Katie and Max's Dreams Tulum Wedding Review 5/1/2009

maxandkatie · May 9, 2009

PART 1

Our overall experience at Dreams Tulum was amazing. Ladies, if you are worried about your wedding coordinator not getting back to you or just worried in general if everything will fall into place...don't be! Natalia was our coordinator and she was fantastic. We thought we were supposed to meet with her the Tuesday before our wedding, but come to find out that there were 5 weddings that Tuesday and she was quite busy. So, we met with her on Wednesday (our wedding was Friday) and she had it all down pat. It was great. We ended up having 8 people cancel their trip, so we ended up with 24 guests. It was disappointing that they cancelled as the media blew the whole swine flu thing out of proportion, but we totally understood and still had the best wedding ever.

The resort location was perfect. The resort size was great. Because so many people were cancelling their vacations to Mexico, the resort was very empty by the end of our trip. We arrived on Monday, April 27th and departed on Thursday, May 7th. The beginning part was pretty crowded but by the weekend, it was like a ghost town. It was nice cause we sort of had the resort to ourselves. One complaint that we had was that because of the low capacity at the resort there were only a few restaurants open for lunch and dinner. We never got to eat at the sushi restaurant or the french one. Part of it might have been our fault as we went to other restaurants in the beginning of our trip and by the end those 2 were closed and we missed out on them. We complained to the manager because a few of our guests were disappointed about that, so in the end we got 3 free nights to come back again! We'll take it!!

maxandkatie · May 9, 2009

PART 2 - WEDDING STUFF

Natalia had everything in order for us. She had it all written down and knew I was bringing stuff for her.

FLOWERS - Awesome! I brought some ribbon to wrap my flowers, the boutineires, corsages and flower girl bouquets and they did an awesome job of wrapping the flowers with the ribbon. My flowers were really pretty. They were white calillies and the ordered small bouquets for the FG's and they looked so cute carrying them up the aisle. Natalia even used some of the extra ribbon to wrap around the flowers on the gazebo. Super super pretty. The aisle was lined with flowers as well and we all were in our barefeet which was great.

SPA STUFF (HAIR/MAKEUP/MANI/PEDI) - Trinidad was my stylist. She was really really awesome! She made me look beautiful. I had my sisters with me to make sure everything was ok. I made sure I told her I wanted light and natural makeup and it turned out magnifique!! I loved the way she did my hair more so than my sample do with my hairstylist in chicago! My mani/pedi was ok. My sisters did not like theirs. I would recommend if you want to get a mani/pedi to have Trinidad do it. There were a couple girls who didn't seem to know what they were doing. Jennifer at the spa is very helpful and if you have any questions, I would go right to her. We had 90 minute massages and they were fantastic. I also had a mini facial that was great and didn't break my skin out as I have sensitive skin.

CEREMONY - We wrote our own ceremony and it was beautiful. The minister did a great job and told us that our vows were just beautiful. The whole ceremony was maybe 15-20 minutes, not long at all. Great job here. We rented the sound system, which was great for everyone to hear our vows. Even though we repeated after the minister, everyone said it sounded like we were just saying them to each other, that they didn't even know we were repeating after the minister. We used the music provided by the resort for the ceremony and honestly I can't even remember hearing it. It was just so amazing being on the beach with everyone there, that the music was not even on my mind! We didn't have any extra bows on the chairs or anything like that. We did make program fans that Natalia passed out to everyone when they were seated, however, it was so breezy that the fans were not needed. But they turned out really nice!! We had no other decorations that we brought and it still looked really beautiful.....the ocean makes it beautiful...I remember standing there listening to the minister and just thinking, "This is amazing! That is the ocean right there! Holy crap!! This is awesome!!"

Butterflyf369 · May 9, 2009

Thanks, hope you post your pics!

maxandkatie · May 10, 2009

PART 3

RESORT PHOTOGRAPHER - We used the resort photographer and our guy was amazing! I'll post some pics for you all to see. Can't remember his name, but he was bald and wore black baggy pants and a white button down shirt with the sleeves rolled up and white sunglasses. Every pose that we hit perfectly, he was like "purrrrrrrrrffeect!" He was like the paparazzi!! It was great! We were very happy with our pictures. He came to my room 20 minutes before the ceremony and ran me around to take some pictures of me alone and then went back to my room where Natalia came and got me to take me to the seaside grill to walk down the aisle. He took pics throughout the ceremony and then he took us around after the ceremony and took pics of us with our families, with everyone and by ourselves. They were great. We got the 50 pics that were included with our package. We met with him the day after to pick them out of the 200 and some pics he took. It wasn't hard to pick them. With the ultimate wedding package you get 50 printed pics, all 50 on a CD, a video and a cool photo album.

We also have tons of pics from everyone who was there. Even though he didn't come to the cocktail hour or dinner and dancing, we still have tons of photos from our guests.

COCKTAIL HOUR - We had ours at the lobby bar terrace. The hors d'ouevres were really tastey and our waiter took really good care of us. We had the Mexican Trio play and they were awesome. A great little piece of Mexico.

DINNER AND DANCING - After cocktail hour we went to dinner on the beach next to seaside grill. We had 3 tables of 8 set up and a 2 person table for us. There was a cake table as well. We also hired the DJ to play for 3 hours for the dinner. He played music throughout dinner, nice peaceful music, it was great and then after dinner the dancing started!

Our meal included the following:

Appetizer - Shrimp Quesidillas...it was more like an empanada and it was delicious.

Salad - mixed greens with citrus vinagerette. It came in a little shell and everyone but me seemed to love it! I think I just didn't like the dressing....very citrusy.

Main Course - Steak and Shrimp. It was really good. The shrimp was better than the steak though.

Dessert - chocolate cake - delicious!

Our package also came with a cake, which we never ate!! We forgot about it and they told us to pick it up at the seaside grill, but we kept forgetting and by the time we remembered it probably would not have been too good. But it looked really pretty and we took a picture with it!

One thing to note....service was a little slow during dinner. We had 2 waiters for 24 people and it was a little slow, but it was fine.

DJ - The DJ was great. We sent him a list of songs prior to the wedding and he played most of them. He even played longer than we had rented him for! It was a lot of fun. We only paid one fee for the sound system because we used it for the ceremony and for the DJ.