Mrs D To Be!'s Moon Palace Review - 05-28-10

WEDDING DETAILS

 

Wedding Date / Time – Friday 28th May 2010 at 5pm

Wedding Coordinator – Rosy Lily Sanchez

Wedding Package - Complimentary

Gazebo – Tucan

Reception - 6:00 p.m. – Terrace Venado

 

Guests staying at the resort - 12 adults / 3 child (two 2, & 14)

Guests staying offsite - Dreams Cancun - 5 adults, 1 child

Crown Paradise - 2 adults

Barcelo - 2 adults, 1 child

Our stay – May 24th til May 29th 2010

Honeymoon – Le Blanc – May 29th til June 8th 2010

Photographer – Citlalli Rico

 

Overall Experience - A++

We started planning our wedding about 2.5 years in advance, and had originally chosen Le Blanc to get married at, however because there was a good chance there would be children attending, we moved to a family-friendly resort…it was originally between Dreams Cancun (mainly because of the dolphins!) and MP. They were both coming in at very similar prices, so we had to break it down, and Moon Palace won hands down, mainly because of the wedding set-up…where-else do you get to arrive on a horse and carriage?! The accommodation was a big thing for us too, as we were fully aware everyone was going to be paying a lot of money to attend our wedding, and also it was going to be our wedding/honeymoon, we want nothing but the best. We felt the accommodation at Dreams just wasn’t up to scratch..whereas at MP you have your flat screen, double Jacuzzi, stylish rooms, etc.

 

I’ll be honest and say my expectations were pretty low for MP. I am an internet junkie and looked into everything with a fine toothcomb. What with reviews on here, and on trip advisor, I’d set myself up to be going to a resort with a really crap beach, I stocked up on diarrhea tablets because of the reviews on the food, and because we were moving to Le Blanc for the 2nd week, I just focused on our stay there, hence the reason for us moving to Le Blanc the day after the wedding. I wish I hadn’t now. Moon Palace was beyond amazing. From the moment you arrived, it was just sooo amazing! We hope to return to Mexico, and it will defo be Moon Palace we stay at! The service was 1st class, and the hotel defo deserves the 5* rating it has.

 

Booking Process

We booked our accommodation through palaceagents.com. The main reason for this is, the tour operator we were flying with, Thomas Cook, stopped working with Le Blanc for holidays apr-10 onwards…we couldn’t believe it and were soo gutted at the time as it worked out a lot more expensive. However it did work to our advance as we were able to book a concierge level room which we wouldn’t have been able to do through a TA.

 

The airline, Thomas Cook, were awful. Wouldn’t fly with them again. We upgraded to premium class, costing us an extra £220 each, meaning we got 30kg luggage allowance, unlimited drinks on the flight, priority check-in, priority luggage drop-off, and extra entertainment in-flight. Yeah, under the circumstances the extra luggage was a god-send, but not worth £220 each. Priority check-in my bump…and priority luggage drop-off…only on the way back home! The entertainment package in-flight was terrible – we flew long-haul with First Choice normal class last year and that was better than Premium class with Thomas Cook!...Moral of the story, fly First Choice!!lol

 

Why we chose the Moon Palace

Like I mentioned earlier, we needed a family friendly resort, but we also needed somewhere luxurious, as it was our wedding. We come from divorced families, and the pull for us was how big MP was, because it meant everyone could stay at MP, but on different sections, so could easily go the week without bumping into each other! In the end, this wasn’t an issue, but I really think MP would be perfect for anyone else in this situation.

 

TIMELINE OF EVENTS

 

Monday, May 24th – We arrived in Cancun around 2.15pm, and customs wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. We had been told by some of our guests it took them 4 hours to get through the week before, but we were kept moving and didn’t take very long at all. Out of everyone, it was me who got stopped and asked to open my luggage…everyone had went through by this time, and of course, I was using someone else’s suitcase (because mine wasn’t very big) so did I know the combination to open it when put under pressure? No! They just kept shouting at me to open it…in the end they put it back through the scanner and let me go, as they weren’t letting people back in, so I couldn’t get the combination off anyone! I had my dress as hand luggage, in a tiny box (to meet airlines dimensions) and they asked to open this too, but being a lovely white box, they did ask if it was a wedding dress, and at that point they said it didn’t need to be opened! I can laugh about it now, but at the time I was about in tears!ha

 

I booked transfers for 9 of us through Entertainment Plus Cancun-Discount Tours & Airport transfers - it was something like $60 for the round trip – I think we tipped the driver like $5-10 each way, as they were on time and very friendly. Some guests were staying at Nizuc, some on Sunrise, and some at Grand, and the driver was happy to drop us all off, couldn’t ask for more!

 

Check-in at MP was seamless, we asked for a few room changes and they were very accommodating. We were on the concierge level and we did get a bit better treatment than others, but this was only noticed because we checked in with some of the standard room guests!lol The cocktails and flowers and cool clothes on arrival were amazing! We got taken up to our rooms and all the amenities were explained to us, I don’t think it took us longer than 30mins to get from stepping off the taxi to getting to the room.

 

If you are debating whether to go for concierge level or not, GO FOR IT!! It’s a top floor oceanfront room – waw! It’s technically on the Nizuc section, however its on very last building, and I’d say its more Grand than Nizuc. We were lucky and got the end of building room, so we would only have had one set of neighbours, but I don’t think we even did. It was sooo quiet…without a doubt I’d go back to concierge!

 

The rest of the day was spent chilling in our room, a bit of time down at the pool…we found “our spot†at the nizuc pool area – we all met there every day!ha We went down to the Michael Jackson show – everyone loved it, but again, I’m not really into the whole putting on a show then miming through it thing – plus this MJ kept covering his mouth, I think at the bits he didn’t know the words to – it happened a lot as well! It was only really at this show that we saw the place busy – the rest of the stay at MP we felt like the hotel was at low occupancy..we didn’t ask what % it was at, but I’d say low anyway – and that was great for us! ☺ Just next to the MJ show, there was a barbeque-type set-up going on, some of our guests got some steak, and loved it. They asked for some fries, they didn’t have any, but got someone to go to a restaurant and bring some to us!! That’s service for you! ☺

 

Tuesday, May 25th – We hung out at the pool all day, we ate at the pool bar most days, I LOVED the MP burgers, second to none in my opinion! I don’t normally eat any burgers barr mcdonalds…so that’s a big thing for me to say that!ha Some of our other guests went to the little place in Nizuc that done the bagels…they loved that..you know what its like when your sun bathing, and a waiter comes over to get you food, you normally just go with it cos it’s the easy option, right? Our guests were opting to get up and go to this little place to get the bagels…so they must have been good! Then went to La Gondola, Sunrise for dinner at night. It was Italian and it was good – I have to say, I am a VERY fussy eater, like plain junk food, so I am pretty hard to please, but going by the other guests reactions, it got the thumbs up!

