. My DH is so sweet I told him to trade sides with me if the sun was going to be shining in my eyes or if the wind was going to blow my hair in my face J so he had changed sides and I’m so glad he did or my hair would have really been in my face. Our ceremony was just beautiful. Our minister was pretty funny, he sounded a little like Borat, me and DH would giggle looking at each other because we were each thinking the same thing. The minister was incredibly sweet also. Both of us choked up when it came to the hand ceremony. My DH doesn’t get emotional easily so when I saw those tears in his eyes my heart just melted. AWW I love him J

 

The bad things that happened but didn’t ruin it for us but could for others. We got married at 3PM and that is right about the time they play games in the pool and blare music. I actually thought of this while walking down from my room but what can you do at that time LOL! Sure enough they played the tootsie roll right in the middle of our ceremony!! Gosh! I only heard bits and pieces because I was focused on my hubby but we did have some good laughs about it later!! Hahaha Also, they didn’t play the songs correctly. They got all of them right except for the song we were supposed to walk off to. Oh well, no big deal but I did give her a cd with everything written out in order.

 

So, after the ceremony we took group shots on the beach and then went up to the main lobby at 4PM, right outside on the top of the stairs for the cocktail hour. The guests were so happy because they were ready for some shade. We did a toast and then DH and I went around with our photographer for shots. Haven’t seen them yet but she was great to work with! Cecilia Dumas if you’re interested. We only lasted about an hour because like I said the humidity was deadly! We were just dripping sweat. We went back to the lobby where our guests still were talking and hanging out with the whole bar to themselves. It was perfect. Cecilia took a cake cutting shot and then she left. At this time we had about an hour and a half left and we all headed to the beach to sit under the palapas and chit chat. DH and I changed. I NEVER thought I would do that but I was miserably hot in that dress- I had to change! We had dinner at 6:30- 7ish by the pool by the Seaside Grill. We had a set menu from the Seaside Grill and it was delicious!!! We had a Caesar salad, tomato soup, fried calamari, new york strip steak and tres leches cake. WOW- it was so good! Everyone raved about it.

We later went to the show for that night which was a participation show and it was ok. We then went to the disco bar and danced and drank the night away. It was perfect and laid back just as we wanted.

 

The next day, our photographer, Cecilia came at 10:30 for the TTD session. OMG we had SO much fun!!! I can’t wait to see all of our pics. We wish we could do it all over again!! It was a total Dream wedding for us. Hope this helps and let me know if you have any questions.

 

NON PRO PICS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[monicabrandon2008]

 

 

 

[monicabrandon2008]

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Nrvsbride]

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful! I loved every second of reading that! I am so glad that everything turned out well. You looked absolutely gorgeous! I love the pinks and the orchards you used. Btw my sister gave me the same "sexy little bride" tank top. LOL. Congrats!

[monicabrandon2008]

If you want to see more pics I have about 700 resort, vaca and wedding pics in my shutterfly account.

 

http://www.shutterfly.com/lightbox/v...bbd47cbb382743

 

my email is [email protected] and the password is wedding1

 

Just click on the Mexico album. WARNING- there are LOTS of pics.

[jajajaja]

Oh you looked so pretty. I love the lovely flowiness to your dress. It looks fabulous on you!

 

I loved the chuppah! The flowers were such a great touch.

 

Weclome back!

[Leia78]

You looked so beautiful Monica! WElcome back and congratulations!!!

[nikkianddean]

Great review!!! I started to get hungry reading about all the food

 

You looked absolutely amazing. Not sure what your hair inspiration was, but it looks really soft and beautiful in your pictures. Gorgeous pics - can't wait to see more!!!

[DanielleNDerek]

Congratulations, you look gorgeous. So glad you had a great time. It's great they were honest about your bro's ring.

[Dez921714]

You looked GREAT!

 

Congrats and welcome home!!!