Kits55

Color Changing OOT Cups The idea came from many other brides on here. The cups are fron Pens Promotional, Pens Personalized, Inexpensive Pens Personalized, Cheap Imprinted Pens,Customized Pens and Custom Beer Bottle openers by Vendo Direct.com. The cups went in the OOT bags and I love them! I split the order with other brides on here; I was lucky that so many other brides wanted in! Programs I was so divided until 2 days before we left. At first I NEEDED to do them, then not, then yes, then no way (not enough time), then yes, I better make them. So I also had to overnight ship the fans from Oriental Trading. I bought the ribbon from Michael’s and Hobby Lobby. I already had the glue dots. Now, I will say that I would NOT recommend using the organza ribbon as I did. I wanted the satin ribbon but could not find it in the color I wanted. I thought the organza would be pretty and shimmer in the sun so I bought that. Well, the glue dots don’t stick to it! We had so many unraveling by the time we got to Mexico that I had to go through them TWICE to put more glue dots on them. I wasn’t sure how to word the program because I wanted it to be very simple, did not have a lot of room, and basically just took ideas from BDW. I believe I got the idea from SusanK although I can’t see the pictures from her planning anymore. In my email I have that thread as the one for my inspiration for the programs. If you recognize the formatting as yours please give yourself props!  I used one of my creations in Photoshop as the background and created the program itself in Microsoft Publisher so I could fill in the white box and play with the wording. OOT Bag Magnets These were made from Vistaprint. All I did was add the wording! Phew, one easy project! No picture available  Sand Ceremony Frame (kind of Disaster for us) We’re fairly certain that no one explained what was supposed to be done with the sand frame because they had us pour the sand into a random vase (how were we supposed to get that in the frame??) and DH had to pour his sand into the vase from a Ziploc bag! They put my pink sand in a smaller vase but not his. It was a disaster so now we’re going to have to buy more sand and because we got glue all over the inside of the frame we might have to order a new one of those too.  The resort said it was their first sand ceremony so maybe that’s also why it didn’t run smoothly. No picture available.  Hair Flower/Feather Bouquet Ceremony Set-up Lounge Furniture for Cocktail Hour

Boutonnières It took me many months to finally pick a bouquet. I knew I wanted a silk bouquet because I didn’t want any unpleasant surprises with a live bouquet, I wanted to show it off at our AHRs, and I just couldn’t make up my mind in general. I tossed the idea of having either a crystal bouquet or a feather bouquet but they were really expensive. I finally found a bouquet that I fell IN LOVE with. The feathers I had my vendor (Plumerias Wedding Flower Boutique) use in my bouquet I used for my boutonnieres. I purchased some beads from Beadaholique (I think). I purchased the wire from a local beading store. I made these at about 9:30 pm, only 6 hours before we left for the airport for Cancun. I was extremely rushed and stressed out so I didn’t get to wrap ribbon or green floral tape around the base like I kind of wanted to. Centerpieces Oh boy, I don’t even know where to start with this one. This is something else that took me many many months to finally decide. I decided on these centerpieces about 5 days before we left for Cancun. In that time I had to rush the trees/branches. That cost A BUNDLE. I bought the trees at Crystal WeddingTrees & Hanging Crystals for Centerpieces & Decor. I had to order the gold ones in order to have them ship out in time so we bought good quality silver leaf spray paint to make them silver. The crystals in the vase are acrylic “gems†from Hobby Lobby. I also bought some of the very small acrylic diamonds. The little pink lights are pink floralytes. The pink orchids are extra stems that I purchased from the woman who made my bouquet. The crystals were ordered online. The vases were the resorts. Parasols I posted about making these parasols in a different thread: http://bestdestinationwedding.com/forum/t3273-6 This will open up to the exact page where I posted my instructions on how I made mine. Return Address Labels Thank you to JMB0902 for the Address Labels. I love her idea and because my mother in law had a circular punch I knew these would be perfect. We are using them on our Thank You postcards. I also made some from JMB’s templates for the AHR that my in-laws were having us. Instead of the address it said “You’re Invited! May 2, 2009â€. I hope to use this same idea for my sister’s wedding to give it some flair.  Playing Card Template This is from MarieSam…another amazing bride on here! I LOVED her template so I just changed the colors and font and voila, a cool template for our card cases!

