suzannepdc

Old bride lurking here! We got married at AB on 4/27/2010 and then went to the El Dorado Royale for our honeymoon. We stayed for 6 nights in the casitas with our own pool, which is the second highest room class (other than the Presidential Suite) and it was not that expensive. I think it was about $4700 for both of us (we paid for AB and EDR all together, so I cannot remember the exact breakdown). $3300/person seems high - especially since it's the same week that we were there last year - I would honestly just go on the EDR's website and see what the costs would be and then go to your TA and see if they can match it (assuming it's lower). Â

Just checking in - too many questions to try to answer! We did the same thing re: champagne at Azul Beach - my sister is awesome and frugal and was like, well, I could pay to order a bottle of champange or I could just order 6 separate glasses for free - so we had that and some fruit when I was getting ready. RE: the veil. I actually rolled on into David's Bridal about a week before we left and got the veil - I just wanted an ivory, chapel length veil with a small finished edge (and refused to pay $250+ for it). You normally buy off the rack if they are in stock - so that was something I left for the very end.

Quote: Originally Posted by dirtymartini It was me who asked. I was wondering, because now Kiara is telling me that they will charge me extra for using the arch vs. the gazebo. Which had NEVER been mentioned to me before. Anyone else run into this? For just the location? No, and that's pretty ridiculous. We did have to pay for the fabric that they use to decorate. We used a purple/eggplant and it was $75 for each so $150. Seems a little crazy for two pieces of fabric, but I think that they have to rent it too, so there's not much you can do. I think the white is cheaper for some reason, but that's all we paid for on that since we did not want the flowers they sometimes put on it (they were expensive and we didn't really think they added anything).

Quote: Originally Posted by amybermuda Everything was awesome. We had the minister wedding - it was the woman with long dark hair. Her voice was so soothing and her english was excellent. We got married by the same person! I thought she was fantastic - read our ceremony that we wrote - added a little in (DH gave her permission to do so) and it was perfect and fit with the rest of our ceremony.

RE: AB ceremony locations I cannot remember who asked, but I agree with Amy B. about the gazebo - it's really small and I think it would be hard for guests to see what is going on - even if it's the bride and groom. We got married the same place that Amy did - it was a bit windy, but it's much more open.

Amy! SO excited you are back!! Like Wendy, I have been waiting for you to return! DH was concerned that you were getting rained on over the weekend. SO happy that you had a beautiful day! I am utterly speechless about that other girl!! First of all, you call off your wedding and your family still goes on vacation to the SAME place where you were supposed to be married?! And whoever was consoling her needs to be slapped! Who lets their friend, stand there and watch while hysterically crying? That's when you take her to the bar or back to the room or something to distract her - not let her watch! Did you see her again? The place is small, so it seemed like we knew most of the other guests in the place. LOVE the pics!

Quote: Originally Posted by taylorwd Wooohoooo one month!!!!!!! My due date came and went and I had to ask about making the final payment. They didn't come to me. But then because of the big fiasco with the reception location, along with working out some other details, we didn't end up paying until about 10 days prior. They were very easy going about it. Same here. We had a big issue with the reception location - so I told my TA that I was not paying them yet. Then, once we got it all figured out, I emailed Tiffany about how to make the final payment. She emailed me 2-3 weeks later and phrased it like I hadn't done anything to pay, which was not what happened. But I think we only paid a few weeks prior.

