SunBride

Hey, Coquetayloca, so have you officially decided on dreams puerto aventuras or are you still deciding between the two? If so you'll have to start a DPA thread so that we can follow your planning!

yes, I saw your post in our other thread and was just about to update the list!

Even with the new info package it's still confusing! It frustrates me so much because I am a real perfectionist about communication (both in my personal life and most importantly for work). I always put lots of details and organize the information so that it's clear, and I find this is the exact opposite. First they say groups of 20 or more must be in the ballroom, but then they talk about being able to rent a private restaurant (so maybe what they really mean is groups of 20 or more go in the ballroom unless you rent the restaurant privately?) Also it's funny that they say you must have "up to 40 people" to rent the restaurant privately, what I think they mean is minimum 40 people (whereas up to = maximum!) The booklet also says only portofino can't be closed privately, but that doesn't seem to be what some of you girls have been hearing. They also give very little info about the outdoor options and whether there are extra costs or which packages includes it for free and minimum or maximum amount of people And next to the blurb about the Ballroom dinner, they show a picture of the El Patio Terrace set-up (misleading). And on page 13 it says you can reserve one of the restaurants "if you are not getting any of the wedding packages" which is weird because it makes it sound like it's only if you aren't getting a weddign pacakge, but in reality most people get the wedding package and then do the dinner in a restaurant (paying the private fee if necessary) I guess the problem is that they have different policies depending on if you are having a small group (under 20), if you have a large group with public dinner and a large group with private dinner, but they aren't clear about saying which rules apply in which of those 3 cases. Sorry for the long ramble but it really annoys me! They would be getting way less emails from confused brides (taking up so much of the coordinators' time to respond) if the info package was clearer

I understand what you're going through, I had a similar situation with my maid of honour although at least I knew from the beginning she probalby wasn't coming. But she has been my best friends since we were 5! We have grown apart though in the past few years because I moved away for university and now live in another city. She never would have done this to me a few years ago. Anyways, she had her excuses which were semi reasonable and semi lame. Our wedding was the week before she had a few assignments due, but the thing is she goes to a very small university/college which we always joke is a like a continuation of high school (small community, everybody from like 2-3 high schools goes there) and so they know their professors so well and get extensions all the time on their assignments using the lamest excuses, we always laugh about it and I think it is ridiculous compared to my university where you needed a really good excuse to get an extension or something. So I'm sure if she had told them she had to go to mexico to be a maid of honour in a wedding they would have given her extensions on her projects (or seeing as she had several months notice she could have worked her ass off getting them done in advance). I think what it really came down to is that her and her boyfriend didn't want to spend their money to come on vacation with our families. I know they had the budget for the trip, after all they had planned on going on a one week all inclusive vacation a few months earlier but their trip was canceled last minute when their flight was changed and the new flight didn't work with their schedule. So they had planned money for that and never went (and got it refunded), so my wedding would have been the perfect substitute trip. So yeah, I was pretty disappointed but I knew she was flaking on me, but at least it's not like she dropped on a bomb on me (like you), I pretty much knew from the moment I got engaged that she wasn't coming. it also bothered me that she couldn't at least have contributed some way to my wedding day or done something, anything, to let me know she was thinkign of me that day. All I got was an email a few days before (not even on my actual wedding day) Some other friends/family members did the same thing and I found that disappointed. A written message, little gift, having prepared a toast and asking somebody else to say it, even just an email on the actual wedding day (I got a few emails the few days before but I don't think any the actual day, and I went to check at the resort specifically for that reason) any special gesture would have really been appreciated. oops, sorry to have made this all about me. Was just trying to say I know where you are coming from! This type of shit seems to happen a lot with weddings.

We had a similar problem when Charlie was very young and we were house training him. Everytime we would come inside he would check out his water and food bowl (I guess just to see if anything knew showed up while he was outside!) and he would drink a bit. So then he would need to pee again an hour later (he was only a few months and didn't have good bladder control) and it was this awful cycle of going out and drinking when he came in, like every hour! And he would also lick rain off the pavement and grass. I called the vet and she said he was likely just what they call a "compulsive drinker", not drinking because he's thirsty but just out of habbit. They said I could limit his water intake, not only when we were not home (we only gave him the smallest amount of water when gone to work) but also his total daily water intake. At the time I think he was like 12 pounds and they said that 1 cup of water a day was enough to keep him hydrated (I'm not 100% sure, this was 10 months ago, but I'm pretty sure it was 1 cup) Definitely keep him off water when he's alone to help get him house trained! Either give him none at all or just a really small amount (like 1/4 of a cup) so that he can wet his mouth a little. I have no other house training advice because although our puppy made very slow progress in the first month and a half, we took him on vacation with us to my parents cottage for a week (he spent most of the week outside, and when he was inside we were always around to let him out) and then we came home and he never had an accident again! It was so weird, it was just like flicking a switch and it was done! He was only 3.5 months at that time and we were leaving him alone for up to 6 hours at a time without accidents! Note: I'm not suggesting you don't need to see a vet, in fact based on your discription, I think maybe you should, but just letting you know we went through something similar and there were no problems and he got over it in a month or two (although in your case you say he's always been this way...)

