El Dorado Royale (EDR) Brides - POST HERE!

As promised, here is my review for my December 2008 wedding at EDR. Overall, we had a great time, minus a few mishaps. I’ll do my best at breaking down the details for all of you. Of course, feel free to ask me any questions.

Wedding coordinators: Since March I have been dealing with Valeria via email planning our wedding. I have to say that she was awesome. Her response to my emails were quick and very detailed. I felt very comfortable working with her. Towards the end I felt we were a little rushed with getting all of our final payments in. I actually had to remind her at one point that we were already 30 days pre-wedding day and our final payments weren’t done yet. I felt a little nervous sending such a large sum of money via fax, but Valeria wrote to confirm that she had received my payment as soon as it arrived.
The onsite wedding coordinators were awesome as well. We had Marisol for our coordinator. We met with her the day after we arrived. We went over all the final details. Everything was just like Valeria and I had planned. Of course they will try to sell you a few extras while you are there. We were suckered into a few things…..ha! They also scheduled a time to have my dress and David’s suit pressed at this time. This was one bump in the road that was kind of irritating. They scheduled to pick up my dress the day of the wedding at 10 AM and return it by 1 PM. It was perfect timing because I would be at the spa during that time getting my hair and nails done. Well they didn’t pick up my dress until 10:45 and didn’t return it until 2:15. It completely messed up our time to be ready for pictures at 2PM with our photographer. So I highly recommend getting you dress and grooms suit pressed the day before the wedding to prevent this hassle.

Photography/Videography:David and I were so blessed to have won a contest here on BDW from an amazing photographer named Kristi Klemens of KLK photography from Newport Beach, CA. Her fiancé Paul Bennet, has his own Videography business (Blue Sky Videos). Both of them joined us at EDR for 3 days to capture our wedding day and then do a TTD session the next day. We had so much fun with them! Kristi and Paul are young and so fun……….we hit it off from the start! I know we will have a lasting friendship with them. Not to mention that their work is AMAZING! You would never know that the two of them have only been doing this for around 4 years! They are definitely blessed with the amazing skill of capturing a moment! Here’s a link to her blog with a few “teaser†pictures from our wedding and TTD: The Gift

Wedding:Our wedding was held at the Presidential gazebo. Our wedding was at 4 PM. I loved this gazebo location simply because we had such a small amount of guests with us (13, including David and I). It has a lot of lush greenery around it too, which was nice. Gazebo 55 is just to the right. I like that one too, but it is definitely more fitting for larger weddings. The sound system they used is really good, the music was so pretty!! Our minister was Aleena. She is one of EDR’s English speaking ministers. She is so articulate. She spoke everything from memorization, never once looking at a paper. My guests thought that was amazing. I truly felt she was speaking from her heart to David and I. We also did a sand ceremony, and used the sand ceremony picture frame. We even “borrowed†a little sand from where we both stood. The frame made it home in one piece! The ceremony was about 30 minutes total.
Our reception was a Tucanes. I loved this location! It’s not next to the water, but honestly, you probably don’t want to be. It can be SO windy by the ocean! They decorated the table so pretty…..just how I wanted it! The wait staff was great too. We did the family style dinner, which was perfect for our little group. It was fun to pass all the trays of food around to everyone. We also used the sound system with Ipod station for this event. Again, very good quality. For the cake, we just got the small heart shaped cake. We really only did this just to have one and to keep tradition. The cake tasted okay, nothing special.

Spa:

I did get my hair done the day of the wedding. I brought a picture for them to go by. They did a good job. My “doo†definitely wasn’t going anywhere. I also got my nails retouched. I got a really good manicure and pedicure before I left, so I decided to just have them do a French nail polish on nails. I also got a massage later in the week with my maid of honor. They do a good job, but of course everything is WAY overpriced.

EDR:
EDR is definitely a beautiful resort. The grounds are very well kept. Beautiful flowers everywhere. We stayed in a Casita (3031). The 30 block is further away from everything, but it’s newer, so that’s why we wanted that particular block. They definitely pamper you in the Casitas. The concierges are nice, but they seem to call you a little too much, always wanting to know if everything is okay. The food at EDR is pretty good. But I have to say that I am definitely not in to all the “foo foo†gourmet food. I am a country girl and definitely prefer good old meat and potatoes. Cocotal was the best for breakfast, they had the most “normal foodâ€. Unfortunately, David and I got very, very sick a few days before we left. Full fledged montezuma’s revenge. It was awful. Not sure what we ate or drank. A few of our guests got sick as well. Just go prepared with plenty of tummy medicine. As for the beach, I’m sorry to say that I was really disappointed. I knew ahead of time that the huge sandbags were spread out across the whole resort, but once you see them, it’s really an eye-sore. For that reason only, this resort might not be the best choice if you are wanting the pretty, white, sandy beaches. Deep down that is what I wanted, but our wedding was still amazing and I wouldn’t change it for anything.

So hopefully that explains most details. Again, contact me if you have any questions. Having a destination wedding was an amazing experience! You will love every moment of it!