Quote: Originally Posted by MaggieandJay OK Ladies, I got my budget and things are looking good. My grandparents really want us to move the wedding from 2012 to 2011 and it looks like I may be able to swing it budget wise on my end so now I am waiting on my FI family to be cool with it. Then I can talk to the WC at Azul Sensatori and see what dates in May of 2011 are open. YIKES! I am an event planner so it's not like I can't get everything I was planning to do over 2 years done in 1 rightLOL Question for you ladies; I have had 2 WC's contact me from AS Tiffany Borowsky and Cécile Alix. Did anyone have good experiences with one or both? Thanks ladies! I would be Lost without you guys! I didn't have any problems with Tiffany until the very end of the process when we were about to pay the balance. I am still not sure if it was her or the resort who caused the problem, but I also don't think she pays enough attention to detail sometimes. I had been to the resort on a site visit and was pretty laid back about what I wanted, so working with her was easy since I just sent over my sheet. But I had to have my TA contact her directly so we'd get a contract that was signed by her (was told that they don't do that since it's just a list of their policies, um, no, you will sign it) and then the issue with our reception location - but again, not sure if it was her, or the powers that be that she reports to.

Quote: Originally Posted by meghan Did you do a symbolic or legal ceremony? I was told that you can not change the script if it is legal.... It was symbolic - so I decided that we'd just find someone else to do the ceremony if we can into trouble with the minister!

Quote: Originally Posted by chong About ceremony... Does the officiant has a typical ceremony script that they share before the wedding? I have found some awesome ceremony script and was wondering if anyone asked their officiant to read the ones they have written? Thanks! chong We wrote our entire ceremony. DH met with the minister right before the wedding and gave it to her, she read through it and he told her if she had something she wanted to ad lib, that was fine, but we did not want any religious references. She was fine with that. She was fantastic and I was so happy with her (I was really nervous that we'd get a very religious minister and run into a problem).

Quote: Originally Posted by amybermuda Ladies, I am seriously balling my eyes out right now everything seems to be working out so perfectly. My coworker thought something was wrong but they are tears of joy. My step mom speaks Spanish so she called the hotel about babysitters, etc. She said she spoke to each one individually and was very impressed by all of them. They said the hotel was not filled with kids the week of our wedding (next week) so everyone will get the cribs and strollers they need and they can get babysitters or play time any time they want during the week. She also said they knew about our group and are all expecting our arrival!!! Then she also called a restaurant the hotel recommended in Cancun and made the reservation for 28 of us for the Thursday clubbing tour we are doing. They are going to put us in the best spot by the band and dancers and will have pitchers of margaritas and munchies for us when we arrive. She said they were pleased our hotel recommended them and they will do everything they can to accommodate us and make sure we have a great time. SERIOUSLY - how can i NOT cry with all of this? I am crying just typing it! Who knew weddings were so emotional??!! YEA!!! I'm so excited for you!!! That's great about the restaurant in Cancun - and it helps that your Mom speaks Spanish! You are going to have an amazing, amazing time!!! Don't worry about the tears - I cried almost every day leading up to the wedding. I think the morning of the wedding my sister thought DH and I got into a fight or something because you could tell I was crying, but I was just having another of my tearful "I cannot wait to marry you moments" that occurred more and more as the day got closer! SO, SO excited for you!!

Quote: Originally Posted by taylorwd Okay AB brides, my review is up! http://bestdestinationwedding.com/fo...3/#post1293269 Meredith, I also wrote a review on Andrew: http://bestdestinationwedding.com/fo...9/#post1293228 Great review! We didn't get our names in the fountain either and we had asked - it totally slipped my mind until the next day. We also didn't get the room decorated, but I got ready in our room, so it was pretty much a disaster. The funnier thing is that they put the champagne in the wrong room - it went in my Mom and Grandma's room - not sure if it's because we have the same last name and got confused or something - lucky, my Mom's cool and she gave it to us! I really like where you got married - I think it's a great location.

Quote: Originally Posted by cjb0arder13 That's pretty much my idea of a nightmare... Me too. We looked at another resort when we went down for the site visit and one of the ceremony options was right near where people were playing volleyball on the beach. The WC told us that they would stop the game during the wedding, etc., but DH looked at me and said "Yea, but how far in advance and if people are drinking all day and playing and they are forced to stop, who knows if they'll be cool or jerks about it." If you look at an older blog post of my photographer's blog (you may have to go to her old blog) she has a picture of the guy in a speedo who just rolled on up and was basically under the arch with the bride and groom - more than once since she physically moved him the first time - I can assure THAT will not happen at AB!