I always use cover girl outlast for special occasions, but I have never used the double lipshine version, just the normal version (the color and topcoat come in two seperate sticks rather than one double-sided stick like this one). I LOVE the staying power (you have to use something oil based to take it off, I use just chapstick) my lipstick is always still perfect the next day! And if you keep re-applying the top coat it doesn't get too dry. My only problem is I always have trouble finding colors I like. I've bought like 7 different ones adn I'm not crazy about any of them! I usually end up mixing them up to try to get something lighter or darker. My sister and SIL had the costco brushes for my wedding (my photographer even got a nice picture!) but when I went to costco the following week to buy them they didn't have any I thought it was maybe just one of their one time items they only sell for a few weeks, but if you got them recently, I'll keep checking. I spent that much at the drugstore just to get 3 no-name brushes in a case that isn't nearly as nice

Congratulations Paul! I assume you have a video to share too?

Quote: Originally Posted by AmyInMI Also, I wanted to let everyone know that Sandra is no longer with the wedding department!!! Our wedding was one of her last and she accepted a different position at the resort. I did get the pleasure to meet Landy, who is also very nice, and Landy's assistant, although I can not remember her name. I have no doubt they will continue to do an amazing job with the weddings at Dreams Tulum. Please remember that these ladies not only work at the resort, they live there too!! They start their day at 8 or 9 am and do not go back to their rooms until at least 10 or 11pm!! They work so hard so please remember that if you do not get an immediate response to your emails. Welcome back Amy! Can't wait for your review and pictures! We haven't had any new ones in a few weeks. There is also Debla1 (married same day as Amy), Babycow, and Olive who recently got married who need to post photos and reviews for us! We have 5 brides getting married in June and then none till October! (no I don't know this all by heart, was just checking out the http://bestdestinationwedding.com/forum/t14762 thread) That's too bad about Sandra leaving but I can tell you girls to have complete confidence in Landy. I only dealt with Landy for my entire wedding (only saw Sandra a couple times that week) and she did a wonderful job, it was not at all obviously that she was only the "assistant" she seemed very much in charge.

you don't have to do your pics with your FH before the ceremony if you don't want to see him, you could just do the picks individual with your families, and with your wedding party, and alone, so that all you have left for after the ceremony are a few group shots and then you can focus on pics of the two of you together. This is what we did and it went really well. Also spreading out the photos a bit makes it less tiring.

I got married in the mayan riviera and I was allowed to use our 4 parents as witnesses. I was also concerned because I knew some places didn't allow family members, but obviously our area does (might not be the entire mayan riviera, but it would be the same for Playa Del Carmen area because that's what's marked on our certificate even though we got married in Tulum)

Quote: Originally Posted by coquetayloca I dont know if everyone knows about this forum yet... but its all about Dreams Resorts with some staff that answer questions... Dreams Resorts & Spas - Login (I see some familiar usernames... lol) Yeah, they have a wedding section too, but everyone on it seems to talk about Dreams Punta Cana, which is fine, because we can concentrate the Dreams Tulum talk here! Quote: Originally Posted by soontobeamrs Hi Girls (and guys?!.) ...I just spent an hour trying to go back through the archives to find out if anyone made a wedding website for their wedding in Tulum? If anyone did, would they mind sharing a little of the area content to help save a stressed-girl time? Thanks! My wedsite doesn't have any resort or tulum info on it, I put all that in my newsletter. You could steal some of the content of my newsletter to post on your website though! Do a search, there is a link in this thread to a document sharing website where you can go download my newsletter.

I got mine from Avon on sale for 1,49$, they were I think 150mlper tube. walmart also had some in the travel size section for 99cents, I think they were 75-100ml.

