SunBride

Great review, very detailed! Thanks so much for posting. Perhaps one of the mods could add the picture links that are at the top of this page to the first page so that people don't miss them. I find it really crappy that you met the photographer but then they sent you another one and didn't listen to the request for them to go to your room first (especially if you asked 3 times!) From everything I've heard brides say, they seem very unreliable. But at least you are mostly happy with your pics.

Quote: Originally Posted by nscaper I too am in a predicament about whether to do the AHR or not. We recently (April 21st, 2009) got married in Jamaica. We originally said no to AHR because we wanted to put that money towards wedding things and have the best wedding down there we could since our guests (26 people) travelled so far. We thought about doing a backyard BBQ but even that was a maybe. However, while the wedding (ceremony) was fantastic, the reception and rest of day were not my "dream" wedding (I haven't done a review yet, but I am working on it). We skimped on things down there to save money that made me unhappy after the time. I was left wanting more. So upon arriving back home, DH said we can do whatever I want since he knew I wasn't 100% happy with the reception in Jamaica, I think he was thinking about just a backyard BBQ relatively soon (we even started thinking about menu - Jamaican jerk chicken, appleton rum and rum cake!), but the more I think about guest list, the more I realize my backyard is too small for what I picture! And I don't know if I could wear my dress again in the backyard! (although I really want to wear it again!) So now I'm thinking about going bigger, and more formal. But that comes with a bigger pricetag, which defeats the whole purpose of doing things cheaper down south! I'm torn. I think you can still wear your dress if it's a backyard thing. That's what I did. We warned the guests that dress was casual but I also wrote on the website "feel free to dress up if you'd like to, the wedding party will be!" If your backyard is too small, can you do it at your parents' or in-laws? If not how about some other outdoor location (a park or something). I would warn you against getting too hyped up about your reception and having it make-up for your less than amazing wedding reception. In my experience, the AHR wasn't as fabulous as expected because I just couldn't get into the spirit that night (even though I had been so so looking forward to it). It just wasn't the same as the wedding day at all, not even close (not that I expected it to be, but I did expect it to feel special and I thought I was going to have an amazing time, but I didn't. I had fun, but just not as much as expected). If you haven't read my AHR review yet, I suggest you do, I include a lot of advice about the dilemnas you're having (although obviously you might not feel the same way, but you are obviously looking for advice so check it out). http://bestdestinationwedding.com/forum/t27927 I just added it in my siggy too (don't know why I hadn't done that before) so that it can help out as many ladies as possible.

In general, the beaches in the Mayan Riviera are not the best. Tulum has great beaches, although there are no all inclusives there (Dreams Tulum is near Tulum, Bahia Principe Tulum is even farther). Maroma Beach is suppose to be amazing, one of the resorts there is Secrets Maroma which is adults only. It's one of the resorts I'd LOVE to visit. When I was searching for a wedding resort I was looking for a great beach but most of the resorts I was looking at did not have great beaches, i.e. Dreams Tulum, Bahia Principe Coba/Tulum/Akumal/, Grand Palladium Riviera/Colonial/Kantenah, Paradisus Rivera, Barcelo Maya Tropical/caribe/colonial/palace, Grand Occidental Xcaret, El Dorado Seaside/royale. All the beaches were rocky (to varying degrees). I suggest you check out this aerial map, it will give you a very good idea of what the beaches are like (the darker spots in the ocean is the rocky/coral part) Riviera Maya Map: Aerial photos, road map, Mexico I agree with the others that for an amazing beach, go to Puna Cana, Dominican Republic.

Quote: Originally Posted by Heather Huggins Hello all you lovely brides, I just wanted to say thank you for your support it literally lifted my spirits so much. The article that was written about my fiancee and I was in hopes that others would see that they weren't alone. We figured there must be a ton of other couples, families and friends in the same predicament and maybe people could help eachother. As it turns out there are more cynics out there than I thought. However, a wedding must go on right? Jamie and I received an offer from a local golf and country club who wanted to help us out and throw our wedding, since some of our friends including some of our bridal parties had to use their vacations, and the fact that we didn't book our wedding through the resort so we couldn't just go somewhere else, we decided it was a great idea. We are looking at a May 20th wedding date and we are so excited! Sometimes even when the cards aren't in your favour, things turn out the way they were meant to be. Well now I'm really happy I posted this! I'm also curious to know which golf course was generous enough to offer to host your wedding for free. That's really amazing.