 

Wednesday, May 26th – We had our meeting with the wedding co-coordinator, well I thought at 1pm, but it turns out it was at 11am. We went to the pool at Grand in the morning..amazing btw…if we go back, we’d be there ALL the time! This is where the comfy beach-beds are! Anyway, I went up to the room at about 11.30 to get ready for our meeting, there was a voicemail asking where we were cos the meeting was at 11 – I checked my paperwork, and yeah, I got it soo wrong! So I called them and said I’d run over. So didn’t have time to shower or anything, just grab our stuff and go! I swear, we were walking in to the wedding area and the nurse was walking out!! We JUST got her!! If we’d missed her I think we’d have had to pay for her to come back, so we were super lucky! The jags were fine, honestly, nobody should be worrying over this part! Lily went over all the wedding bits with us, tbh she was really just confirming everything as we had A LOT of communication for a long time, from last year tbh. She was absolutely fantastic – always answered emails within a few days. A few weeks before the wedding it did take her a week to answer one email, but I didn’t think anything of it, because I knew it was busy season, and when she did reply she was very apologetic..so yeah,we got very lucky with our coordinator, so if your able to request someone, go for Lily! We had went for the free package, as we wanted to bring our own photographer. The reason I got contact with Lily so early actually was because I asked my contact in Miami to confirm we could have an outside photographer with one nights stay, and she copied Lily in to get a reply…Maybe do this if your wanting to make contact early ☺. Anyway, the free package was perfect for us. We used the dinner reservation at Arrecifes on the Wednesday, and we went with the flowers and cake included. I took pictures of flowers a bride on here had had, and said I wanted mine exactly like that, and that’s what I got! I didn’t have any requirements with the cake, because I didn’t want to spend extra money. I’ve seen too many people on here saying they paid extra and showed pictures and weren’t happy with what they got, sometimes getting lop-sided cakes, so I played it safe and didn’t ask for anything. We added on the horse and carriage, a bestman boutonniere, flowergirl petals, and the bridesmaid bouquet. We debated whether to get the videographer, and decided against, and went for the paper lanterns instead. Reason being, I’ve seen a dvd done at mp a few years ago, and found it quite cheesy and not very well done, especially for the money. One of our guests filmed it all, haven’t seen it yet, but I’m sure it will be good enough for us. We had an outdoor reception, with 2 additional hours – for this we got to choose the menu (which I’d already done by email). We also booked our morning after breakfast at the meeting. We also used Zuniga for the paper lanterns and firedancers. I took our wedding suitcase and left this with her, and also left my dress with her. This was good, because up until this point it had been hanging in the cupboard, in the dress cover, but I’d told hubby to stay away from the cupboard, which wasn’t really fair, so it was good to get out the room! She had a look at it and I was surprised to find she didn’t think it needed steamed. The travel box it was in was super tiny because of the airline hand luggage dimensions, so I was delighted to save the $$ on that! I left the wedding suitcase with her, which had the favor tins ready to be filled with sweets on the day, Bose sound system, lots of children’s toys to put out for them, whiteboard for guestbook, memorial candle…and other things I can’t think of. We didn’t have to pay any extra for using the Bose sound system – I know its been said on here before that you need to pay for the plug, and you need extra speakers, but we didn’t. Hubby did want to get other speakers on the night, but I said no, because I honestly don’t think we needed them. We had 26 guests and I didn’t make a table plan because I wanted it to be really informal. I quickly done one when in the meeting because otherwise you don’t know what layout your going to get. I really wanted round tables, but needed it to be 9,9,8 with a top table for us. So try get this done before you go, print it out and make it look better than a wee drawing like I done! I also didn’t make table name cards, again because I wanted it to be informal. I’d probably do that if I’d to do it again, purely to help the coordinators out. Because they didn’t know where to put the children’s favors, so just put them on a table at the side, which was fine, but the kids didn’t know they were for them until we got there. The translating of the marriage certificate cost more than I thought, $45 for one copy, so we just went for one copy. We worried incase we needed more, but so far no-one has asked to keep the original, so I’m glad we didn’t pay for anymore. We then went over the music. Hubby walked in to “Wild Boys†and Lily said they’d only be able to play the first 30 seconds…Hubby wasn’t happy with this, so their entrance was longer (!) so they could walk in to the full song! Then we had a song playing for my arrival on the carriage, and another for me walking down the aisle, then another for us walking out…I think that was everything! I can check the CD if anyone needs me to.

 

After the meeting we went and hung out at the pool again, then at night Dinner was at Arrecifes, Nizuc. We chose this restaurant because of all the wonderful reviews I read on here, and I wasn’t disappointed! We booked a table for 15 on the terrace for 6pm, and I was excited to see they’d set it up to have my husband and I at the top! Lol the little things… Anyway, we all got a beer mat type card, which was green on one side, and red on the other. They bring out all types of meat, any type you can imagine and more, and when you’ve had enough, you turn your card over to red…it was hilarious!! I only had the chicken as I’m not a big meat-eater, but it was amazing! If we’d been staying at MP the following week I’d have ate there every night and been happy as larry, and that’s just based on the chicken!lol

 

We were there till about 8-8.30 – then we all got a taxi up to Coco-Bongo. I, like most of our guests, thought Coco-Bongo was a nightclub with some crazy events going on during the night around you, so I had tried to discourage my mums 60 year old partner to come out with you…I’m soo glad he came now! It wasn’t my thing, but all our guests LOVED it! It isn’t a dancing at all, its more a themed night…but it is an amazing show that gets put on. If anyone is thinking of going, upgrade your tickets to have a table, not sure how much extra it costs, but whatever it is, its worth it. Because otherwise you’ll be standing crammed together the full night!

 

Thursday, May 27th – I think we just hung out at Grand this day, and being on concierge level we got use of a private beach area, so we went down there for a wee while. It was soo quiet we fell asleep! Again, the mattress-style beach bed are just soo amazing! At night we went to Los Caporales, Nizuc, for dinner. This was a Mexican restaurant. Firstly I’d like to say, we were going for dinner quite late at night, around 9 probably. Being in semi-large group, we were arranging to meet at 8 in the lobby bar each night at Nizuc, but you can imagine what its like, some people run late, ordering more drinks etc…so I don’t think we went into the restaurant til after 9, but one of our guests had went in and top them we were coming in, so they were expecting us. As we walked in, there was another large table getting their meals taken to them, and they all roared and clapped, we just thought they must have been a rowdy crowd…turns out the service isn’t that great in this restaurant, or at least it wasn’t this night. 11pm and we hadn’t got by our starters! They had cleared the plates away, but hadn’t came back near us, not even for drink top-ups! People were getting annoyed, but didn’t want to say anything as we were all-inclusive obviously, but eventually someone did, and within 5mins the dinners were brought to us…and we left about 10mins later…either the food was cold, or well-done to the point of not being able to chew it! Very disappointing, because we were all hungry..but that’s the beauty of room service I guess!ha

 

This was our “night before the wedding†and we had asked our coordinator if we’d get a room for the night, but was told this wasn’t a Mexican tradition, so we’d need to pay the nightly rate if we wanted this. Tbh I was pretty disappointed with this, because we hadn’t had any group benefits at all, but hey. So hubby stayed with his cousin, and his auntie stayed with me.

