Gran Bahia Principe Akumal/Tulum/Coba - POST HERE!

Hi there,

FH and I are getting married at GBP Akumal in January 2010 after visiting and staying in the Golden section this past January. We fell in love with the resort and saw a couple of weddings there. I have been in contact with Yuritzia and Paloma and they seem helpful. We are paying for the sunshine package which is approximately $1500 USD and I was wondering if anyone paid for extra decor? We requested getting married on the beach near the Golden section and I'm wondering what the standard decor is. Also we booked Dolce Vita restaurant which was just "okay" when we went. Any advice on the menu or decor for the wedding night? Is it worth it to get the extra drinks by the pool after? Did everyone go out dancing after? We are getting married on a Thursday and I believe that is when they have a big party in the Hacienda so I'm wondering if we have to pay for all our guests tickets to get in to go to the disco. I am hoping the swine scare will be over and bring back business because I have heard 2 of the 3 resorts are closed down. So sad!! Any advice would be helfpul!

How exciting Joanna your wedding is almost here hopefully you will get everything straightened out with the TA.

Congrats Mike& Wendy we got married at the same location we did the standard setup but we did buy extra flowers for the aisle which were really reasonable, I think $40 each. With getting married on the beach that was enough decor for us. We also had dinner at the Dolce Vita and everyone loved what they had except for DH (because his came out last and it was cold) but we had the choice option of the grouper and chicken. We used the flowers from the ceremony as our centerpieces and I brought candle holders in pink and blue and brought table numbers and we gave out maracas as favors which we got at the Hacienda. We then moved to the poolside for dancing. It was a lot of fun after the reception was over we just went to the 24 hour snack bar and hung with our friends and family.

Here was our setup:

Our centerpieces at the dinner (sorry its the best pict we have of them) -

Hey all,

I'm getting married on the Tulum side the week of January 25th. The reason i say week is because i don't have a wedding date yet (yikes!). Nervewracking! My TA told me the hardest part of a DW is picking where you want to go - maybe, maybe not. We're pretty laid-back people, so maybe the relatively last minute decision to do a DW has contributed to some of our dilemmas (I've seeing some girls planning for a year on here - that is some impressive organizational skills).

I'm hoping for some feedback on a couple things:

1. It seems the week i want to go, there are only 3 times left on 2 different days: noon, 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. I checked sunset times for that week in 2009, and turns out it's around 5:30 p.m. or so. What would you ladies recommend as the better time? noon (despite possible blistering heat) to allow for some nice sunny (i'm an optimist, can you tell?) photos? Or later in the day with the possibility of a pretty quick sunset and limited light for pics?

2. I've been told the times are not set in stone (even with a confirmed time, it is still subject to change depending on judges' availability). It sounds like most people got the times they wanted, within an hour or 2. Can anyone comment on the number of weddings maybe going on in one day that would give me such erratic time options? My understanding from reading is that there can be up to 3 weddings per day.

3. On that note, if we are perhaps the last wedding booked for a certain day, would that significantly decrease the things we could plan for our dinner and reception? (ie. which restaurant, places to have reception).

I am absolutely floored at how epic a thread this is - my eyeballs felt like sandpaper grapes after finishing it, and my brain shut down with the massive information overload. I do apologize if any of this has been answered in detail earlier in the post (information here rivals some of my textbooks).

Thanks, and looking forward to advice from past, present and future Gran Bahia Tulum brides.

Wow Joss...you have some really good questions! I'm sorry that I can't be any more help because we're in (kind of) the same situation.

We are having our wedding at the Tulum Gazebo (staying at Coba) and our time is 2pm...but we have asked a few times to have it at 3pm or 4pm instead. They tell me that we won't know until the time comes...but then how do I tell our guests what time we actually have?

I wish you all the best and I'm sure everything will work out just perfectly for you.

Your picks look Great!! I'm very excited, i'm using claudia as well. I'm not having a civil wedding ceremony, just the symbolic. But, how long do you think your ceremony was?

Congrats let me see what I can help you with.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joss Hey all,   I'm getting married on the Tulum side the week of January 25th. The reason i say week is because i don't have a wedding date yet (yikes!). Nervewracking! My TA told me the hardest part of a DW is picking where you want to go - maybe, maybe not. We're pretty laid-back people, so maybe the relatively last minute decision to do a DW has contributed to some of our dilemmas (I've seeing some girls planning for a year on here - that is some impressive organizational skills).   I'm hoping for some feedback on a couple things:   1. It seems the week i want to go, there are only 3 times left on 2 different days: noon, 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. I checked sunset times for that week in 2009, and turns out it's around 5:30 p.m. or so. What would you ladies recommend as the better time? noon (despite possible blistering heat) to allow for some nice sunny (i'm an optimist, can you tell?) photos? Or later in the day with the possibility of a pretty quick sunset and limited light for pics? I would suggest 5 we had our wedding at 2 and it was really hot plus our guests did not really want to get changed and then get dressed up again the other reason I suggest 5 is if you have a sunny day like we did our photographer was having a hard time getting pictures without us squinting really bad. So we did our ceremony at 2 then took a couple of pictures then went to the lobby bar and started our cocktail hour then around 5:00 went back outside to take our pictures and our dinner started at 5:30.   2. I've been told the times are not set in stone (even with a confirmed time, it is still subject to change depending on judges' availability). It sounds like most people got the times they wanted, within an hour or 2. Can anyone comment on the number of weddings maybe going on in one day that would give me such erratic time options? My understanding from reading is that there can be up to 3 weddings per day. Times are not set in stone our wedding started out orig at 4 then was moved to 3 then when we got there it was moved to 2 because a larger wedding was booked at 4 and since our wedding "only" 32 we had to move our time or we were not "allowed" to get married at the Akumal location.   3. On that note, if we are perhaps the last wedding booked for a certain day, would that significantly decrease the things we could plan for our dinner and reception? (ie. which restaurant, places to have reception). I do think that being the last wedding booked you may not get the choices you want however as I said we would not have been married at the location we planned on for a year if we did move our time because we were told a bigger wedding took priority and we were the first wedding booked for our date.   I am absolutely floored at how epic a thread this is - my eyeballs felt like sandpaper grapes after finishing it, and my brain shut down with the massive information overload. I do apologize if any of this has been answered in detail earlier in the post (information here rivals some of my textbooks).   Thanks, and looking forward to advice from past, present and future Gran Bahia Tulum brides.

I'm curious if anyone has any information about the poolside reception (coba)...and mainly how they set up the tables, chairs, etc...?

Wow! I don't check out this thread for a couple of days and boom, new questions and information galore!

I am curious as to how some of the 2010 brides have already booked your restaurant? I was in contact with Paloma consistenly during the pre-booking stages, then once we had a date, time (tentative), location, and wedding package confirmed, I have not had any contact with her at all. I tried to get a response about what we could plan now and if she could send restaurant options but I did not hear back. Throughout the thread it looked as though we had to wait 3 months before our date to get those decisions made, so I took her non response as an okay thing. Now, I'm wondering/worried?

If anyone could shed some light on this that would be awesome!

Julie