Quote: Originally Posted by KeLLi29 does anyone know of a good photographer that would fly down to dreams with me and stay 3 or 4 days? i saw alot of brides that have pictures of the days leading up to the wedding and i love that idea! let me know..thanks!! Pretty much any photographer will do it, you just need to pay their travel fees on top of their photography fee. So if there is a photographer in your area that you like, ask them. If you do a search for "photographer" or go to the vendor sub-forum, you will find a few who are members of this forum, and you will also find many other recommendations for good photographers. If you don't want to pay big money, it's probably best to look for a photographer that hasn't done a ton of destination weddings, as their prices will be much lower (i.e. they may have done a ton of regular weddings, but if they haven't done many DWs than they need to charge less until they build up their portfolio. Many will charge travel fees plus only a small photography fee. Or if a photographer has never done a DW they many only charge travel fees and that's it!) It's not really a subject specific to Dreams Tulum, so it's probably best to discuss elsewhere (sorry, don't mean to sound like the DT thread police, it's just that I can see this questions getting a zillion responses, and like I said, it's not really about Dreams Tulum so our whole thread would get sidetracked).

Quote: Originally Posted by soontobeamrs Quote: Originally Posted by dollbird View Post I just confirmed my wedding for Feb 18, 2009, and need to take a stab at the package options. I'm wondering how customizable they are...is Sandra flexible about adding/removing items from a package? Sunbride, didnt you say they were pretty flexible? Not like reducing the cost but at least adding for something when not utilizing something? Yes, there were flexible for me although it wasn't about very expensive stuff. I had the free package. They let me have the flower arrangements outlining the aisle for free seeing as my gazebo flower decorations were a lot smaller than the usual one (I had one small bunch on each side rather than the large arch across the top). Also they let me have a small 2 tier cake instead of just the basic one (afterwards I wished I had tried for a 3 tier!) I was working with Landy the whole time so obviously they are both flexible.

Welcome! hope you don't mind that I'm adding you to our http://bestdestinationwedding.com/forum/t14762

Quote: Originally Posted by amodew Originally Posted by amodew The legal requirement is actually 48 hours in Mexico. All of the resorts post different requirements because they essentially want the extra time to get things ready. I'm only arriving in Mexico on Dec 27th (saturday) and getting married on the 30th (tuesday). Sandra said this was ok. Oh, and I should note that we are having a legal ceremony and still no problem with being there less than 4 business days. Wow, I find this really surprising, I have never heard of anyone else being able to have a legal ceremony within only 2 business days (monday and tuesday). You are really lucky they are letting you do this!

Interesting comments, as they are so different from my photographer's position. She was very pushy for more time (but at least I knew this when I hired it so it was not a surprise). I do remember thinking at one point during the pre wedding discussions "I want to enjoy my wedding day, not organize the whole thing around taking pictures"! But in the end it worked out that I had lots of time to do my make-up and get dressed and stuff, and I am very happy with the large number and variety of photos I got so if I was to do it again I would definitely do the same schedule. I guess your personal preference for amount of photos and also the photographer's preference and experience should be the deciding factors. But again, my advice would be if you are going with a resort photographer, more time would be better since they are generally not as highly skilled

I loved Xel-Ha the first time I went, but didn't enjoy it all that much this time, so while I would recommend doing it, I wouldn't do it again We went to the Dos Ojos cenote and that was pretty cool - we didn't do any others though so I can't compare. I was told (by the concierge at our resort) that Dos Ojos and Hidden World are actually the same place, just entrances at opposite ends, and that the difference is that Dos Ojos is run by locals while Hidden World is run by an american company. It only cost us 30$ versus the 70 or 80$ entrance fee at Hidden World. Maybe somebody else can confirm that they are in fact the same. Anyways, it was definitely a really cool experience which I would recommend.

Oh yes, receiving 2000 photos was quite overwhelming! My photographer choose to give us almost all the photos she shot (she said she only had to delete a very small number due to blinking). She definitely could have given us only about 1000-1500 and I would have been just as happy (seeing as there were so many duplicates or very similar photos). But I didn't mind her doing it this way, as it allowed me to choose the ones I like best (i.e. I am better at judging in which photos our smiles are natural / the way I like). But yes, definitely overwhelming to get so many photos! All I meant was to say that we took photos in tons of different locations and poses, which we could not have done in much less time. Just want girls to realize that you can't expect your photographers to do an amazing job and give you tons of photos if you only give them a couple hours to shoot photos. In terms of sunset times, I guess speak to your photographer! Matt's preference for ceremony and photo time is obviously vastly different that my photographer's (likely due to experience and/or equipment) as she wanted us to do our ceremony as early as possible because the photo session would have to end about half an hour before sunset because she said after that it was too dark. And if you are going with a resort photographer who you don't usually communicate much with beforehand, then I would say go earlier (based on my expereince I would suggest 3 hours before sunset) seeing as it's unlikely they have the experience and equipment to take great photos when it gets dark.