Quote: Originally Posted by Dreams425 Hi girls!!! I'm BAACK! Today is my first day back in the office so things are a little crazy but I wanted to let you know I'm here and swine flu free along with all of our other guests! The wedding was amazing. I'm aiming to write my review tonight, pending my internet working at home my new hubby said he was having some trouble with it this morning. As long as its working this evening my review will be posted I can't believe its over. I'm so sorry for the girls who have to move/postpone their trips and Beth I hope you and all of your guests have an amazing time. Okay, I don't get how I missed this message! Welcome back. Going over to the review section now to see if you posted it yet.

Beth I've missed your wedding day by just a few minutes but I hope it was wonderful!

Just saw this article and I'm wondering if it's one of our brides from BDW Flu spoils wedding getaway

beach bag and vases are gone. TTD and Sundress are likely gone (I have a buyer and a back-up). Everything else is still available.

Since I am having good luck selling my other items, I thought I'd try this one. I have a sexy little black halter dress for sale. The only reason I'm selling it is that I have 2 short black dresses and not nearly enough occassions to wear them to justify owning both. My husband will be disappointed as he thinks it's sexy (it's kinda low cut!). Has only been worn once Size 7 (I usually wear a 9 pants, small or medium tops, and 7 or sometimes 9 dress) The material is partly chiffon and partly some sort of imitation silk. Asking 25$. Am willing to ship for free if you want to risk buying without trying in on For ladies in Ottawa, you can come try it on with no pressure to buy And here is the only picture I have of myself wearing it, during our wedding trip.

Quote: Originally Posted by Chanti I remember reading somewhere in this thread that if you upgrade your room to OceanFront or better, you have access to some sort of lounge? Does anyone know what I'm talking about or did I dream I read this? We have 3 hours between cocktail party and the start of dinner, so we're looking to have a Wii Mario Kart party. If indeed this lounge exists I'd like to see about booking it so that we can play this video game as a team against our guests while we wait. Pretty cheesey, but our first date after meeting on eHarmony was to meet online and play Mario Kart together :-) Sorry, I have no idea what you are talking about. Although there is one really big suite, you can see it in this picture (right above the towel hut). You can see it has a really big patio. I'm thinking maybe that's what you are talking about I assume it must be something like a penthouse suite or something. Probably has a bigger living room which you could use for your video games and you could have guests hanging outside on your patio. The room probably costs a fortune but maybe you could get it just for your wedding day.

Beth - any update on how many of your guests have shown up? I was just searching your recent posts and I saw you mentioned your best friend has arrived (YAY!!!) and that some other guests were suppose to still come. I know your wedding is tomorrow. I hope some of the important people (parents/siblings) can make it. We all have our fingers crossed for you. Make sure to report back ASAP after and tell us how it went and pictures.

I saw that resort on my way to Couples Sans Souci in January and it looked beautiful. Plus I know somebody who went there, normally he goes to Sandals (so he is used to high end resorts) and he said Iberostar Rose Hall Suites was awesome.

Quote: Originally Posted by shorty does anyone know of a good photographer in the cancun area this probably isn't the best place to ask such a question. Check out the mayan riviera sub-forum, there is lots of talk about photographers (and other vendors) there. Look over a few pages worth of the most recent threads and you should find lost. Also you can do a search of that sub-forum for "photographer". There are many many brides who have asked the exact same question as you.

wow, 600 times. I thought I was bad, I've probably watched mine like 30 times.

Quote: Originally Posted by ERnurse Hey Girls, So my fiance and I finally decided that we will hire a DJ to play the music during the reception because we didn't want to deal with controling the music ourselves. I e-mailed Nataliya to let her know that we hired an outside DJ for our event and she told me that they will charge us $150 for that!! I have never heard of that... that fee is not in the wedding guide nor has it ever been mentioned by another bride! I think that fee is rediculous, the guy will only be there for 4 hrs, i understand making us purchase a 1/2 day pass for 55 bucks... but 150 dollars!!! It seems lately they are just adding hidden charges. Now we booked the guy and sent him a non-refund deposit, but had i known i had to pay 150 extra I would have just went with the sound system. It's just very crazy and frustrating that these fees spring up out of nowhere! I liked dreams tulum because they didn't have crazy weird fees for all this stuff like other resorts but now I see i was wrong! Sorry just had to vent.... but do you think I should fight them on it or is this a legit fee? wow, I agree that is unfair given it's a new fee and the first time the charge for outside vendors. If they are going to be making major changes like this, they need to release a new wedding guide (which they probably will soon, last year I think it came out in June). I would definitly put up a right about this. At least 150$ isn't that bad, but still it's unfair to spring this on you out of the blue. Tons of other brides on here have used outside DJs very recently without being charged and I'm sure other future brides have one booked too.

