Still trying to find a place....(sorry it's long)

Hello lovely brides and brides-to-be!

I am still fairly new to this site and have been reading through every thread on here (it seems like it!).

 

Anyway....I'm still having a tough time deciding on a venue.

Let me start off by saying that FI and I are paying for this wedding ourselves, and we each have a child, so I personally don't want to spend a fortune on this wedding, we just want to be married, and have a beautiful setting.

 

So we know we want to be married directly on a beach in the corridor (though we are staying at either Villa del Palmar or Cabo Villas). And it is very important to FI that there aren't alot of random people around during the ceremony or the reception, so we are looking for someplace where the weddings are held in a pretty seculed area. Let me also say that we will most likely get married on a Tuesday or Wednesday, so I'm wondering if prices can be negotiated for a weekday wedding?

 

Right now we are at about 25-30 adult guests and about 8-10 kids (under the age of 10).

 

Casa del Mar is FI's top choice. I also LOVE the look of the place and think it fits well with our requests. However, I feel they are a bit expensive. The "beach club" location is $2,500 to reserve and plated dinners start at $85.

My next choice is the Sheraton. FI also likes the look of the place but we are wondering how private it is? I have a price list for the food, but haven't come across any location fee or pictures of the reception area.

 

Does anyone have any insight to our choices or can anyone suggest other locations that fit our needs?

 

Because we are having so many children, I'm wondering if any of the locations have "kids" menu's to choose from, I've asked a few WC that I'm e-mailing with, but none have directly responded to that question.

 

I'm sorry this post is so long, and I realize I'm asking alot of different questions, but if you can offer any type of advice, I would very much appreciate it!

What about Sunset Da Mona Lisa? It is really beautiful and you can rent out the place if you like so you will be overlooking the water and it will be private. I don't know if its on the corridor or not though.

 

Sunset da Mona Lisa :: Home Page :: Italian Seafood Restaurant with Arch view in Cabo San Lucas, BCS, Mexico, Weddings, Events, Private Diners (former Da Giorgio)

 

Or how about the Cabo San Lucas Country Club?

Nrvsbride, Thank you for the response. I LOVE the view and elegance of Sunset Da Mona Lisa, but we really want to be married directly on the beach, and we want the reception to be practically on the beach, we figured since we are having so many kids, they would rather play in the sand then sit and have dinner!

There are a few different areas at the Sheraton where you can do the reception. 2 restaurants and what they call the Palapa. The Palapa is not officially private but I think others who did receptions there were happy with it - maybe if you search for Jessalyn's review she will say something about it bc I think that's where she did hers. We're doing ours at the d'Cortez restaurant which is only private if you meet a minimum spend. With the # of guests you're having it's unlikely that you'd meet the minimum in a reasonable fashion. We're expecting more than twice that and are worried we might not reach it so might not end up having it private after all.

I got married at the Sheraton on a Tuesday in front of DeCortez, location fee was $300.00 (that of course may haved changed now) If I would have picked in front of the Pithyites (hell I'll never remember how to spell that other place, but I'm sure you know where I'm talking about) the location fee would have been $600.00. Both are great choices IMO. As far as the beach being quiet, for me it was.. Yes their were a couple of people but that was it, and to be honest with you I didn't even notice. Any beach wedding is going to have a few people on the beach but the later in the day you have your ceremony the odds are that less and less people will be on the beach.

Have you contacted Irma at the Sheraton yet to talk about location fees?

Have you looked into the Cabo Surf Hotel? Maybe they will waive a location fee because you are getting married on a weekday? It's definitely fairly secluded, although there are always some surfers around. I think they have pretty reasonable food/beverage prices and if you tell them you are on a budget maybe they can work with you. Armando is the guy to talk to there.

Bridget - thank you for the info on the de Cortez restaurant. I will search for Jessalyn's review and see if she has pictures of the Palapa.

 

Tammy - I just looked through your pictures (again) and I just LOVE your little individual cakes! Did de Cortez make those for you? Did you have your reception at de Cortez? And I just got online this morning and sent in a request to the Sheraton so I'll let you know what they say.

 

Janet - I hadn't looked at Cabo Surf at all, but your photos have inspired me to check it out. Is there more than one option for reception?

 

After talking with FI last night, and looking at all the pictures on this site, we have realized that a beach wedding is beautiful no matter where it is held, so we are not going to pick based on the ceremony. We are more concerned with the reception location and we realize it is because of all the kids we are going to be having as guests. We don't want to keep the kids bottled up in an enclosed restaurant for hours, and we don't want to be directly next to a pool because it would be too hard for the kids to resist (especially my kid!), so that is why we are looking for something very open that would allow the kids to play in the sand directly next to where adults are enjoying dinner and dancing. And we are also very concerned with a "kids" menu because we obviously don't want to pay $60+ for a kid to eat 1/4 of an adult meal.

I'm guessing this will be the most difficult part in planning a destination wedding - not being able to actually hop in my car and check out the location options....

We got married at Playa Grande Resort, it's in Cabo not the corridor. Our ceremony was directly on the beach and the reception was outdoors on their terrace. They kept is blocked off from the other guests. They have a wonderful resort coordinator, Claudia, that really handled everything very well. We also had an outside coordinator but in reality we didn't need her. There is no charge for having the ceremony on the beach, only your decorations. The food was sooooo good. We had a surf and turf buffet and it was $35 dollars per person. They were willing to include a child's menu, but there were options on the buffet that the kids liked so we didn't need it. They are very flexible and easy to work with. We had 35 people attend the wedding. We had an open bar for 3 hours, the surf & turf buffet, cake, champagne toast, including flowers and ceremony set up and dj...oh and photographer for 4 hours with video. The total for everything was about $9,000-$10,000. Depending on what you want, you could make it less. Here is a link to our pictures, you will see the set up and the resort. If you have any questions, let me know. If you can't open the link you can cut and paste it into your browser.

 

 

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Nope, Deena from Sweet Dreams made those cakes. if your having around 30 guests I can see it getting really expensive. They were $16.00 each, and in all honesty 2-3 people could have shared one cake because they were huge.. (trust me, I love cake but it was even too big for me to eat) However if you go to Deena's website she has an adorable 2 tier shellfish cake that I would have gotten if I had more guests, she quoted me $125.00 for it plus delivery (course that price could have changed now) Her website is www.sweetdreamcabo.com (I think, let me know if it doesn't work)

DeCortez is a great resturant, but it's a little $$, course they may have a wedding package for you to look at. I wanted our guests to order off the menu because we only have 6 guests, but we ended up spending over 1k for our dinner and drinks for 8 people..