Quote: Originally Posted by cjb0arder13 That is SUCH a relief!! Not that I'm thinking of anything other than beautiful blue skies, of course Is it private? I really hate the idea of looky-loos staring at the ceremony. The whole point of a DW for me was not having a bunch of people I didn't know very well gawking at me and making me break out in hives, so it kind of defeats the purpose if it's not private! Oh, and I'm so excited for your review!!!! It's sort of private - it's off the main lobby, but they are really good about making the "non-invited guests" keep their distance. They had people, including the security guard, in the area keeping people from walking into the general wedding area and I also like to think that for the most part, people are respectful. Some little kid ran by right before one of my sisters started walking and Mayra grapped him quickly, so it's no big deal. You'll have people watching, but they are far enough away that it was not an issue for us. My ILs travelled back to the airport in a van with people that went to a wedding at another resort down there - not only were there 3 weddings at the same time, but one was right near a pool bar - that was still open!

Quote: Originally Posted by amybermuda Hi Suzanne! Thanks for the review! I cant wait to check out your teaser pics! Congrats Welcome back!!! Where did you honeymoon? We went to the El Dorado Royale and stayed at the Casitas - it was wonderful too! Completely different from AB - since the place is HUGE, but we had a lot of fun. I will say that we had nothing but amazing service at both hotels - I don't think I could go to any other AI resort b/c they have ruined me! (For example, Blue Terrace had a buffet and a la carte for breakfast, if you do the buffet and go to carry your plate back to your table, someone will stop you and insist that they carry your plate for you!!)

Quote: Originally Posted by amybermuda Oh and they only have 3 restaurants at Azul Beach - so they dont want one booked off for like 20 people when there are 200 staying at the resort, cramming into the other 2 which are very small places to begin with. We had our reception in Chil - but they didn't want to close the restaurant. We were told this was an option during our site visit, told Tiffany and everything was okay until a week before the money was due. It got pretty ugly because they basically were accusing us of lying that we got this information from Francisco during the site visit b/c he had nothing in our file about it. But we had no idea that he was no longer the on-site person, so why would I make up this elaborate story? It ended well, but I was livid. We also got married on a Tuesday and a bunch of people left that day, so when we went by Blue to/from our reception, it was only 25% full. And honestly, you meet lots of the guests at the hotel, so what jerk is going to be mad that one of the restaurants is closed one night for someone's wedding?

Hey everyone! Lurker here - back and married! Just missed Wendy by ONE DAY at the Azul Beach!!! And thank you for the sweet note - it made my day! Wedding was wonderful - I really do love the resort and it was absolutely perfect for my family (we only had 16 guests - all immediate family) - it was their first AI experience and well, you really can do nothing better than the service at AB, in part due to its size. My Mom was so in awe that she could just sit on the beach and someone would bring her glass after glass of champagne. I just wish that the Lomas people in Miami were not so frustrating to work with - we had a big issue with our reception location (which was finally fixed after MUCH fighting by my TA) where I would have moved the wedding - despite the fact that I loved the resort (we did a site visit in October, which is when we fell in love with the resort). To answer lots of questions that have come up in the last few days - yup, there's a free kids menu for the reception. I just assumed that it was free and dealt with Tiffany in that way - my niece is 3 and two others were both 5, so their rate to stay was minimal, so I wasn't randomly paying for them to have dinner. The people there are also amazing. We had the flan as the dessert, which none of the kids were too excited about, so they brought them all brownies and ice cream and brought my niece who doesn't like chocolate something completely different - without being asked or prompted, they just did. (and I will echo Wendy's comment about the cake - it was REALLY good - and I figured it was worth the fight to bring it to the room - damn, I would have!) Photographer issue - I agree, it's super annoying, but I also understand a bit where they are coming from and I think even charging people the $500 fee was not helping in trying to maintain their relationships with their preferred vendors. I know that some places (I think some of the Sandals, but I could be wrong) do not allow ANY outside vendors, so you have to pay a game that they are part of your family, which would make me very uncomfortable. We flew someone in who rocked, but she's a little expensive. There are some photogs that have fairly reasonable rates and do not charge much more than the cost of having them come down. I am more active on theknot destination weddings board and I know that several recent brides used Jaye Reilly (Jaye Reilly Photography San Diego, Minnesota, and Destination Wedding, Boudoir, Birth Photographer) who is a former destination wedding bride herself and I think she is reasonable. You may also want to pop over there and look at people's planning bios for names of other photographers that they are flying in from the U.S. to various destinations for weddings to see your options. I really do think you can do it for $2000. Oh - our pics in case you want to see a small AB wedding - just some teasers are at Leah Stafford Photography Oh and for the person having 90 people, they can do it, but I would check on the location of the actual ceremony. We got married on a Tuesday and there were weddings on Thursday, Friday and Saturday (so of course, we left to the honeymoon resort on Thursday and missed them all!) but Mayra, the on-site person mentioned that one of them was for 80 people and the ceremony was in the Blue Terrace. Okay, that was just WAY too long! Just happy that I finally have time to get to check in with you guys!

