Hi All,
I just returned from Cabo and our wedding on June 22 at RIU Palace was perfect! Here is a breakdown of the experience;
Arrival: RIU arranged our transport from the airport, we arrived and got right into our room which was on the small side but had a great view. Later that night we received a note from WP Daniella welcoming us and reminding us of things to do.
Blood Test/Photography: We were scheduled for our blood test the same day we were to meet with Mango Photography and Daniella to set the details. We went to the Dr's office at the scheduled time and he was nowhere to be found. After an hour of asking and calling around we found out the Dr was not coming in that day, he had expected us the day before. 2 hours later we returned to the Dr's office to find a woman ( hopefully a nurse, but probably a civilian) who drew a tiny bit of blood, it took about 15 minutes. We never received any report about the results...but they married us. The meeting with the photographer was short, he didn't bring any sample pics to look at but did help us decide to move our reception time from 8:45pm to 6:45pm, which was great since the wedding was at 6:00pm.
Meeting with WP: Daniella reprinted all the documents we had emailed each other and went over all of our choices and how the day would go. We had the wedding rehearsal on Saturday, it went really quickly and everybody got a general idea of what to do on the big day.
Wedding Day: The whole wedding party had our hair done at Suzanne Morel Salon in Cabo. The salon was great, but kind of hard to find. Usually they come to resort, but RIU doesn't allow it so we had a hard time getting directions but the concierge was very helpful and the salon was only 15 minutes or so, right behind Office Depot and Cabo Flowers. The ceremony was supposed to start at 6:00pm, but the officiant was late. The ceremony was right on the beach about 100ft from one of the pools, we had quite the audience watching the whole thing. The ceremony was short, but you have to stop half way through and sign and fingerprint a bunch of paperwork. After the ceremony we took pictures on the beach, they turned out great!
Reception: We chose the Mar de Cortes Steakhouse for the reception, it turned out really nice and there was only 1 other big party in the restaurant so it felt like we had it to ourselves. We ate, had cake and did our first dance and were out of there by 8:45pm. After dinner we went upstairs to La Ventana bar and did the garter and bouquet toss. Everything turned out better than I expected, I would highly recommend getting married at RIU Palace Cabo!