Thanks for all the compliments! I got the bridesmaid's necklaces at Xcetera is Canada, it's a really cheap jewelry store (sells costume jewelry, not real stuff, like everything under 15$ type of store). I thought they were a great find even if they won't last forever. I got mine (similar but slightly different.) at Stitches, which is a cheap clothing store in Canada. It was also 10$. Perhaps some of the stores around you will have some this summer. Keep an eye out at all places that sell cheap jewelry (unless that is you want something better quality).

Quote: Originally Posted by sgbrown Well, I'm sad to announce that it looks like our wedding is now postponed. We will be heading to Jamaica instead at the end of May. SIGH. Over a year's hard work in planning my dream wedding at Dreams Tulum and it's not going to happen. We've been scrambling to find a new resort. I think we have one picked out but we're just making sure that the price is comparable. We have a non-refundable honeymoon booked in Europe starting on May 11th so we're actually going to go on our honeymoon BEFORE our wedding... funny, I know, but what can you do? My heart goes out to any of the other DT brides who are affected by the swine flu. It really doesn't seem fair. Thanks for everyone's advice over the last year. It was so helpful and I just know that there's no way I'm going to find another community of women on this forum that were as helpful as you guys. I'm so so sorry. I know you have spent a LOT of time planning your wedding. What resort are you going to in Jamaica? It seems especially crazy for the Dreams Tulum brides to be going through this, considering what happened with the temporary resort closure last fall (see the links at the bottom of page 1 for any new brides wondering what the heck I'm talking about).

Hi ladies, I will PM the two ladies above. For anyone else who is interested, it's probably best to PM me to make sure I see your message pronto and to make sure I don't promise the items to somebody else.

Remember when our resort closed and some people got transferred to another resort just a few days before their wedding? They thought their wedding was ruined. But everything ended up okay, sure, it was very different than what they had spent months planning, but it was still amazing. I know it will be the same for you, whatever you decide.

I posted this in the other thread but wanted to post here too in case you don't see it. I hope at least a few important people can make it. If not, perhaps you can get married anyways, just the two of you, and then have an amazing celebration back home with family and friends. Or you could invite them all for a Renewal of Vows next year for your one year anniversary. Or you could reschedule the whole wedding. I know all those options probably sound like the worst thing in the world right now. Just try to stay positive. As hard as it is to believe, it could be worst. There is a bright side to everything, you just may have to look really hard to see it.

Quote: Originally Posted by Blkatz we are down here now, and we are thinking about bagging it. All of our guests have canceled I hope you are exaggerating when you say ALL (fingers crossed for you). I hope at least a few important people can make it. If not, perhaps you can get married anyways, just the two of you, and then have an amazing celebration back home with family and friends. Or you could invite them all for a Renewal of Vows next year for your one year anniversary. Or you could reschedule the whole wedding. I know all those options probably sound like the worst thing in the world right now. Just try to stay positive. As hard as it is to believe, it could be worst. There is a bright side to everything, you just may have to look really hard to see it.

Honestly, maybe I am sounding naive and insensitive but if it was me I would put a mask on for the flight and I'd be there in a second! I mean really, it's a flu, not a nuclear attack. I'm sure way less than 1% of the population will end up contracting it. And 99% of those who contract it will probably just be sick for a few days and then be fine. It would not stop me from attending somebody else's wedding. I think only people with weak immune systems (children, seniors, anyone who already has pre-existing medical conditions) should be concerned. Perhaps I am being naive but that is my opinion.

Quote: Originally Posted by Blkatz thanks ladies-I just posted another link that most of our guests have canceled their plans to come down. this is probably the worst feeling I'm so so SO sorry to hear this. You must be so upset. Just try to focus on the positive. At least you will be marrying the love of your life in paradise. It could be worse. Something awful could have happened to a family member or something like that. Do the best you can to stay positive.

Quote: Originally Posted by Blkatz just an FYI-we are here right now. As far as I can tell the resort is normal. It is quiet but they also said that they were expecting a ton of people later in the week Have a WONDERFUL wedding! Take lots of mental notes for your review

Okay, I just had to report back to say that yes, I did just watch it AGAIN, and still, after all these times, it gives me shivers and brings a tear to my eye. I can't explain how it makes me feel to hear my husband say his vows (not mine as I'm not so fond of the sound of my voice!) I spent way more money on my photos and I absolutely love them, but looking at them doesn't make me feel the way watching the video does. It's like I'm reliving the moment.