KARLA

Here's a link to a Sunset Tim Calculator. http://www.sunrisesunset.com/custom_srss_calendar.asp Cabo San Lucas, Mexico is listed and you can enter June 2007 and see the sunset times for the whole month. For June 5, 2007: Sunrise: 6:34am Sunset: 8:02pm

Quote: Originally Posted by host sarah, i did not feel married after the legal event and it was pretty non-sentimental. the ceremony in front of our families was the real deal for us. i don't even remember the day we had our legal ceremony. EXACTLY!!!

We did the U.S. marriage in the courthouse last week, and I'll be honest with you, BEFORE we did that, I was a bit bummed. I wanted Cabo to be the "real thing" and I thought it would take away from my Cabo experience. I was worried for nothing!! Once in a while, Tim and I will look at each other and go... wow, legally we're married! BUT... we know that until we are up infront of our family and close friends and say the vows to each other, it won't be a done deal in our minds. I can't stress enough how much the symbolism of saying those vows infront of the people you love carry SO MUCH MORE weight than signing papers. I don't know why I was bummed or worried... it is so clear now!

You know what surprised me... the already married friends that gave me a hard time with the RSVPs. They HAD to have gone through this before, so it really boggled my mind that they did not jump on the RSVPs! One of them actually had the nerve to say "But you KNOW I'm going already!? I really don't have time for this!" Granted, she was really stressed out at work, but seriously?!? I just looked at her and said, "I guess you don't want to eat at the reception?!?!" I actually almost started a thread back then when I was dealing with this... but I was so stressed about it, I just wanted to forget it!

Quote: Originally Posted by A10CALGAL -My FI's family thinks RSVP's are unnecessary - they are Hispanic & apparently expect everybody & their inlaws to show up for their events, so why shouldn't I. Christa, Good luck with that one.... I'll tell you right now, anybody in your FIs family that you think can financially swing it, go ahead and count them in! My little sister got married in NC this past May. She sent out invites, counted RSVPs, etc... 2-3 weeks before the wedding, our family in California (can't remember now.... 20 people??) calls to tell us they are coming. Not to scare you but not only did they show up with very little notice, but they also had nowhere to stay and expected us to house them. Which of course, were obligated to since they are family. Hispanic culture is very much like that, sorry to say! Luckily my mom told them that if they showed up to Cabo, they'd have to get hotel rooms... seriously, I wonder if without that warning they'd expect to stay with us?!? Just kidding! Oh... and if they do show up to the wedding, my advice to you is to have one person in charge of them arriving ON TIME. Are you used to "Hispanic time" yet? The whole family from California showed up to the church for my sister's wedding 30 mins late, and really thought they'd be "on time". They saw us walking out, they missed the whole thing! We had a family party for my FI and I this saturday at 6 PM.... EVERYBODY but my sister's inlaws showed up at 8:15 PM. I know this is probably nothing new to you.... but know what to expect to avoid the headaches! I've tried to break my parents out of the habit, and I have successfully reduced their tardiness to 30-60 mins.

Quote: Originally Posted by TAMMYM Omg I'm the same way,, I'm like well I'll loose points and I don't want to waste them.. Ummm yeah, what I'm I really going to buy with my points.. LOL Ha ha, you guys are cracking me up! I just bought 4 lottery tickets. But I do the same thing.... Must.... not... open.... documents... frivolously

Quote: Originally Posted by A10CALGAL So, I sent out STD's 9 months in advance of our wedding. On the STD's I printed out wedding website where I have onlinve RSVP-ing enabled. I was hoping I'd get some idea through that function (or people just calling me) to figure out how many we will have. Well, my friends all let me know, but my damn family for the most part hasn't even bothered to call & say "yes, we'll come" or "we won't be able to make it." It almost makes me wonder whether they received the STD's...they did. So, I plan to make my RSVP by date 8 weeks prior to our wedding date. I pray that my 35-40 # I've been estimating everything on is at least close to right. Christa, The STD/RSVP process was the most annoying thing for me. We sent out STDs 9 months in advance. Then we sent an e-mail out to have people RSVP on our website 8 months before just to get an idea of the number of people that were thinking about attending. We got about 10 responses, not even the whole wedding party responded. I know, no need since we knew they were going.... but you get the point, people really just don't make this a priority. Then the RSVPs... don't get me started! We're having a plated dinner, so I needed the RSVPs... Half of our friends never sent it back (wasted our stamps!). Most of them I had to e-mail them the dinner choices and had them choose that way. My advice is to go as high as you can in the number you are budgeting for, and at least you will have that covered. If I had to do it again, I would have saved myself the stamps and enabled the online RSVP for the REAL RSVPs.