Quote: Originally Posted by coquetayloca What the wedding guide says regarding groups larger than 20 is... "For 2008 weddings the maximum number of guests allowed to have dinner in the restaurants will be 20 people , for more than 20 people the dinner should take place at the Ballroom." I posted this a while ago, but I couldnt remember where I saw it... Its on page 15. Yeah, but they weren't really sticking by that rule, I guess partly because people has prior agreements for something else.

Quote: Originally Posted by rachelannmartin Does anyone have pictures of the Ballroom? Whats the decor? Is it you and a bunch of other weddings? I had no idea that if you had over 20 people, that they plopped you into the Ballroom GAH!! Somebody posted a bunch of information and pictures on the ballroom in this thread, probably about 2 weeks ago so if you do a search of the thread or browse back several pages you could probably find it. There are a few different rooms (2 or 3) so no I don't think they would put multiple weddings in the same room!

Quote: Originally Posted by Seahagamy I have just received an email from Sandra saying they no longer allow wedding receptions in the Seaside Grill. So now the only options are ballroom, beach or patio? I can see why they are doing this, a guest on trip advisor recently complained they could not get in El Patio or Seaside Grill all week because of weddings (they might be exaggerating, they might not have tried every night only a few nights, who knows). But at the same time they have to give the wedding groups more options! Many people don't want to be in the ballroom, they want to be somewhere open or near the beach. I think, probably, she means for private receptions or very large groups. I assume that if you go with a group of, say, 20 or something, that you would still be allowed the choice of any restaurant, because you are not taking up the whole restaurant.

Even though I knew that the beach was not going to be great, I was still disappointed, and found it to be a bit worse than most people on trip advisor say, because they all say that the area around the trampoline is fine, but in reality you have to pass a punch of rocks to even get to the trampoline (about halfway there), so it's only really around the trampoline that it is fine (after swimming over some rocks to get there). There are some amazing beaches in Tulum (was recently rated one of the top 10 beaches in the world in an article) but not at Dreams Tulum, the nice beach is at the ruins and some other smaller hotels in tulum (not all inclusives). If you are set on the Mayan Riviera, you will find that there are very very few resorts with great beaches, it's rocky almost everywhere. If you haven't seen this link, check it out. You can scroll up and down the coast. Loco Gringo: beach photo tour, aerial images

I was hoping to get beautiful sunset photos too, but my photographer said the sunset just wasn't very good that night. Maybe advanced editing can create a beautiful fake sunset, I don't know. My photographer said there was nothing there for her to work with.

That's a good point about the too bright sun. We had our ceremony at 3pm (this was the week before daylight savings time started) and did not have a problem. However when the groom's family was taking photos at 2pm they had problems with the sun. I don't know why it was fine at 3pm, I guess we were just lucky. I had our sunglasses on standby but I never once thought about putting them on during the ceremony, and we aren't squinting in any of the pictures. It was very sunny (even though looks cloudy in the first picture) with only the odd cloud in the sky. I'm not sure what you mean by the perfect sunset lighting, but here are some of my pictures as an idea (these were taken by a professional who came with me, although by the looks of it she didn't use the same type of equipment as Matt talks about above based on the pictures he posted with the moonlight) These were shot probably about 1 hour - 45 mins before scheduled sunset. You can see she used the flash (I think) to avoid shadows in faces These were shot probably about 30 - 45 mins before scheduled sunset This one was shot I think pretty much right at scheduled sunset (maybe 15 minutes before). We had stopped taking pictures for about 15 minutes to half an hour at this point, and then we went back to try to get just this one with a sunset (she said she would try playing around with editing since the sunset was not that good) I has posted this elsewhere, here was the schedule of my day. I think it worked out really well (allowed my photographer to take 2000 photos!). It would have worked equally well I think if we had started about a half hour to an hour later, but I didn't mind having extra time. If you have 2 photographers you could condense the time more, seeing as I had to leave time after my photos for the groom's photos, so I just hung out in the room for an hour 9am: hair appointments 11am: get dressed and do make-up 12pm: photos of me alone and with bridesmaids 1pm: photos of me with my family 2pm: photos of groom alone and with family 3pm: ceremony and toast 3:45pm – 4:30pm: group pictures 4:30pm – 6pm: pictures of bride and groom 6:30pm: dinner