 

Wedding Day – Friday May 28th – Had my hair appointment at 12..there were 7 of us getting our hair done, and they couldn’t get us all together, and one of the appointments was a single, so I took it. I got my hair done in the Nizuc hairdressers, and like most things, wasn’t expecting a lot. I took pictures of a bride on here that I wanted my hair like, and she said no problem. There were 3 or 4 other girls in getting their hair done, one a bride and I guess the others were her maids. We all got started at the same time, I needed my hair washed tho, but still my hair was ready in the same time as them. She put me not facing the mirror, which I was pretty scared about, because it meant if I didn’t like it, she’d need to start all over again! I kept trying to get wee peaks, and the only comments I made to make were for more volume and more fallen loose curls at the front…apart from that it was all perfect..worrying over nothing! I think as long as you go with pictures of what you want, they can’t really go wrong.

 

I headed back to my room to get ready for my bridesmaid arriving. She was staying offsite, and was arriving just in time to hand in the table runners and chair sashes to Lily, then go for her hair appointment. She came to my room afterwards, and we had some cocktails. The reception area was right outside my room, so we watched them set up…which was pretty good because we saw that they ran out of sweets for favors!ha I made a call to one of our guests to bring more though, so that was fine. I done my makeup while waiting on my bridesmaid. I had heard too many bad things about make-up getting done at MP. I’d tried to look into going to a MAC counter in Cancun, but couldn’t work out how close it was, so done it all myself. I don’t generally wear a lot of makeup, so opted for eyelash extensions instead of mascara. LOVED them, I’m addicted to them now, getting them done every few weeks. Make up was all MAC. I’d went for some trials with Estee Lauder, NARS and Laura Mercier, but MAC won hands down. I didn’t have a foundation on, I just feel even a light foundation is too heavy for me…my skin isn’t perfect, I have large pores, but a tinted moisturizer was enough for me, and going by the pictures I’ve seen, has came up brilliant. I did have a mineralized finishing powder on, and some blusher and bronzer…I swear by all this on a daily basis now…oh and a lovely lip gloss…I don’t think I’ll ever use anything but MAC now…well except for my Smashbox primer!lol If anyone is wondering, there is a MAC store at one of the shopping centre’s up at the hotel zone…the one across from Luxury Avenue, can’t remember the name of it…but it’s about a 30-35min taxi drive from MP if anyone is interested in getting their makeup done there for their wedding. I’m happy with the way mine turned out, but if I’d known beforehand how close MAC was to MP, I’d probably have went for getting it done there. Ooh I also wore Armani diamonds perfume on the day….I didn’t know what perfume to wear, knew I wanted one I hadn’t worn before, so had a look through the duty free on the flight, and that was the best option, and I loved it. I wear it everyday now, so it doesn’t particularly remind me of the day, but hey, I loved it.

 

Our photographer Citalli came to the room at 4pm. I had done all my make up, so only had to get dressed for the photos. Bridesmaid was ready before she came, and our flowergirl arrived after Citlalli. Hubby didn’t want pictures taken in his room, so Citlalli’s assistant, Tammi, her sister, went straight to the gazebo. My bridesmaid headed to the gazebo, as my flowergirl, my mums partner and myself went down for the horse and carriage at about 4.45pm. It took us a de-tour, as the gazebo was literally round the corner from the room. It was nice, because hotel guests were soo kind saying good luck etc, and it got our 2 year old flowergirl more time on the horse and carriage.

 

The wedding went so fast, I can’t wait to see the video footage, because honestly, I can’t remember the order it all went!

 

I think for the next part my timing was way out. Ceremony ended at 5.30, and we went to the beach for photos. I’d set dinner to start at 6, meaning we kinda got rushed off the beach up to the reception. I’m gutted now, because there’s a lot of beach pictures we missed out on, but hey, can’t change the past. But I’d say to leave maybe an hour between the ceremony ending and dinner starting.

 

The reception was brilliant, I’d defo do the outside reception again. I wasn’t even aware of any people walking by, although I’ve been told that guests were stopping and watching a lot, particularly during the firedancers! This was a surprise for everyone, we didn’t tell anyone we’d organized it. It was good, but wasn’t what we expected. It was traditional firedancers, and everyone made jokes about them doing fertility dances, but it was fun and something a bit different, and we all got our pictures taken with them, but we were looking for the firedancers with the sticks blowing fire and stuff. Funny story, one of the kid guests, 2 years old, talks about “our party when the monsters came with candlesâ€â€¦how cute is that?! I LOVE that sooo much. After the dancers, we cut the cake, hubby “found†my garter, and we went on the beach for more pictures. Hubby actually got thrown in the water halfway through the reception…it had to be done really, we were right next to the beach! Like I said earlier, hubby wanted to get more speakers, but I honestly don’t think we needed them, the sound off the Bose system was perfect for our party size. If you had a bigger reception area outside I’d say you probably would need to hire the other speakers though. We had the photo/wipeboard guestboard which I got the idea from here, where we passed out a wipeboard for everyone to write a message to us, then get photographed with it. We kept ourselves occupied when this was going on, so don’t know what the messages are. Citlalli took the photos, so we won’t see them til we get our discs, we are itching to see what they were! The plan is to make a collage of them and have hanging in our house somewhere, beats having a guestbook you never look at! Our favors were the little personalized suitcase tines, and we filled them with haribo sweets and personalized “mr & mrs†and “just married†rock…we were stuck for choices as didn’t want to go for sweets that might melt in the heat. For the kids we had colouring in books, crayons, sand buckets, pirate set, lip glosses, and a pop-up pirate ship and pop-up princess castle…think the kids were kept happy! The reception ended at 10pm, and the guests with day passes left, some went to bed, and the rest of us moved on to Sunrise. We went to the lobby first, which was soo much fun. Everyone clapped as I arrived, which I’d seen happen a few nights earlier at Nizuc and I’d cringed at, but on the night I loved the attention, soo not like me! There’s a piano in the lobby and I allowed to go up on it and get some pictures taken, such a loser but they’ve turned out great. The congo came on and everyone done that…it was just a great atmosphere, if your partying, sunrise is defo the side to be at. We then went into the disco, which was amazing! There were another 2 brides in dancing, and it was just a great atmosphere with fab music…they even played a Scottish song, none of us requested it, maybe they knew we were there!lol

 

Just a fantastic day and night, I honestly can’t sum it up, couldn’t have went more perfect, I’d do it a hundred times over at MP.

Wedding Coordinators – A++

I know a lot of brides have terrible “before arriving†experiences with their wedding coordinators, but I had the best communication I could have had. I had contact with her from last year, possibly September(?) and Lily ALWAYS replied promptly. I did book my wedding direct with moon palace, I don’t know if that made any difference, rather than going through a TA. And onsite Lily answered all queries we had, and anything she said she’d do was done, I can’t find any faults with her or her team on the day.