I'm still getting RSVPs in the mail. They are all for "Not attending", but seriously... I think at this point if I got a "Attending" RSVPs in the mail, I'd faint!

Quote: Originally Posted by MARIAELM I'm so excited now! I bet you are too!!! We're planning on going to Costco to save on breakfast/snack stuff so we can splurge more on dinners and drinks. We're normally good at metering out extravagances. See attachment. I put the following list together from reviews on this forum and trip advisor. Maybe it will help. Thanks!!! Again!!! I'm going to wait to open the attachment until I can open it on my home computer. Hopefully I can add to it later on this week.

Quote: Originally Posted by NABUMBAH sorry ladies! did not mean to freak you out about how much Cabo can cost. I am sure it can be cheaper, but C and I both like to drink and eat a lot so it was definitely more expensive for us. Also, those costs were based upon spending a lot of time at the resort, but obviously if you want to venture out and about you can do it for much less. And the cost per day also included any other costs such as boat trips, etc. I would definitely recommend posting this question on tripadvisor. You may get totally different responses on there. I just figure it's best to err on the side of caution and budget too much rather than too little Actually, there are some reviews on this page http://www.tripadvisor.com/SearchFor...alifornia.html I see that one person estimated $150-$200 per day. I would say that's also reasonable. Again, it just depends on how much you plan to stay and eat at your resort and how much you plan to do there. We picked up beer and snacks at CCC on our first day and that definitely saved us some money. Oh okay, so the cost you gave was also for activities? We budgeted for those separately. Regardless, my FI seemed fine, and I'd rather be prepared than shocked during our honeymoon. I expect to stay at the hotel for quite a few of the meals, and I am expecting that to be very expensive. Thanks again for posting. I honestly had NO idea how much our budget should realisticly be. I have heard Cabo was expensive, but I was not sure what that really translated to, so it's good to hear some examples. The ONLY reason I posted is because we had decided to put our money in with our financial planner and take out a chunk for honeymoon expenses. We needed to know SOME roundabout amount before doing that. Thanks again!

Quote: Originally Posted by MARIAELM Ha, I know where you're coming from Karla. Now that we've got a full picture of the budget (including honeymoon, rings, etc), my FI is starting to freak a little about budget. I've warned him that I don't want to be nickeled and dimed either. He's starting to get over the sticker shock though. It won't matter once you're there, I really can't wait! Are you excited?!? Can you believe how fast it is approaching? We still wonder where the time went! After seeing the big picture, that taco stand is not sounding so bad! ha ha I'm going to do some research on more affordable places to eat. I do remember seeing some postings in tripadvisor, etc... I'll let you know what I find.

Quote: Originally Posted by TAMMYM WOW, ok so if were not big drinkers then that saves us some money their, but WOW I didn't expect the meals to be that much. Karla I'm with you, time to stess out the FI.. Believe it or not... he took it in stride!! I sent him a quick instant message with the listed budget above, and he replied: "Doesn't matter, I can't wait!!" Probably because last night when we were putting a list together of things we (ha ha "I") wanted to do... (i.e. couples massage, etc...) I reminded him that we did not stay at the Palmilla or Ventanas so we could have more spending $$. So I think it sank in that I didn't want to be nickled and dimed for food, activities, etc... Luckily we prepared and saved up, but still.... $300 a day?!? It's nuts! I'm trying not to think about it!

