My Experience With Maye Cortinas **LONG**

Yay! To be honest after finding the forum I realized that I could do it all myself if I wanted to but I wasn't financially commited to alot of money and at that point I didn't want to take over the stuff she was doing so I stuck with her...

Hello Ana & everyone in this thread,

 

I am sorry you had a bad experience with Maye, I have taken the time to read the different opinions on this matter and I guess this comment will be very valuable coming from a vendor itself.....

 

First of all, we as vendors try to give the best rates to all WC's, it is a simple business practice here in Cabo, in the US or anywhere in the world right?

 

I always see this wedding community as a wedding circuit, everyone knows everyone and therefore it is very easy to know who is jacking-up prices.

 

Speaking from a very personal situation, everytime any bride asks for my fees I always ask if the wedding is being coordinated by a WC, if that is the case then I always refer them back to the WC for pricing and all.

 

If the bride is in fact with no WC, then we could negotiate rates. But please keep in mind that we vendors have pretty much a set rate. And this is only because we know that if we want to have a serious and honest income, then it becomes almost a normal practice. Don't get me wrong here, If it sounds too good to be true, then it won't be good.

 

Maye has hired my services before and not once have I had a problem with her or any of her brides. In fact there are so many great reviews of her in this forum, that's why I am surprised.

 

I also understand how hard planning a wedding from a distance can be, trusting your BIG DAY in the hands of one person... Boy that must be hard!

 

But hiring a WC is just like hiring any service back home, you have to be very careful and do some homework before making a final call.

 

Just as you stated, some make more money than others and some work more than others.

 

My advice for this matter is that wherever you plan your destination wedding, you must get at least two or three different set of vendors so you can compare, check prices and then make your final call...

 

I guess what I am trying to say is that you should always do some window shopping before.

 

Have a lovely day everybody!

I hired Maye when we got married. I experienced some good and bad with her, but not hiring her wasn't an option because we wanted to have a legal wedding in Mexico and without her I found it extremly hard, and for me impossible to book the judge and do all the legal stuff for the wedding. I did hire her for other services, IE flowers & ceremony music, the flowers were exactly the price I expected and the music was a HUGE disappointment because she dropped the ball and never confirmed until the night of our rehearsal so we didn't get what we orginally wanted. BUT I'm the type that double checks everything, but what I found is if you book with Maye she makes sure the vendors do what they need to do, ontime and so forth and yes she does charge a little extra to work with the vendors. At the end of the day I would hire her again

Thank you Ana for your very honest and candid post. All of us, brides-to-be really appreciate it. I myself have hired maye as my wedding coordinator. I'm getting married at Dreams too in Oct.. I hired her b/c of all her fabulous reviews and b/c I knew I would be having a fairly large DW. I pretty much knew who I wanted to book as vendors, so I guess I wanted to hire someone as my day-of coordinator. She has always responded quickly to all my emails and concerns. And when I met her in person, I felt very at ease and comfortable with my choice. I'm not getting legally married in Cabo, so I only paid ~ $500 for her services, which I thought was a very good price. She did book the fire dancers for me, lunas de fuego, and I was able to negoatiate a lower price with her to fit my budget. I also brought up another concern that I had...there was a bride on the forum who hired her, and someone else showed up to coordinated her wedding. I guess she books more than one a day. When I brought this up, she assured me that she would be the one to be with me all day since I hired her way in advance.

 

I'm hoping I've made the right choice...i don't have any major complaints now and I haven't had my wedding yet. But I thought I'd share my experience with her thus far.

Ana, I am so sorry you had to deal with this!!!! I am glad I am not using a WC after reading about your experience.

 

And DJ Ricardo's rate for 2009 is $225/hour. I just got an email from him with his 2009 rates.

 

You are doing a wonderful job planning the wedding on your own. The vendors you are using are wonderful and your weddig will be beatiful

I'm sorry about your experience. If you need a new WC, I would call Varia of Allure because she seems really good too. I'm using her and she has been good so far. I think she is on the forum as well so she can answer many questions.

All the prices Maye has given me are over what the vendor is giving me. Just like Ana, Maye quotes me 275/hour for Dj Ricardo. When contacting him myself he quotes me 225/hour. For two horses I was quoted 400$ by Maye and 350$ direct from them. Same for flowers...everything I asked so far is more expensive with Maye. It's really frustrating me. Leia, you got quotes 500$ for October? WOW! how did you get that deal??

PS: She better be VERY good with coordinating day of wedding. I'm booking all my vendors myself because of her increased prices and every time I do so, she gets upset with me! If she's only so so at coordinating the day of wedding, well then what's the point of paying $800 for a coordinator? I'm worried

I'm in the exact same boat as you...I'm basically going to book all of my vendors myself, but I booked her so that she can completely organize the day of the wedding and make sure everything is showing up when it's supposed to, and set up the proper way. $800 is a lot to pay for that so she better be PERFECT at it! I think we just have to let her know in advance that we expect a lot and make sure we send her a time-table before the wedding with a lot of detail on it...?

be careful because she books more than one wedding a day and sometimes will send her assistant to coordinate some, and in one case that I was told about, she actually left 2 hours before the wedding ended and left her teenage niece in charge so she could go see to the 2nd wedding she had booked