SarahMc

Forgot to add a couple of things about Dreams - they were really booked up when we were there. Two guys that were sharing a room had requested double beds and ended up with a King. They didn't want to share a bed, but Dreams wouldn't switch their room unless they paid more - didn't understand that, could see why they couldn't if they didn't have rooms, but and extra fee? Then a couple that came with us ended up in a suite and didn't have to pay for it. Another couple was able to upgrade to a suite. Kind of random, but I think it depended on who they talked to at the front desk. Also, James and I wanted to have a nice dinner at Portofino - don't trust the beepers they give you. We waited for two hours - I went back an hour or so after we got ours to check and she said we were two tables away. Next time we went back they were closed! She said our beeper didn't work and went to go get us in the restaurant, but by that time we were done waiting and just went back up to our room and ordered room service. Friends at Himitsu and hated it - the sushi was good, but they ordered Phad Thai and said it was awful. Their kids wouldn't even eat the pizza there. The other restaurants were all good though!

Here’s all I can think of right now – probably more than you wanted to know – but I found the reviews really helpful when I was planning stuff. Don’t have too many pics yet – sorry! (I was going to add some, but it won't let me add any pics?) Flight – A+ Flew on Alaska Airlines. I carried my dress on and had no problems. We had used mileage plan miles to upgrade to first class (totally recommend doing this if you can – James is in trouble because now I’m always going to want fly first class even though we can’t afford it). This helped with the dress because we were first to board so the closet was always empty when I got on. It’s a short closet, but better than shoving it in overhead. I also had an overweight bag and they didn’t charge me on the way down there (but did on the way back). Carrying a wedding dress around gets you some bonuses! No problems with customs either – we had tons of stuff (starfish, candles, etc.) Transfers - B We used Epic booked through our travel agent. They were there for us, but made us stand out in the sun (or sit in the hot van) for about half an hour, then took us to the hotel. I think they were trying to get some more business – not sure. The ride back was fine. Dreams - A+ This was my second time to Dreams, but James’ first – both love it! We had a honeymoon suite right along the ocean. It was bigger then my first condo and we totally moved in. The staff was very attentive and we had no problems with any of our things going missing from the room (neither did our guests). I know people have mentioned some issues with stealing, but we didn’t experience this. We put our passports/travel docs and rings in the safe and hid our money in our clothes. We had our ceremony on the beach in front of the gazebo – I don’t remember much except for not being able to get the ring on James finger and having to shove it on. The Dreams staff set it up exactly as I requested. We also had a cocktail hour on the beach right after while James and I took photos. We did a legal wedding and the judge was very nice. We had our bloodwork done earlier in the week and they came to our room for $150. Mariana set it all up. I am usually impossible to get blood from, but the tech got it right away with no bruising at all. He didn’t wear rubber gloves but the needles did come out of clean packages. Didn’t taste any of the food during cocktail hour, so can’t comment on it, but heard it was fine. They provided two waiters for this. Our reception was at Oceana and was pretty perfect as well. They set up a table for 22 – 2 on each end and nine down each side. We had 3 waiters and a bartender who kept the drinks flowing. The food was probably the best we had all week. We did crab cakes, green salad with goat cheese and a double plate of sea bass and beef . We didn’t do dessert, so got $2 off our set-up fee. I brought all the decorations and they provided chair ties for $1 each. When we got back to our room after the wedding they had put candles all over and had made it really romantic – too bad all our friends went up there with us! Wedding Coordinators – A+ We didn’t hire wedding coordinators and just used Dreams. Mariana was our coordinator from the beginning and is TERRIFIC! Unfortunately when we got there, we found out she wouldn’t be there for our wedding (she said she had to travel for some family issues). She introduced us to Yessica and the four of us met to talk about the wedding. Yessica ended up being great as well. The only issues we had the day of were some missing supplies (there were supposed to be disposable cameras at the cocktail hour and no one remembers seeing them and we had cake boxes for extra cake which didn’t make it to the reception) and music (see below). I was a little anal and made lists of my lists for them and put all the supplies/decorations