Luggage Tags I loved the thread that Becks started with pictures of her luggage tags. I had NO clue where to buy the luggage tag holders but I knew that I didn’t really want the self laminating ones. I am grateful for her suggestion with different pries listed. I will say that I purchased the same brand as Becks. I think I only used about 40 of the holders tops but within that 40 I had four that just ripped right down the side seam upon trying to get the card in. So it’s not the best quality out there but it was definitely good enough for mine. Many of guests used them which I thought was awesome. We used two different images, and sent one per person. I also loved using the fuchsia ribbon since fuchsia was one of our colors. The inserts that I used for the tags were a special size (I wanted them to fit exactly so they are a tiny bit bigger than business cards). I would have used Vistaprint but didn’t have the time to wait for shipping. Welcome Books OK, this idea totally goes to MelanieS. She started a thread with pictures and templates for a welcome book for her daughter’s wedding. It is an amazing idea and I even some guests crying while they read mine. Again, I basically took the templates and re-did everything to personalize it for my resort and guests. I did not do the Sudoku because I changed the formatting and it wouldn’t print out right. I just bought Sudoku books at the dollar store instead. My idea for Meet the Guests (I came up with it on my own! Yay!) was a little word find about each guest/couple. No one actually did theirs that I know of but I think most of our guests at least read through them so maybe they had an idea of the other guests’ interests, etc. I also used a funny Spanish phrase translation from Simistar. I loved it even if no one else did! Unfortunately we only had one left over and I have no idea where it is so there is no picture available. OOT Coolers and Inserts Gail and I ordered the coolers from Western Graphics Plus and we dealt with Tom Poyer. I thought the service was very good and they were pretty quick. He did warn me that the imprint area on the front of the cooler was going to be rather small. He had them send me a virtual proof and they had to play around with the image and words a little bit but it came out looking GREAT. If you’re interested in these coolers Gail might still have some for sale! They were $2.39 a piece plus tax, shipping, and set-up fee. The cooler inserts were also a special size because the size of the ID holder on top of the cooler was fairly long. I wanted them to be as big as possible so that people could read them. Again, this could have been made and ordered for free from Vistaprint. Instead, I had them printed at Kinko’s, not without issue although they did cut them for me for free because of the “issueâ€. Post Cards-Gracias I just ordered these from Vistaprint and then we’ll put our DIY return address labels on them. I specifically made the Gracias parasol because I really wanted a cool picture of us with it for our Thank Yous…I’m not entirely happy with the quality of the picture but my photog sent it to me as the “best†one so I’m really afraid to see what the rest of them look like. I actually had to crop the right side of the picture because our photog got his assistant in it. It’s weird because he’s usually pretty good about details like that. Post Cards-SMB I ordered these for Vistaprint way a head of time. I didn’t realize that the giant white borders on the sides would also print. I couldn’t just cut them off because of the writing on the back. The writing on the back would then have been cut off. I didn’t re-order them because some friends said they thought it would be OK…by the time I was mired down with all of the other projects I decided to just let it go. I cannot remember who’s idea this was, but of course I got it from someone here on the forum. Guestbook I got my guestbook as a combination of ideas from the thread Creative Guestbook Ideas. Originally I had a few different ideas. Luckily some friends pointed out some things that I hadn’t thought of. My first idea has been to buy a book with pictures from the Riviera Maya and have guests sign that. I loved that idea but was afraid to wait to buy that book in Mexico. I thought I might not be able to find the perfect book (it had to be exactly what I envisioned) and I didn’t want to be running around Mexico looking for a book. My second idea was then to create a giant puzzle. I was going to send a piece or two to each guest. Then they’d all bring their pieces and we would put it together at the reception. I thought it was pretty creative but then a friend pointed out to me that I couldn’t count on all of the guests to bring their pieces…then it wouldn’t have been complete. The idea that I ended up using worked out well for us. We had pictures from our Save the Date and Engagement photo sessions so that was good. I also used a couple of pictures of our resort to make it even more special. I thin this idea maybe came from the same thread as well. I had our guestbook made at My Publisher (MyPublisher | Create your own Photo Book with MyPublisher and receive a published hardcover book!). I used Photoshop to fade out all of the pictures. I then typed the words over the faded out picture. It took me FOREVER to figure out how to fade the pictures but once I did everything moved along fairly quickly. Townie Princess saved my guestbook. I couldn’t think of any good questions while I was creating it in Photoshop. I sent her an email and thank goodness for huge favors…she was sent me an email back very quickly so that I could keep on going. She said that she got the questions from some other websites but I’m grateful that she compiled them for me!