 

Customs - A

I was a bit worried about going through customs, because some of our guests arrived the week before us, and had got caught up for 4 hours at the airport, but we kept moving all the way, and the only problems our whole party had was with my case…but it wasn’t that bad.

 

Transfer – A+

Entertainment transfers delivered what they sold, the transfer was there for us coming out the airport, and they were there on time to take everyone back to the airport to go home, can’t fault them at all.

 

The Resort – A+

I’ve heard soo many people say they don’t like the idea of MP because it’s far away from everything, or because it’s soo big…I just think they are excuses for people who don’t want to part with the money for MP personally. The resort is big, yes, but it can be walked around easily…fair enough, during the day in the blazing heat its not recommended, but at night its an easy walk..and if there’s not a golf buggy just ask a member of staff to call for one…we done this a few times and it was no bother…â€a pleasure†as they’d say. And the fact MP isn’t on the hotel zone is a MAJOR plus for me…means you don’t spend money going out to the shops, pubs, taxis….you have everything you need for a 1,2,3 week stay at MP…I don’t think people realize this. And the fact it’s literally a 10mins taxi journey to the airport makes life soo easy.

 

The staff were all FANTASTIC – all soo fantastic, all soo helpful, and NOTHING was a problem, whether it was room service at 3.30am, bed linen needing changed at 3am, golf buggies needed from sunrise to grand at 2.30am…it didn’t matter…every effort was made to please you.

 

The food at MP was soo much better than I expected. No-one needed the diarrhea tablets I brought due to soo many comments being made about the “Mexican food bugâ€. We were very partial to room service..hot dogs, burgers….like I said, I love my junk food, so we were very easily pleased. Something I’ve not mentioned, on our first morning, we ordered breakfast – hash browns and pancakes (I know I know, what a combination!!) and got these hash brown balls with cheese in them…ohmigod they were AMAZING…I’d return just for these!! If you called room service, they didn’t know what you were talking about, and they didn’t have them at the breakfast buffet, you had to order them on the breakfast form you put on your door…waw soo amazing!!

 

The grounds of MP were well kept, some parts the grass we a wee bit long, but not like a jungle or anything! You could see they were constantly working on the grounds and improving things, can’t fault them!

 

We went to the honeymoon desk after checking-in, and got our t-shirts…I was quite disappointed with them, they just say honeymooners on them, no mention of mp…but hey, I get to wear them in bed so yeah! We got the champagne and fruit sent to our room, and we used the champagne the morning of the wedding. Oh, almost forgot, the wedding breakfast the morning after..wasn’t that impressed with, you get to choose from a few set menus…we didn’t eat any of it! Again, we are fussy eaters, so don’t listen to me!lol

 

We didn’t use the palace passport while we were at moon palace, just wasn’t enough time, would have liked to have done wet n wild though, and the zip line actually.

 

Rooms – A+

Rooms were cleaned daily, the bed was MASSIVE, furniture was all beautiful. TV channels were rubbish, but really, how much time do you spend watching tv when on holiday?! Its only really for inbetween times, and honestly, I don’t think we had it on. The turn-down service was great, was nice to come into the room to some little choco’s and relaxing music. The view was just beautiful, every morning we just opened the curtains and lay and looked out…heaven. The minibar was great, we aren’t big alcohol drinkers, so the spirits and beer was wasted on us, but the constant supply of pepsi and 7up was awesome…only thing that was missing was some chocolate and crisps! I sound like such a heffer..all the junk food and munchies…I’m not, I swear!lol

 

Room Service - A

Room service, as I’ve said, was just sooo great…I want room service at every holiday now. The only reason the A+ isn’t given is because they wouldn’t deliver cocktails on my wedding day!lol

 

Nightly Shows

The only show we saw was the MJ one, a few of the guests saw the firedancers and said they were brilliant, other than that don’t really have any reviews I’m afraid!

 

Flowers – A+

My flowers turned out exactly as I wanted. I wasn’t sure what I wanted for my bridesmaid, so Lily suggested fuschia and white, as mine were all fuschia..they were nice, so I’m glad I took her advice. Flower petals were mostly orange, to go with my flowergirl/bridesmaid colours.

 

I had looked into artifical flowers, as MP’s prices were high, but because I only had one maid, it would cost the same to get amazing artifical flowers as MP were charging for standard flowers, and I just thought it would take out the hassle of traveling with/sourcing outside vendors for the artifical ones. If I’d had a large wedding party, I’d probably have done it, because it would have worked out cheaper.

So we got the complimentary bridal bouquet, 1 bridesmaid bouquet, a complimentary boutonnière, 2 boutonnières for the 1 bestman and my mums partner, and flower petals for our flowergirl.

 

We didn’t have any alter flowers or table flowers and didn’t think we needed them.

 

Carriage Ride – A+

I loved this! When I first booked MP, the wedding package included the horse and carriage as standard, and at the time I thought it just wasn’t me, and I wasn’t going to go for it. Then the packages changed and you had to pay for it in the complementary package – and of course I started seeing lots of reviews and decided it was a must…it was sooo fantastic. Its every girls dream…even a non-believer like me! You just can’t get married at MP without the carriage! Everyone was apparently in tears as we arrived…its just soo special!

 

Photography - A++++

Photographer – Citlalli Rico and assistant Tammi

 

We decided from the start that if we had guests going on a 9+ hour flight and paying £1200 upwards to attending our wedding, then the least we could do was have amazing pictures to show for it. We debated between Citlalli, Claudia Rodriguez and Elizabeth Medina..and the more we saw of Citlalli’s work, the more impressed we were, so we had to have her! She was sooo easy to work with, honestly sooo friendly, first time we met she was hugging us and stuff, just soo nice, and that’s what you need, someone you feel totally comfortable with. Probably the biggest regret with the wedding, although its not big, is that I didn’t send Citlalli pictures of what direction I was looking for. I had a full folder of fab photos I’d seen on here, but never sent them, because I didn’t’ want to come across all bridezilla-like. There are a few pictures I didn’t get, but it is my own fault, I didn’t tell her I wanted them, and my timeline was too tight, and I just completely forgot on the day too!ha So a big must for future brides is to send your photographer photos you love so they know the direction your looking for, and if there are particular shots you really want, make sure they know, because you can’t rely on your memory on your wedding day..everything goes soo fast and if someone asked you your name you’d probably have to think about it!lol

 

We done a TTD session with Citlalli and Tammi on the Monday after our wedding. We’d originally wanted to do it at sunrise, but had got warned off because of the humidity the week we were there, so we changed to sunset…bestest plan ever! We headed up to the hotel zone beach, got changed into my dress at the public toilets next to Coco Bongo, and walked down..that was an experience in your wedding dress! But the shoot was amazing, honestly, if you can find it in your budget, you need to do a TTD session for your destination wedding, I just loved jumping about the water and getting amazing shots with the beach and the same and the great weather..just perfect.