in bags labeled with our name and what part of the day there were supposed to be used for. They said it was really helpful (maybe they were just thinking I was crazy and being nice ) Yessica didn’t stay for the whole reception, but she made sure that we had everything we needed before she left. We also had an issue with our wedding certificate (still don’t have it yet). It was in our room the night of the wedding, but James’ last name was spelled wrong. We sent it back and got a new one the night before we left. This one was spelled right, but had no seal. Mariana took it back and said she will mail it to us. Hair/Makeup I had Dreams do my hair and it turned out exactly like I wanted it. I brought pictures and she kind of went from that. I did my own make-up with help from a friend who had gone to Sephora with me – we just watched what they did and copied it for the day of. It totally helped having a friend to fix my mess-ups! Flowers - A+ Got flowers through Dreams. I had no bridesmaids so just did a bridal bouquet of gerber daisies, corsages for the moms and petals for my flower girl. I told Mariana what colors I wanted and she got exactly what I asked for. Cake – A+ or C – depends who you talk to We did a tres leches cake through Dreams. It looked beautiful – exactly what I wanted. We brought down starfish toppers and some blue ribbon for them to use to decorate it. Some people loved it and thought it was delicious. Others were not so excited about it. I think I just depends on your taste. I only had one bite – I was too busy trying to get the frosting out of my nose ) Bonus was they forgot to charge us for the cake! Music David Flores – A+++++++ I-Pod with Logitech portable speakers – D I hired guitarist David Flores for the ceremony and cocktail hour based on Janet’s review of him and listening to the samples on his website. I was a little nervous because he requires no deposit and his e-mails are a little cryptic, but he showed up on time. I had found some music for him that my mom wanted him to play when I was walking down the aisle and he did it perfectly. He charged $250/hour with a minimum of 2 hours and it was worth every penny! I didn’t get to hear any of it really, but all our guests couldn’t stop talking about how great he was. I did playlists on our ipod for the reception and bought a Logitech portable ipod speakers to play it on. It sounded fine in my backyard – but you could hardly hear it at Dreams. It only worked for background music. DON’T BUY LOGITECH! Luckily, Yessica was able to find us a speaker really quickly for $100 cash. We were able to use it the whole night. Using the ipod ourselves wasn’t a problem (we’re pretty informal so no one cared if we went up and took a while to decide what we were doing) but if I was going to do it again, I would have paid Dreams to set up speakers and have someone really comfortable with working the ipod operate it (I ended up doing it most of the time). Oh, and I’d take my ipod off random BEFORE the reception. Photographer – Hard to grade yet since I haven’t seen any pics but am guessing will be A+ We had Juan Carlos as our photographer. You could tell he was definitely in his element. It was the first time either of us had ever done photos like that before so I’m sure we weren’t easy to work with:o) I’ll know how they turned out in a month and half! He did mention the forum – he said something about all of us girls talking about him. Cabo San Lucas – B- We went into Cabo several times and it’s really a little commercial for us. Next time we’re there I think we’ll do more in San Jose. We had a great time at Squid Roe and the Gigglin Marlin – Cabo Wabo smelled like an outhouse when we were there. One of my friends got scammed by a timeshare person at the Tequila Factory. A couple of our friends got tattoos at Monkey Spunk and had a really good time with the tattoo artist. We took the bus back to the hotel several times and had no problems – much cheaper too! ATV Riding – B The boys went riding on ATV’s the day before through Baja Explorers. They enjoyed the hour they had on the beach by themselves, and the tour part was okay. One of the people they were with flipped their quad and broke their arm and we heard about someone else who got hurt pretty bad on a different trip. Glass Bottom Boat Tour – C Some of our guests took the glass bottom boat tour and said it wasn’t worth it. You really couldn’t see much and they ended up spending most of the time rescuing a girl and her dad from a jet ski. Dreams Massage Under the Stars - B- One of our wedding guests got this for us - massage was okay, but was not as relaxing as you'd think. Being on the beach was cool, but you could hear too much talking etc, which took away from the massage. If I think of anything else I’ll add it. Being back at work sucks! I asked James if I could be a housewife and if he could build me and ocean with some palm trees in the back yard…he said yeah right. Oh well, we’ll just have to start planning a one-year anniversary trip!