I will start off by saying that I think every single idea that I “came up with†for my wedding was a direct idea or a combination of different ideas from other people on this forum. I swear on my life that this forum SAVED my wedding! I always knew we were going to have a destination wedding but I had no idea that brides could do so many things, be so creative, and have such gorgeous, memorable weddings. Can I still call this a DIY thread even though I got the ideas and templates from others on the forum I hope so!  I will give kudos to as many projects as possible, although I may forget someone because my emails are all over the place and some ideas were bookmarked while others I sent to myself via links in random emails. I apologize ahead of time if I forgot to give someone credit. If you see one of your ideas PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE take credit for it!! You deserve it! I thank everyone for their amazing ideas and work! Now I want to make all of my friends have destination weddings so that I can try out other ideas and actually finish ALL of the projects that I wanted to for mine. I procrastinated so long that I ran out of time and had to scrap about 5 ideas.  Electronic Save the Date My DIY Save the Dates which weren’t really MY DIY. I have to give credit to SunshineKC08 for creating my entire STD basically. I picked the picture and was trying to get the wording formatted correctly but wasn’t able to do it. I also wanted it to open up in a full page and didn’t know how to do that. So basically, I had an idea but had no clue how to go about making it come about. Favorite Std Invitations My inspiration for these invites came directly from AmyH. I nearly copied her invites exactly as I couldn’t imagine wanting them any other way. I used the template that she recommended in her DIY invitation thread. My fiancé did all of the measuring and cutting and of the paper. I did the silk belly band (a HUGE PITA in case anyone is thinking of using silk) and all of the formatting. All of the black designs are embossed so they’re raised. I had to have the stamps custom made after I spent hours and hours on Photoshop isolating the images from scrapbook paper that I scanned in. The invites were my biggest and probably least pleasant project They didn’t come out exactly as I had hoped, not to mention there are many mistakes on them but I almost didn’t get them out in time so at least I finished them.  Pre-Travel Brochures and Resort Map Thank goodness for Morgan! I know I’m not the only on here that thinks this! I’m am grateful that she put her templates on the forum as they saved my brochures! It still took me a long time in Photoshop to get everything done because I didn’t format things ahead of time so I had to borrow a lot of the wording from Morgan and someone else on here. I apologize but I can’t find who else I borrowed wording from but I do still have the template!  If recognize it as your work give yourself a shout out for me!  I got the resort map from someone on Webshots. She was kind enough to let me add her as a friend and then I was able to get the map. It still wasn’t excellent resolution but I was able to get it to be passable. The map had to be it’s own page because otherwise it too small to see. more to follow...