Quote: Originally Posted by TOESNTHESND We are staying at PB Sunset Beach for the first week, and would like a different hotel for the honeymoon. Does anyone have any suggestions? Is an AI good for the honeymoon? If the budget for food is not enough to scare you to go to an AI... The only reason we did not consider staying at an AI for the honeymoon is because my FI and I LOVE going to try new restaurants when we travel. For us that's part of our traveling experience. It sounds great not to have to worry about having cash and budget though, and RIU and Dreams both look beautiful. So it all depends on your taste and what you value in a vacation/honeymoon.

Thank you! I knew I was way off....we thought about $150, but we don't usually hold back on food and drinks. I knew Cabo was expensive, but it was hard to gague exactly how expensive it would be in reality. Ugh, I'm about to freak out my FI with this total... oh well!

Yeay! I found it!! Thanks Tammy for posting!

We are trying to come up with a budget of sorts for the honeymoon. We have never been to Cabo, so one thing we're not sure about, is how much food is going to cost us. We plan on doing 2-3 really fancy dinners (C at Palmilla, Ventanas, etc...) so for those evenings, we plan to budget a big chunck of money. (We hope it's worth it!) But for the other days, we are not sure what a realistic budget would be. We are staying at the Marquis for 7 nights. We're assuming that we'll have the continental bkfst included in the rate at the Marquis every morning. For simplicity, let's assume we'll go out into town for lunch and dinner. How much money should we expect to pay for a regular lunch and dinner?

Our RSVP date was 6 weeks before the wedding, knowing that most people would send it out after that. And we were right! Just remember that most people will not send them by that date, so plan accordingly.

Quote: Originally Posted by BURROWM Last one, I promise!! You know we're all Cabo wedding picture junkies!! Post as many as you want!! Thanks for sharing, they are gorgeous pics!

I'm procastinating my trip to the gym today (I'm still going... just not wanting to.... again!) so I was doing google searches to get must take pic ideas. I ran into this slideshow of a RIU wedding. I'm hoping that posting somebody else's link is not rude, but I know how exciting it is to see site pics of where you are getting married, so I wanted to share what I found. http://www.bostonimages.com/2006/082...ron/venue.html

I second what Christa said. You know your guests better. The only reason I did it was that I thought some of our guests would end up left out.

Congratulations Megan! I can't wait to see the pictures!

Rebecca - We have the same situation, sort of.... In Guatemala the tradition is that the bride and groom sit in the head table with their parents and their godparents. We don't have godparents, so our head table is 6 people, us, both sets of parents. We put all of our parents friends all in one table... time to mingle amongst themselves! Janet - I thought about not having assigned tables like you, but decided to go ahead and do assigned seating because I was afraid that some people would be left out. We have tables of 8 people, and we have a whole group of friends that are 12, and then 4 others that are not in that group (sounds so high schoolish, doesn't it? ha!). I knew that 8 of them would be at one table, 4 mad that they didn't sit there, and 4 people would feel left out. So I just went ahead and assigned seating, and stirred them all up, yet they would be happy enough because enough of them are in each table. Same with my FI's group of friends. Also, there were some people that are just random and I didn't want them to feel like they were in secondary tables, so I made sure they were mixed in there also. Does that make sense?

Maria Elena you're cracking me up! I am sooo going to create one now. Watch out... I might become organized!!

I said sure why not... It helps that my FI does not like strip clubs... but seriously, like Katie said, the guy seriously going to leave you for somebody that showed them her boobs for 10 minutes? I trust my FI completely, so I didn't even think about it. He ended up (on his own) requesting NO strip clubs for his bachelor party because he wanted to just hang out with his friends.

Quote: Originally Posted by MARIAELM Another fun & Motivation contact - I've been working with Denisse Herrera. [email protected] She and I have been e-mailing as recently as last Thursday (10/05/06). Thanks again!! I e-mailed Fatima a little bit ago, I'll see if she responds. My parents were going to take care of the cake stand, but they forgot... I should have put it on MY list!!! Good thing that it's just an optional thing anyway....