 

Citlalli sent us a sneak peak of the TTD a few days later, and we asked for a few more for our thank you cards, and we got them super quick….i was in work when I got the emails and ran around phoning hubby..ohmigod they are MINDBLOWING AMAZING…to have Citlalli did cost a lot of money, but its when you see the photos that you realize it was money well spent..don’t scrimp on your photographer people…these are your memories!

 

CEREMONY

 

The officant’s English was perfect. The ceremony lasted about 30mins, just perfect timing really. I can’t wait to see the pictures of our “thumbs†lol

 

Specific timeline of events:

5pm - start of ceremony at the Tucan Gazebo

5.30-6pm – pictures at beach (not long enough)

6-10pm – outdoor reception (amazing – worth every penny)

10:00pm+ - DISCOTHEQUE!!!

 

One thing I really want to mention for anyone doing an outdoors event in the evening, is that the mosquito’s were BAD!! I wasn’t soo bad, because of the wedding dress, just a few bites, but our guests were getting eaten ALIVE! Luckily one of our guests carried spray around with her everywhere, so was spraying everyone, but please make sure your guests know to do this and be prepared for it. Hubby got thrown in the sea halfway through the reception, and he said after that he didn’t get bitten, so maybe everyone just jump in the ocean if it gets bad?!lol

 

RECEPTION – A+

The reception was just fantastic, really rounded off a great day, I know 100% it wouldn’t have been such a great day without it. It was a lot of money to shell out, and we did grudge it constantly when we were trying to get our budget under control, but I’m just soo glad we didn’t cut it. Having your reception outside, by the beach, while a sunset is happening, with all your family…you just can’t beat it!

 

The reception consisted of a first dance, mother/groom dance while I danced with my mums partner, best man and father of the groom speeches, then the fire dancers, then the cutting of the cake, “finding†the garter, more fun photos on the beach, then dancing.

 

We opted not to have a DJ. The week before the wedding, I was emailing Lily for prices of the DJ as we were panicking, however it was just too late in the game to be adding things to the budget…and there was no movement left…and I am glad, because armed with a few iPod playlists (one mellow for dinner, one dance for later) and a docking station, it done the job. The only thing was, hubby had spent HOURS working on the playlist. We had a wedding wedsite, and he’d requested people send in playlist requests for the night. Honestly, he was getting requests right up til the night before we left for Cancun. So he tried to get everyone’s requests in, as well as making sure there was enough dance music to keep people partying. In the end, because no-one was manning the iPod, guests were going up and choosing their own songs, and playing them more than once…didn’t bother me, I can’t even remember the music that was played. But I think just because he spent so much time on it, he was a wee bit gutted. Defo not a deal breaker tho.

 

VENDOR REVIEW

Zuniga -$1000 – B+

After seeing another brides pictures on here only a few weeks before our wedding, we decided the paper strung around the perimeter of the Tucan Terrace was a must – was just so pretty. And don’t get me wrong, it was pretty on the day, but essential? Not sure. Another reason for the B, is the $1000 was made up with $400 for paper lanterns, and $600 for fire dancers. As I’ve said before, they were good, and it was good to have some sort of entertainment during the night, but it wasn’t what we were expecting, and if we’d known it was traditional fire dancers, we probably wouldn’t have went for it. Service wise, it was seamless. But you do need to try bargaining to get the best price, they do come in higher at first. But I just said my friend used them earlier this year and got this price…it was really someone on here! So do your research before finalizing prices with them.

 

Favors/Invites/STD’s/Thank You Postcards

 

We started discussing our May 2010 wedding plans away back in September 2007 believe it or not! We wanted to give everyone as much notice as possible, and we obviously needed to save too! We didn’t tell anyone our plans, and surprised our close family in the March 2008 by giving them one of these:

 

Message In A Bottle Invitation

 

It went down a treat! It cost around £80 for I think 6 or 7 of them.

 

So the December-ish 2008 we made boarding pass style STD’s and gave one to everyone, with personalized stamped address envelopes to rsvp…I think I could count on one hand how many we got back…everyone said they didn’t want to ruin the STD!! it cost around £165 to make around 40 STD’s including postage.

 

So once we knew numbers, we then ordered more of the message in the bottle invites from hanson ellis – around £130 for 14.

 

By this point, around September 2009, the dollar wasn’t strong for us brits at all, but everyone loved the message in the bottles so much, we couldn’t not give the people who were making the trip one! That’s pretty much how we justified everything in our wedding planning….â€these people are paying a lot of money to attend our wedding, we need it!†ha But it was just so hard to find amazing invites or favors or anything in the UK, so 9/10 I had to go through American websites, which was costly, but hey, we got what we wanted!

 

We got these for favors:

 

Miles-of-Memories-Suitcase-Favour-Tins--sets-of-12 Wedding Favours Favour Containers - Finishing Touches for your Special Day Wedding Favours, Personalised Gifts, Wedding Accessories

 

And filled them with haribo loveheart shaped jellies, and some personalized rock, to bring in some Scottish tradition somewhere. I think everyone liked them. They were personalized with our name and wedding date, location, so they are a wee keepsake rather than traditional favors that just collect dust then get thrown out. They were quite expensive, £70 for 24 tins then the sweets too, but because we only had 26 guests we didn’t mind spend a wee bit more to make it more special. One of hubbies aunts gave out Cot Death pins:

 

Scottish Cot Death Trust

 

Which I didn’t know about until the night before the wedding. It was SUCH a fantastic idea, as cot death is something we’ve been touched by, I just wish we had thought of it! Giving out pin badges for a charity that’s close to you/your family is a FANTASTIC idea, honestly, it goes down so well with the guests, and its about remembering loved ones unable to attend the wedding. The pins were super cute, everyone was wearing them.

 

For our thank you’s, I really wanted to stick with the “holiday†theme, so went for thank you postcards. Citla had said from day one it would take 6-8 weeks for our photos to be ready, but when she sent us a sneak peak, I asked if she could send us 4 or 5 more to use for our thank you postcards. So we used 5 pictures, hubby designed it from some ideas I had got online, and we personalized each one. We only had to buy the photo card postcard, to ensure both sides were level, so it was only about £18 to do it.

 

So many times we’ve given gifts at wedding, and got a standard thank you card or picture back, and felt a bit “huh†because there was nothing personal about it. So for the back of the postcard, we wrote a little note to everyone, mentioning the gift they gave us, and saying how we couldn’t wait to meet them. I think it was a nice touch, because it shows we paid attention to what everyone gave us, rather than just taking everything!