Quote: Originally Posted by Dmitri_Markine 5mp is not too bad. Just a bit low by today's standards. I used to provide 6mp in 2004-2005. Most photo labs are able to upsize them. You only need 1200x1800pix to print a 4x6. Without digitally up-sizing, the biggest print you can do with your photos is 5x7... Just curious if that photographer was paid? I've heard of some who would do a free wedding,deliver small resolution files and then offer bigger files and other services for a higher fee. If you did not pay your photographer, I think you should be thankful you got some images at all. All the stories I hear about that are crazy! Good luck! Dmitri, you being a photog I have a question that I am going to PM about also regarding my photog. In my mind a high res photo would be capable of printing off 11 x14 or 8x10 and that is kind of what I expected. I did not know enough ahead of time to bargain for exact sizes unfortunately. To me a 5 x7 is way too small. He actually sent me some of the pictures ahead of time, as teasers back in May and I tried to get them printed online by Target. No matter what I did (I was printing 5 x 7s) it just kept saying Warning! Image resolution is low! I will be so annoyed if that comes up every single I want to print an image. Our photog has written a release form stating that we can print off any and all of the pictures he gave us as long as it's not for commercial use. We didn't pay our photog directly, excluding the $500 deposit to save the date. Which now he doesn't want to let us use. We DID however pay for him to stay at the resort for 5 night, his assistant to stay for 4 nights, their ground transportation and we paid for private transfers so it was only them and they didn't have to make stops at other resorts along the way, and their airfare. We paid extra for the assistant's flight to get her a flight that was direct and our photog wanted to leave as early as possible and be on the same flight from Dallas so that's what we did. I think that we have been very accommodating (he asked for us to pay him for an extra night). We did also get the free engagement photo session but because we had already done ours I used it for a BD session instead. The crux of our agreement was that he would shoot Friday night, just a few, very casual, Saturday from getting ready to the end of the reception, and a Sunday morning TTD session. In addition we would get high res CDs of the images. So, I guess to answer your question, he did not get directly paid but he trying to get us to buy a copy of our album for him.

I love your pictures! They make me nostalgic. It looks like you guys had an awesome time! I love reading about other brides' experiences at SMB. Thank you for sharing the pics! We had the issue of wiping sand off our feet too but my DH had the great idea (our cocktail hour was where yoga is every morning) of just washing out feet off at the "feet showers" and use those towels. So that's what we did! There is a picture of me holding up my dress and my A cheek is showing a little bit! I would have appreciated someone telling me to lower the skirt! lol

Quote: Originally Posted by Morgan that is on the small side. You can't go much bigger than 11x14 without using something to up the resolution. Might want to see if he saves your files so you could get a large print in the future. You can also print lower res on canvas than a regular print. His intention might be that you can only print 8x10s with your disc and you need to order larger from him. but, I'd check with him. I'm just guessing. Hopefully he can remove the effect on all of your images. I wouldn't be happy with black water. I wanted my skies as blue as they really were on our wedding day. I don't care for the washed out look or the ultra saturated look. I don't think it's too much to ask for processing similar to the style on his website and at least one picture from the main events (if he took them). Photographers will have something in their contract usually to protect them if a shot is missed. That way people can't ask for money back if they didn't get a picture of a certain aunt, etc. And sometimes something is just missed. But if he did take the picture and maybe it just wasn't perfect you probably still want it. The sparklers sound like a prime photo opportunity & people often just do stuff like that for the cool pictures. haha, the sparklers were just that! A prime photo opp and that's exactly why I did it!! I wanted to use the 4 minute sparklers and have our guests stand around us during our first dance but that was not possible without paying an arm and a leg to get them to Mexico. My WC was able to find pretty decent sparklers at the last minute which was awesome so we used them for our entrance into the reception. The package photog was ALSO there and did not give us any of the sparkler pictures otherwise I wouldn't mind as much about the missing sparkler pics...we did totally just use them for awesome pictures

Morgan and Dmitri: the res on most photos are around 2300 x 2230 or so. It still seems a bit on the small side but I guess we could always ask him later if we wanted to get a really large print. Thanks for the resolution info!

Thanks Morgan! I also like the washed out vintagy look for SOME pictures but even DH thinks the ones of the resort being washed out is too much. Every single one of the resort looks like that. It actually almost looks like a negative because the water looks black in all of the pictures. I will definitely ask him about getting at least one picture from each main event. That would make me happier even if I had to do some Photoshopping myself to make them "book" ready for our parents.

