$500 to bring in my own photographer!

So the El Dorado Royale apparently has a policy that you can have outside photographers as long as you pay the resort 500 bucks. What kind of policy is this?! GRR. Anyone gotten around this in anyway? I am started to get really frustrated with all these limitations and rules...

And an unrelated question- for those who are having/had a beach wedding, what did you do for music? Did you just use a CD? How was the sound quality. Did you hire someone?

Thanks in advance

Some of the resorts will allow the photographer if you put them on your guest list for 1-3 nights...

If you haven't signed anything with the resort yet, you might try and use your wedding there as a bargaining tool to get them to waive/reduce the fee.... I have no clue if that will work or not, but it's kind of what I plan on doing because it pisses me off that they want to force the couple to either use their (usually) crappy resort photographer or get more money out of them by playing with their (the couples) desire to have a decent photo album of memories...

mikki is right...that or have them stay at the hotel...

lauren - i just got back from a wedding there. its my second one at that resort. you can read a little about the trip here - http://bestdestinationwedding.com/forum/t5102

(i will be posting actual wedding pics from that trip tomorrow and will let everyone know.)

ive always been on the guestlist and ive always stayed there. my couples pay a set travel fee (so they dont pay more if i decide to stay somewhere more expensive. its on me) then i just stay where i want but 99% of the time its where the wedding is. its easier. no one at EDR has ever said a word. i dress more like a guest and try to stay on the downlow. but if im staying at the resort and on the guestlist im not sure what they can do.

Thanks for the suggestions. The WC also said that I could pay for the photgrapher to spend a night in the hotel which is definitely cheaper than 500 bucks. I just dont understand why I cant purchase a day pass dammit!!

That is very frustrating! I'm not looking forward to the hassell of negotiating this myself.

It is good to know that some hotels will let them come if they just book a night. I was already planning that into the budget for booking an outside photographer if we can afford one when the time comes. (I really hope we can, cause that is very important to me.) I just don't want to have to pay an ADDITIONAL $500 on top of that!