 

When I joined this site I got totally caught up in OTT bags, ceremony programmes, welcome packs…and our budget just kept going up and up! So I had to scrap all these things, which was kinda gutting because I like having projects! But to get good OTT bag fillers in the UK is pretty expensive, then I had to consider the luggage allowance too. Ceremony programmes, I kinda just didn’t see the point in doing…I wanted to – so I could attach them to fans and make it all pretty, but we didn’t have a large wedding party, didn’t have any readings…so it would have been a bit of a waste imo. Welcome packs, I did actually make these, with info on the airport, what to do and not to do in Mexico, info on the resort, free excursions, timetable of events, useful Spanish words, etc…but in the end didn’t print…I just felt things were getting out of control. To get married in Mexico can be as cheap or as expensive as you want. We ended up spending A LOT of money on the wedding, we don’t regret it, we had the time of our lives, but to add these little things in, would have bulked it up by an extra probably £1k+, just because I’m not the kind of person who does things by half….I couldn’t have gave an OTT bag with a few fillers…I’d have needed the colour changing monogrammed cups, the cute sewing kits, the medical kits…the lot…and the programmes and welcome packs would have had to be printed on card and high colour…it just wasn’t essential.

 

Table Runners/Chair Sashes £98

I had a dressmaker do my flowergirl and bridesmaid dress, so it made sense to get her to make these for us, as then it would be the same fabric and same colour. It did work out expensive though, 26 chair sashes at £3 each, and 4 table runners at £5 each. And I didn’t think about how heavy they’d be…it didn’t cross my mind til we picked them up, then I gave it to my bridesmaid to travel with, this was one of her only duties though, and she had upgraded to premium too so had the luggage allowance luckily. My girls were in orange dresses, and the flowergirl had a netting under her dress in a hot pink/fuchsia colour, and the bridesmaid had very subtle sticking detail in this colour, so I got the runners and sashes in this colour. I debated to go with the orange, but thought it might have been too much with actual dresses in orange…I don’t think it would have been, either would have been fine. The sashes/runners were made of satin, so were heavy enough not to blow about at night.

 

The sashes were put on the chairs in the gazebo during the ceremony, then moved to the chairs at the reception area.

 

Cake - A+

 

I’d seen on here from previous brides that to ask MP to do anything fancy with the cake cost $$, and was a hit or miss. There were individual cakes I’d seen on this forum a while ago, that I REALLY wanted, I contacted the vendor, but they were too far away – I considered at the time taking the pictures to MP and asking them to recreate, but just because of the negative reviews from brides asking for specific things when it cake to the cake, I didn’t bother, and didn’t go with high hopes on the cake. If I’m being honest, if I’d had a wedding at home, the cake would have been something I’d have splurged on BIG time. I went to a wedding a few years ago and they had THE most amazing cake, cost like £700 at the time, but I personally think it was money well spent because these are the things people remember. But I wasn’t willing to take the risk with MP’s reputation.

 

So we went for the complimentary cake, and didn’t ask for any specific design or colours, the only thing we had input on was the filled flavour…I think we chose vanilla. The cake was nice. It was white with a red iced flower on top and red iced strip round it. I wouldn’t have chosen it, but it didn’t bother me. But honestly, it was the most delicious cake I’ve ever had!! The sponge was as soft as a cloud, and the flavour was just yummy…we got photos taken cutting the cake, and we “fed†each other a slice, but really only had a mouthful….I wish I’d paid attention to how much was actually eaten to try keep some for a wedding night midnight feast!lol

 

CHECK-OUT

 

I had heard soo many bad things about the check-out process, about things being charged to the room at wrong prices, or cards being charged to wrong rooms. So at check-in, I simply said we didn’t have a credit card with us. It didn’t cause any big problems. When we went to book spa appointments, or confirm the hairdresser appointments, they wouldn’t confirm until money was put on our account, which was fine. But one of the days we went to book jetski’s at the place on the beach between sunrise and nizuc, and they wouldn’t accept cash, only a room charge. We booked it through another guests room so it was fine. But I’d say to do that to save anything going wrong when you check-out. We also got an itemized bill from Lily at our meeting, which she went over while I was there, and there were no issues with it. I booked 5 hairdressing appointments and made it clear at time of booking to only charge mine to my room, but they didn’t do it, again not a huge deal, I just made sure everyone gave me the money before the appointment. I think the good thing about not having a credit card on file is that there’s nothing getting charged to you without you knowing, because they won’t charge things to an account with a zero balance and no card on file. And because we were putting on money on the account every so often for spa’s and stuff, it meant we got a print out receipt each time, so got to see that it was only the wedding balance sitting on the account when we went to check-out.

 

Bridal/Bridesmaid Accessories

 

My dress – Martina Liana 209. I’d set myself a target of getting to a perfect UK 10 before I set in bridal store…and I lost 30lb!woo hoo I had always thought I wanted a Jenny Packham style dress, so headed to my nearest stockist. It looked awful on me, I actually still have the pictures, and showed hubby the other night, his face was a picture. I think Jenny Packham dress are made for super skinny and super tall girls..I’m only 5â€5 and not super skinny, so it made me look…frumpy. So in that store I tried on Benjamin Roberts 1020, and the style was soo much better on me…strapless and tight around my waist. Benjamin Roberts dresses were really reasonably priced as well, I almost bought it on the spot! But I’m not that person, I like to look into everything first. So a few weeks later I went to another bridal store and it was the first dress I tried in on there! There was one other Martina Liana dress, design 234. I did prefer the fit of this dress, but I felt the crystal detail was just too understated. I LOVED my dress, even though I did have dress wobbles, but I think this was only because I went to a few dress fittings myself, and didn’t have anyone to be excited with…so never do that! The dress was heavy, there was a lot of netting underneath, but I wasn’t uncomfortable during the day at all, and the extra layers worked to my advantage when everyone else was getting attacked by mosquito’s!! If anyone thinks they can’t have a big dress because they are getting married abroad and its too warm, your wrong, honestly. My dress wasn’t huge, but it was a normal wedding dress an at home bride would have.

 

My mum passed away 2 years ago, and I knew she’d have loved me to wear some of her jewellery. I had in my mind I wanted pearls, and as if by fate, my mum had gorgeous pearl dropped earrings, and a 3 layered pearl necklace, so that’s what I went for. I didn’t have anything in my hair except a veil, just went for height!lol

 

Bridesmaid/Flowergirl Dresses –

I had seen a flowergirl dress, yes, on this site, that I loved, so I sent it to a few dressmakers in my area. In the meantime, I went dress shopping a few times with my bridesmaid, but just couldn’t find what I was looking for. I wanted a just above the knees dress, and to do this, I’d have had to buy a bridesmaid dress and get it altered…which I thought was a complete waste of time and money. So, when I went to meet the dressmaker I got her to design a maid’s dress too. She took the ideas I had in my head and drew them…and in the end, recreated it almost perfect...the flowergirls dress was almost perfect too, just a bit of the detail wasn’t what I wanted…but overall I loved them both. It was expensive to do this way, £220 for bridesmaid dress and £120 for the flowergirl, but at least this way I got the exact colour, the exact material and almost perfect designs of what I wanted…a winner! ☺

 

For presents for my 2 ladies, I’ve got

 

Flower Girl [With Stickers and Envelope]: Amazon.co.uk: Cool Springs Press: Books for my flowergirl and

 

My Beautiful Bridesmaid - Journal at OhSoCherished.co.uk I’ve filled them out, and just waiting on my pro pictures before completing them. Can’t wait to give them them, my maid probably thinks she’s getting nothing, because traditionally it is jewellery, but I wanted something more personal, and we were on a budget when it came to time to buying presents.