I tried to post the other day but my internet connection from Africa is really faulty sometimes. I just had to scrap the whole thing. We also experienced some AC issues in our room. The service guy didn't believe us but came nonetheless. Then he realized that we were right. He fixed it and it just broke again the next day. DH found out what was wrong and used a paperclip to fix the issue. I was pretty miserable our last night there but I was also sick (it wasn't Swine Flu) so that could have contributed to that. I'm glad you loved the Spa especially since you love spas. I had never been to one before so I thought the SMB spa was amazing...glad to know it's not just me! Simi: I didn't realize that you didn't get the rose petals, bubble bath, and champagne. Sad! New York: Did they give you guys late check-out? We tried to get it because we had a later flight but they would only extend it to 1 pm! We were unhappy about that, about the fact that I asked for the golf cart (we were in building 17) and never got it so I had to carry all of my stuff and the wedding preparations over to the other side to get ready in my mom's room (less than ideal), and I asked about getting DH a room on the night before our wedding but was also turned down on that too. I'm so glad that you had such a great experience, I am dying to see your pictures!!

My photog is actually a wedding photographer and has been for many years. He did my boudoir photos as part of our trade but my boudoir photos were only his second time doing boudoir. Soooo, he's a wedding photographer. DH and I looked at his wedding pictures (1,000s of them) before we booked with him so I was expecting what his past work looks like based upon the images that we saw. I will definitely be contacting him about the missing images but it's hard when I live half way around the world now. The internet can be very unreliable and we have no home phone except for Skype. He tried to be artistic but in doing so he has changed and washed out almost all color from all of the resort photos and many of the ceremony photos. I told him up front that we loved his use of light and the brilliant colors in his OTHER outdoor wedding pictures so I know what he's capable of doing. I understand about the resolution now so thanks for the clarification that. It just makes a difference because when I upload pictures to be made into postcards, etc it always says my resolution is too low. I ordered them b/c my photog said they were fine for a 4x6 but sure enough they came out grainy and rather blurry. It's not necessarily the sheer number of photos that I did or did not receive but when he shot for three days I would have expected more than that. I understand that he doesn't want to give us photos that make him look like a poor photographer. But in trying to make photo albums for our parents and not having enough appropriate images to choose from (he gave a lot of TTD pics that are NOT appropriate for our friends and family's eyes) is frustrating. And if I'm going to be paying more than $1,500 for our album I want to make sure that there are pictures in there that represent the entire experience and not just part of that time. I was really hoping to be able to tell a story with our pictures. I have been told before about how photogs just trash the photos with weird faces, etc but those are the ones I tend to treasure the most (depending on how bad it really is). I actually prefer having multiple pictures of the same shot because it gives more variety to choose from and I dabble in Photoshop myself and would prefer to have an array of photos to choose from. Sunbride, I like how your photog gave you the same picture with different effects (B&W, sepia, etc) and I guess that is also at the heart of my problem. There are ones that I really love the image but HATE what he did to it. If I had the images multiple ways then I'd be much happier. Thanks for the input! Thank you to whoever it was that suggested that I ask to see the rest of the pics and ask how many they took in total. I think I will do that. Thanks for the support everyone.

To make a long story short; my husband and I made a trade with our photog and his assistant to shoot our Friday night welcome dinner, Saturday for the wedding, and Sunday morning for the TTD. Out of all of the pictures they took the entire time (including the ones they took of the resort, etc when they had free time) we only received 460 photos!! Plus, in our trade it was agreed upon that we would get HIGH res CDs, not low res. Checking on the resolution of our photos they are only about 1.78 MB!! I hate about 40% of the photos COMPLETELY, like about 30%, and love about 30%. I am SOOO disappointed. There were two of them shooting almost continuously yet we only received 460 photos and I hate almost half of them! There are many many photos that I SAW him taking that we did not receive! i.e. rings together, sparkler tunnel, small group photos, mother/son dance, etc. Is this normal? If this is normal please tell me so I can cool down. It doesn't seem normal to me, especially for shooting for 14+ hours (excluding the ones they took while walking around the resort). In all honesty I feel that our photog was shooting more for his artistic purposes than shooting our wedding!! There aren't that many of our entering, during the ceremony, or walking out. Just a lot of him trying to be artistic, which he really is. For those of you that ordered CDs, how many pictures do your CDs have on them?