Just got back from Dreams and I have to agree with Jenetta. We bought a portable ipod speaker system that sounded fine in our backyard and got loud enough, but when we hooked it up a Dreams (by Oceana, so quieter area) it only really got loud enough for good background music, not dancing music. Luckily Dreams was able to hook us up with a speaker (I think they got it from the Pirate show - at least a Pirate hooked it up) for $100 cash and we had it for about 4 hours. Unless your portable system really has some power I'd go with Jenetta's suggestion and rent speakers.

I leave for Cabo tomorrow and just wanted to hop on and thank everyone for their great advice and ideas. I wouldn't have known what do without all of you. Thank you!

I'm not really familiar with all these songs, but does your guy like to dance? James hates it and wants no mushy love songs, so I narrowed it down two or three I liked, played them for him, he couldn't decide (didn't have any other suggestions), then I told him how long each one was and he picked the shorter one. Same thing happened with the parent dance as well! Which one sounds most like the two of you?

I'm hoping someone is more musically inclined than I am. My mom really wants me to walk down the aisle to "A time for us" from Romeo and Juliet. That's what she walked down to. So I found the song and e-mailed it to David Flores our guitarist, and he asked for the music score so he could have something to read. Any ideas where to find this? I searched for a little bit online, with no success, just a lot of random websites. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks! Sarah

I like #2 on you best. I know they're just quick pics, but you look so much happier and comfortable in #2 even though it's too big. Plus, it's got a unique look to it. Not everyone can get away with wearing a dress as pretty and sexy as that one!

Welcome back and congratulations! I'm glad to hear everything went well (except for the bugs)!

I'm late on this, but I definitely think you should pay for them on your wedding day. If there's a welcome dinner the night before, maybe not for that if there's too many guests, or maybe you could have your welcome dinner at a restaurant in town so you avoid that cost (unless it's free at the resort). I guess the way I look at it is if I were having my wedding here, I wouldn't ask them to pay $100 to attend. I am asking them to pay to go to Mexico, but that's also a vacation for them as well, and they had the option of coming or not. I wouldn't want to throw an extra charge on top of it. Like Kate, I only listed Dreams as an option for accommodations in hopes that people would just book there. Right now it looks like we have one person who's coming who doesn't have a reservation yet, so I might feel differently if it was all 20. I guess if I was going to a wedding and paying a lot to go there, I wouldn't expect to pay an additional $100 to attend the wedding. Does that make sense or am I just talking in circles?

Georgeous! You both look amazing! I totally wish I could do this, but James is with those who would never do it. I'm lucky to get photos on our actual wedding day.

I think it depends on who's doing it. I go in for alterations next week for my wedding on June 28. I've heard of people doing it in a week or so though too. Just think it depends sometimes on how much moolah you want to spend!

A friend of mine had do to this as well and under the "yes, we're coming" box she just put something like this: ___ Number of Beef dinners _____Number of fish dinners Hope that helps!

Check out Tammy's slide show on Juan Carlos' site Juan Carlos Tapia Photography. There's some great pics of the gazebo. I'd ask if the couple getting married on the beach is getting married in the usual spot on the beach. If so, it is right past the gazebo and if your weddings are at the same time, you'll be able to see you and they may be in your way of the beautiful view of the water. There are a couple of spots they do beach weddings, but usually it's out in front of the gazebo.

Kate, I'm planning on doing 4 inch round candles with nothing around them in June, I'll let you know how it works out. I figured we'd just relight them if they go out. I didn't like the hurricanes Dreams had and didn't want to deal with bringing down my own...

Quote: Originally Posted by Adamsgrrl BTW What program did you use to design them I just used word (text boxes) - I'm cheap too, so printed two of the invites on each page and four of the RSVP's on each page. The starfish was a stamp I found. I had lots of test pages to get it right though!

Thank you! I'm going to need to use all those tips!

Thanks! I'm so glad they're done...now I can move on to more fun stuff like the OOT bags! Not that they weren't fun, it was a lot of cutting and glueing, at one point I looked at James and was like what possessed me to do this? That's one big stress out of the way though - they're going in the mail today!

So I'm no Martha Stewart or Sarah (Aqharider) ), but here they are. You can tell I made them myself, but I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. Sorry for the glare (the paper's metallic) and the blocking out of names.

That is a hard choice...

When I was down there in January, our room was right next to a section that was closed off for renovations. It wasn't noisy at all and they blocked off the area totally. You did hear some stuff during the day if you were walking by, but nothing that was too bad.

Thanks for all the advice - sounds like anything will work, as long as they are properly thanked!

So my bridal shower is coming up and my aunt and a good friend of my mom's that I have known since I was little are hosting it together. Are you supposed to buy the hostess a gift for throwing you a shower or is just a nice thank you note enough? A friend suggested I just get them each a nice bottle of wine. Does anyone have advice? What did you do? Thanks! Sarah

Different Sarah then Tammy was talking about, but we are also having a small reception and chose Oceana because it was more private than other spots for a small reception (they'll close off areas for large ones). I don't have pictures of pinata, but here's the view from Oceana (daytime though):

You could try Strivectin too - it's expensive, but I've heard it does diminish their appearance. A lot of people use it for lines around the eyes as well. They sell it online at Drugstore.com and I just saw it at Macy's.

I'd definitely send two thank you's - as someone else pointed out she probably bought the gift. If you are sort of friends with her too, it might be good/helpful for her to know you haven't totally dropped her because of what her ex did. I'd watch out for your sister too, if he dumped someone on a trip to Mexico for a wedding, he seems like he might have the potential to do something not so nice to your sister (even if he is a generally nice guy). Sorry, don't mean to sound b*tchy about a friend of yours, but it kind of reminds me of guys who drop their girlfriends at prom at high school, not too mature.