 

I gave this to my flowergirl on the wedding night to play with, so not really a present, more a favor, but couldn’t resist showing you all it:

 

My Fairy Bridesmaid Castle: Amazon.co.uk: Louise Comfort: Books she absolutely loved it, I’d recommend it for any budding princess!

 

Groom/Bestman Accessories

Originally hubby had wanted to wear a kilt. I’ll be honest, I don’t like the kilt at all…I know I’m Scottish and should be proud, but I just don’t think it makes guys look good, and he knew this was my opinion, but was still adamant. I gave in, because at the end of the day it was his day too, but luckily, he looked through Citlalli’s portfolio just as much as I did, and was swayed! So they both wore light coloured suits from Slaters, white shirts from Zara, and Gucci sandals. All the other male guests wore the same colour trousers, sandals and shirt, if not the same. I think they all looked great, there’s a few candid pictures of all the men together, and I like the look, but if I’d had control over it I wouldn’t have had anyone in suit jackets. It was only the groom, bestman and my mums partner, so they stood out from everyone else, but I’d have done something else, like have them in orange shirts and everyone else in white, or something like that.

 

Bestman present was a pair of aviator Rayban sunglasses for Mexico.

 

Trash the Dress

 

We had originally booked Citlalli for the morning after the wedding at sunrise for this, however she had another wedding that day, and we were asked if we’d make it on the Monday, which was no problem. Then while we were in Mexico before the wedding, we got an email explaining that a lot of brides were struggling with the heat and humidity early morning, and if we’d consider doing it at sunset instead. We weren’t very sure at first, but decided to go for it, as the humidity was pretty intense. The reason we weren’t sure was because we figured no-one would be around the beach at early-o’clock, and the last thing we wanted was people watching us, or worse, people in our pictures. But infact, it was actually really nice having people around us – I NEVER thought I’d say that!! But people are soo kind when they see you in your wedding dress, always cheering, and giving well wishes, and clapping and saying how beautiful you are…so do it…you get the right to be treated like a princess on your wedding, so make it last as long as you can!

 

We were at Le Blanc by this point, and had made it clear we didn’t want at MP beach anyway, so Citlalli suggested the beach at the top of the hotel zone, at the corner before Dreams…I have Citla on my facebook, and I’d commented on how awesome one of her TTD session pictures were, and this was this beach it was taken at….yeah! It was quite funny, because I had to get changed into my dress in the public toilets outside Coco Bongo!! Again, something I’d normally be mortified about, but its just soo amazing doing it, I loved the attention in the end, which is soo not like me!

 

We got some amazing pictures, we have been sent a few sneak peaks, and they are mostly the TTD, and they are soo fantastic, the sky was just gorgeous. Jumping about the water was soo much fun. Citla kept saying only to go middle thigh-high in the water, but we asked in the end if we could fall into the water, and splash around, and she was fine with that. We aren’t really the “sexy posing†kinda couple, so wanted fun ones and I hope we got them! ☺

 

CONCLUSION

 

If I had to give one bit of advice, it would be to just enjoy planning your wedding! You hear this all the time but its so true, it goes in so fast in the end, and suddenly your left with nothing to do – I miss planning so much – I need a project! So just relax and take everything in. If you don’t have great contact with your coordinator before your onsite, and you see other people on here miles ahead of you, don’t worry about it! Because onsite the coordinators are SO professional and SO on the ball, they will bend over backwards to make sure your day is perfect…and it WILL be!

 

Top Tips for a wedding at MP would be:

 

Take a laptop with all your planning stuff on it – keep print-outs to a minimum. MUST print-offs are table plans/set up, hair style & vendor contracts.

 

Make sure to give your photographer samples of the style of photography you want to go for, because I’d be impressed if you remembered all the shots you wanted on the day, on the day! Try take some stress off yourself and use your photographer.

 

Try to have an outdoor reception if your budget can allow at all…it just separated the wedding celebrations from the normal holiday celebrations we had!

 

DIY as much as you can…its so much fun, and its even better when your guests say how amazing everything is!

 

Lastly, just enjoy yourself! You will, fingers crossed, only do this once, so make it the time of your life! ☺

Wow! Great detailed review. Loved the top tips for an MP wedding! Congrats again:)

Congratulations. I have one ? for you. How were you able to invite all of your guests that were staying OFF the resort. I think you can only invite 20% of the amount of guests staying ON the resort. Did you have any problems with this?

Congratulations Mrs. D. Great review. It sounds like everything was just amazing. Thanks so much for sharing your experience with us. Good luck and much happiness

Your review is great! Two awsome palace reviews in one day. Cant ask for much more on here lol....

 

Have you posted any pictures yet? I really want to see that decor you rented for $400. It sounds like what I have been looking for.

we had negotiated with the Miami office away in advance for 30% but in the end didn't need to...4 adults and 1 child booked an overnight room at MP on our wedding night, so we only needed the 5 day passes. So we could have got away with the 20% but suppose it's best to have it in place just incase. We did tell when they were booking offsite to factor in a room night at MP in the price as we only get a set amount of day passes, because we said this like 2 years in advance and didn't spring it on ppl I think we got away with it.

you know out of all the candid pictures I've got off guests, there's none showing what the reception are. Looked like! Why did I not think of this?! If there are any in the pro pics I'll post them. There is an another brides review on here, who has a great picture, who I got the idea from, can't remember her name, but I'm sure it was this year, check that out because it was just the same...I actually printed that picture off as backup on what I wanted it to look like!lol

Just realised I didn't review our honeymoon...

 

Le Blanc - B

 

We always said we'd get married abroad, and our number one choice was the Maldives. However when we started looking into it, we found out weddings in the Maldives aren't legal, so we went to a TA and got lots of destination wedding brochures. We were looking at places like the Bahamas, Barbados, Mauritius...but were finding a lot of the accommodation wasn't that great, or the prices were crazy for all inclusive, or all inclusive wasn't even available...one day I was saying to hubby that out of all the brochures nothing stuck out, and flicked the brochure in-hand...thats when Le Blanc caught our eyes. We hadn't ever considered Mexico, mainly because in the UK, Mexico is a very popular honeymoon destination, and we wanted something different. But looking at Le Blanc it was just perfect! So we chose that...when we realised we needed a family-friendly resort, we were adamant we would still have our honeymoon at Le Blanc, as this hotel was the whole reason we went to Mexico in the first place!

 

I don't know why, but Le Blanc just didn't live up to my expectations. I think my expectations were too high, manly because of the rating and reviews on trip advisor. But Le Blanc did cost a lot more money than MP, so yeah, I did expect a higher standard, and I honestly don't think there is a higher standard. The hotel itself is nicer...I mean, waw, this place is spotlessly clean, minimalist, modern...yeah the hotel itself is of a higher standard.