We paid our photog and his assistant to come to Mexico with us. Part of the agreement was that they would shoot the welcome dinner Friday night (about 3 hours), Saturday (8 hours), and Sunday's TTD session (I think it was 2-3 hours).

so amazing!! I love the one when you guys are looking at each other in the water with just your eyes showing! I LOVE that you brought your bouquet in the pool with you! Oh how I wish I would have done that! I also wish we would have utilized the pool instead of driving an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes each way. Fantastic TTD pics!

wow you totally rocked it!! You were respectful, firm, confident, held it together, and a total rock star!! You will be my new assertiveness hero! haha! I'm sure she'll have an adjustment period after she has been so mean and rude to you for so long. You go girl!

We had a similar problem actually. I very very much disliked the company that we used to help us coordinate our wedding and travel but that is beside the point. Basically we had to do was check on prices for people to stay separately in rooms versus sharing rooms with others. Of course that is much much harder to do if you only have couples coming. FI's brother was going to stay in the same room as his parents, we convinced them to pay the little bit extra it cost to let his bro have his own room. Then my friend and cousins were going to stay together. I had to also convince them to split up. If we had needed to we would have helped pay the difference but as it was we did not have to do that, thank goodness. Sorry I can't be of more help. I hate that some people all of sudden now aren't coming for the whole week. We went through plenty of hassle with people trying to stay only two nights. I seriously thought about dis-inviting those people. A little bit of bitterness may still remain.

I used an electronic STD but it was not tied into any websites or paper ones. I just did it to 1) save money, 2) I was running out of time, 3) I wanted to use fuchsia font over a black and white picture of us. I will try to email you what ours looked like if I can. Beware it will open as a full page in Microsoft Powerpoint.

when DH is trying to get my goat he says that I'm "hurtin' for a squirtin'"!

I think I will watch your slideshow five times a day too! haha totally j/k!! I LOVE Elizabeth Medina's work and she was my top choice but then FI nixed her off the list. I think if he saw your pictures he would totally want her too. He said that the pictures I showed him were washed out of color and we wanted a photog that would utilize the brilliance of Mexico. I think she does just that. I LOVE your colors and the BM dresses especially! You were such a beautiful bride!

I can't wait to see the pictures from the ceremony and reception. What a difference between the allowances that were made for your wedding vs mine. I guess with some things I maybe should have pushed harder it sounds like. I was in building 17, and also asked for the gold cart so I wouldn't have to traipse across the resort. Cecilia said she would ask, I asked her again, and nothing happened. I finally had to carry EVERYTHING to my mom and dad's room and get ready there. They were in building 24 I think. We definitely didn't get all of World Cafe to ourselves even we also had our reception in the Red Room. We didn't get to have our beach bonfire due to high winds BUT it sounds like you got WAY more than what was described to us. And you got to substitute in your wedding package, no way! I also had Alicia, my hair wasn't "perfect" but close enough to not care at the time. I also loved the spa. We used the couples massage and upgrade to make it be an hour and a half, woooonderful! Thank you for the review...it totally refreshes my memory!! I am motivated now to get my own review written and posted! I am glad to hear that you also liked Mike Cantarelli...I LOVE our video

I was worried about the same thing as we had people ranging in age from 24-62. I knew that most of the guests would probably not be dancing so instead of stressing myself out we only did the traditional dances. After that we didn't have the music because we would have incurred a double charge (long story) So basically we just did a later dinner and people talked at their tables, we walked around (oh yeah, we only about 20 guests total), had cake and then people went to bed. I was planning on people going out for drinks after but we were all exhausted so it turned out OK. Like the other brides say...just have fun and do whatever you want to do!

it looks amazing on you! It fits like a glove!

On one hand I see how some brides say it's all about the love and that you and FI are getting married but things didn't go exactly as planned and I would definitely not say that my wedding was still "perfect" as so many girls do. Of course I cared the most about FI and I getting married BUT if I could tally up the hours, thought, blood, sweat, tears, and money that I put into the planning of the wedding I would way past broke! The things that are personal also matter when you get married. When you can make sure that you write a professional email or call her and let her know that 1) you will ship the flowers back at her expense, 2) she will be paying for your new flowers however you are able to get them, 3) that if she does not make it right you will be contacting the BBB, FTC and writing reviews online (let her know about the forum), and 4) that every unhappy customer tells 10 other people on average while a happy customer tells only 3!