 

The room options went from Royale Deluxe, to Royale Honeymoon Oceanfront, then the next option was a Royale Governor Suite. Now the price difference between the Deluxe and Honeymoon wasn't that huge, however to go up to the Governor Suite it was a bigger jump, so we went for the Honeymoon Oceanfront. Now bearing in mind we had stayed at MP before arriving at Le Blanc, where we had paid a lot less for the concierge level room, so yeah, when we arrived at our 3rd floor room we were disappointed. It was a lot smaller than the MP room. There were little things that annoyed me, like the fact it wasn't a proper door for the bathroom, just a glass door...yeah it looked nice, but would it be soundproof if one of us were to flush the toilet at night? And the jacuzzi..there were no steps to get into it, so you had to climb into it...I know these things are ridiculous, but we had these things at MP where the room rate was significantly lower than at Le Blanc. So we were in the room less than 30mins, at about 5pm, and all we hear is loud blaring music coming from the room next door...I'm sorry but the least we expected was for the rooms to be soundproof! I swear to god, we heard ever switch getting switched in the next room to us, then, icing on the cake, when the people above us emptied their jacuzzi, all we heard was the drainage. Now I know if I was reading this, I'd be like, jeez this person is well picky, we aren't, I promise. But to go from an amazing palace resort, to a hotel which is actively promoted as being the premier palace resort hotel, we expected it to be better than MP, or at the very least, on par. So at this point I burst out crying and tell hubby I want to go back to MP! He wasn't too happy, but could see I was really upset, so we headed down to reception. This was the saturday, and they said they wouldn't have any other rooms til the Monday at the earliest, so we told them we wanted moved to MP then. A supervisor came over, and we explained to them, I got upset again, because I felt we were getting no-where, and at this point I just had my heart set on returning to MP. The supervisor asked us to stay in that room 1 night, and she would make sure a room on a higher level would be ready for us the next day. So we left it at that. We both slept with earplugs that night. I went down to the beach on the Sunday morning, and hubby got the call that our 6th floor room was ready, they came and took our luggage away and we went up...they upgraded us to a governor suite...waw! Soo much bigger, and it was on the corner of the building, so our neighbours' bathroom was against our bed wall, so meant we got no noise from neighbours. And a proper bathroom!lol The only noise you heard in this room was of people above moving furniture, like chairs or whatever. So we were happy here, and stayed the rest of our honeymoon. The beach at Le Blanc was beautiful, we hung out here most days as the breeze was a godsend. The staff always followed us down with our towels and headrests, and brought us an ice bucket, then our drinks, and food if we wanted. Cannot fault the service we got at the beach, it was amazing. We only really hung out at the pools on our last days, it was too warm to sit there all day, but all 3 pools were lovely. We ordered drinks at the swim up bar, hubby a coke, and me a pina colada with no alcohol. You always got comments about no alcohol, but I always laughed it off, I just preferred it without, because with alcohol I found they made them quite strong. Anyway, we ordered these and swam away, I took a sip and realised straightaway there was alcohol in it, and turned to say to hubby, but he bet me to it and said they'd gave him a vodka coke! Not a big deal, its not like we are non-drinkers, and it did happen at MP too, and other guests did comment on it happening to them, it just seemed staff always wanted you to have alcohol!lol

I'll be honest and say we didn't eat at any of the restaurants...room service every night - how lazy?! It was brilliant though. Instead of trays, the food was brought to you on a trolley with silverware, very nice indeed. I'd say MP's food was better, but hubby preferred the quality of Le Blanc. The minibar was the same set-up, except the dispensers were better quality booze, and they included chocolate in the fridge and crisps/nuts on top. That was the one thing we wish they'd done at MP, because its always good to have a wee snack at the ready!lol We had breakfast room service every morning except the last day, when we went down to the restaurant...we both wished we'd done that from the start, as the food was a lot fresher.

We saw a few weddings while we were there, and I did say to hubby on more than one occasion, that I was soo pleased we got married at MP. The marriage area was directly below our room, so we saw it all from marriage to the dinner set up...it was just to the corner of the outdoor jacuzzi, and just felt there was very little privacy, if any, due to Le Blanc being a "normal" sized hotel.

We used the gift shop and thought it was reasonably priced.

we walked to Beach Palace one of the days, and the atmosphere at the pool was better imo. There was current chart music being played, rather than the instrumental music at Le Blanc. Altho the pool was taken over by a volleyball game, so it wasn't good from that point of view. We went up to the rooftop pool, it was lovely up there...very very warm, but was a nice touch to have that. We stopped off at one of the levels to have a look at what the room floors looked like...very nice. And we went into the buffet restaurant, the food all looked very nice, pizzas in particular. That day we headed over to luxury avenue and the other shopping centre, where the mac store is, and went into hooters. Being british, and never having been to america, I was dying to go. Hubby has been to america before and has been to hooters, and he said this one wasn't as good. But the food was delicious and the pina colada, with alcohol, was the best i'd had all holiday!

The butler service really wasn't as great as I expected. Yeah they brought our dry cleaning to our room, and yeah, they cancelled the honeymoon dinner for us, and yeah, they got the elevator for us when they saw us coming, but apart from that we didn't use them.

At Le Blanc we did make use of the palace passport, we went on the jungle tour, where we got to drive our own speedboat then go snorkelling. We got picked up at like 8.10am for this, and got taken in our own navigator...we felt like royalty. When the tour ended, everyone was waiting outside for their pick-ups, and we strolled straight into ours as they were waiting for us, with a cool drink and cold cloth in-hand...one of our best experiences at Le Blanc! We also went to Tulum. The Tulum excursion picked us up at something like 8.15am, and we didn't get back til like 5.30pm, it was a very long day. We stopped off at a wee gift place first, and everything was pretty expensive. At Tulum we got a tour of the ruins, then something like a half hour at the gorgeous beach there. I think most people were ready to head back to their hotels at this point, but we got dropped of at the palace resort Xha Pu for lunch. We had a lot of time here, but the grounds weren't really our type of thing...lots of animals, and the beach was pretty poor. So if you plan on doing Tulum, be prepared for a loonnngg day.

Le Blanc was lovely from the point of view it was adult only, when we went on the Tulum tour, we got reminded what it was like to be near screaming kids, but overall I was let down with Le Blanc. I'd only return to a suite, defo not a standard room, but I wouldn't pay suite prices, as we could get a concierge room, which is adult only, at MP for cheaper than a honeymoon room at Le Blanc. I suppose it just depends what you expect for your money....Le Blanc was A LOT more expensive than Moon Palace, yet I don't think it was A LOT better....to put it into perspective, you could get a swimup suite at the Royale for Le Blanc prices...I'd do that before going back to Le Blanc. I don't want to put anyone off who have already booked up, and to be honest, even if I read this review a year ago, I wouldn't have been put off.

Wow. Amazing review, so detailed! I'm so happy for you that I had the wedding of your dreams!

 

Questions: was the beach as bad as everyone thinks?? I'm just picturing it being really hideous and it's making me sooooo nervous.

 

Which menu did u choose for your reception?

 

Can't wait to see pics!!