DreamsTulumBride: I love your dress and you're so lucky that you had Elizabeth Medina shoot your wedding and TTD. The hair flipping picture is so sexy!

Quote: Originally Posted by mlynnea I need some help from some brides that had sunset ceremony's. I want to have my ceremony at sunset, but still allow time for pictures before it gets too dark. Anyone have any advice on what time to start the ceremony? and how much time I should allot for pictures afterwards? Sunset for my date is supposedly at 5:51pm. I wanted to have a sunset ceremony but in the end we ended up having a 4:30ish ceremony (I was late!) and sunset was 7:10 pm the night we got married. Like everyone else says the sun does sink very quickly because of the location of the resort relative to the sun. We had a legal ceremony that lasted about 25 minutes I'd say, then the "receiving line" after we walked down the aisle. Then we did our first dance, father daughter, and mother son before two group dances on the beach. (there was no where to have a dance inside and it was too windy for a dinner on the beach). Then we were served drinks on the beach, did group pictures, had our cocktail hour, and then went into dinner right as it was getting pretty dark. We did waste a lot of time with group pictures because I was completely disorganized and we did not take any before the ceremony. I would say if you're not doing any pictures before the ceremony allow about 45 minutes for group pictures post ceremony (if it's well organized). Definitely begin a list now with pictures that are important to you and then you can break that down into how to organize the group shots. If you have anymore questions feel free to ask...I can't think straight right now but I hope I helped, at least a little! Quote: Originally Posted by newyork6156 Oh this is good to know about the videographer! Thanks Kits55. No problem It's easy for me to recommend him because I really love our video! Quote: Originally Posted by inspiredfyre Thanks kits55 for your information about the photographer at SMB! I just booked for Nov 10, and I was going to just use their photog! Seeing that I really HATE his work, I will happily get an outside photog. Do you know how much the resort charges for an outside photographer, and more importantly, who loved their photog, and has contact info!?!?! Has anyone used Del Sol at this resort? Lol, I love this forum, it's so helpful! I have no one but me and my FI going, and feel so helpless! I'm stressing out over nothing, but pictures are going to be insanely important to us, as this is all we'll have to show our families and friends!! Any advice from a previous SMB bride would be so helpful in this area. Bringing a phtgr from the states is not something I want to do, i'd rather use someone local if at all possible! ALSO, lol, if anyone can tell me if it's worth getting hair/makeup done at the resort, I'd greatly appreciate it! happy planning SMB brides! The resort charges $100 for any and all outside vendors (that includes flowers, cake, videographer, etc). I didn't have to pay that because instead we paid for their entire stay. lol BUT also didn't tell them that two of our guests were our photographers. I can't say whether I loved mine or not and that is irrelevant considering you're looking for a local. I think that the guy who did my video (Miguel Cantarelli) also has photographers that work him. He has some reviews on here already so you can get a good idea of what his work is like. I had Alicia do my hair and make-up for a trial (i used the hair and make-up that is included in the package). I rarely wear make-up on a daily basis so whenever I have make-up on I think I look lovely. haha At any rate there are a few things that I had to change for the day of our wedding. The first day she put powder and foundation? on my decollete and front of my shoulders as well as on my face. I hate that so I told her not to do that on our wedding day. For the trial she made my hair pouf really gigantic, almost beehive-ish I thought so I told her to make it skinnier and smaller for our wedding. Looking back now I wish I would have had an even smaller pouf but oh well. I was very specific on how I wanted my hair curled so I showed her how I wanted it done during the trial run. I would do like Simistar suggested and do learn how to do your own hair and make-up and know HOW you want it done then use the package hair and make-up for a trial. I would not trust their "creativity" to just go at on my wedding day. : ) this is the best example I have right now of my hair and make-up (excuse the squinting, it was really bright for a while! If I can help any more just let me know! Unfortunately the daily emails are not being sent to me anymore even though my subscription says daily. It will be faster if you PM me with any questions.