Quote: Originally Posted by amybermuda Happy Wedding Day Wendy!!!!!! I see it still says 40% chance of rain, so hope those showers are for the early morning or late evening and you get your perfect day on the beach. I know you are going to be a gorgeous bride and your hubby is one lucky man!!! I second this!!! Woke up this morning and thought wow - Wendy is getting married today!!

Quote: Originally Posted by taylorwd Alrighty girls, it's time for me to check out, unwind, have some cocktails in the Mexican sun, and marry the love of my life!!! I have been on cloud 9 all day today, people say I'm glowing! It helps that my staff threw me a surprise party tonight, which was just the sweetest thing. Some of my family is already there, and when I talked to them today, they just raved and raved and raved. HOOOOOOOOORAAAAAAAY! I guess we done good Good luck with all the planning over the next couple weeks! AmyKH and Katie, I can't wait to hear where you're at when I get back! I think you're up next!!! Thank you for keeping me sane, ladies. I wish I could take you all with me!! We'd have one hell of a good time!!!! WOOOOOHOOOOOO!!!!! YEA! YEA! YEA! Have an amazing time!!! AB is amazing and the staff is even better!!! Will be thinking of you on Saturday and am sad that we'll miss you when we get there on the 24th!!

Quote: Originally Posted by taylorwd Eeeek my ticker is now in days!!! WOW!! Congrats!! p.s. - still trying to work things out. I cannot tell you how upset I am.

Quote: Originally Posted by amybermuda The reception options were Blue - inside and out - Wave Lounge - and I think Chill was one of the options, as well as the Beach. How many guests are you having? The outdoor restaurant by Chill is supposed to be super nice where Bree had her wedding. Did you ever have your locations in writing from Karisma? The supervisor is Fabio. Call the wedding department and ask for him. I don't have his contact details. Sorry. We are having 18 total (16 guests and us). We asked for Chill, since it was smaller. It's also a Tuesday, so I don't really understand what the problem is. I know that my wedding will be great once I get there, but I don't know if I would ever recommend a Karisma property to anyone after this - it was such a small thing that has become a HUGE deal. I am really laid back and basically just filled out my form and sent it back with my flowers, set-up, etc. (since we went on a site visit, we had a lot of our questions answered at that time), so it makes me even more mad. All resorts have their problems, but I don't hear about the BS that we have to deal with from other brides at other resorts. Do you have anything that says that you can have Chill? I thought I had printed stuff off the internet, but I don't have anything that lays out the now "old" options.

Quote: Originally Posted by amybermuda The reception options were Blue - inside and out - Wave Lounge - and I think Chill was one of the options, as well as the Beach. How many guests are you having? The outdoor restaurant by Chill is supposed to be super nice where Bree had her wedding. Did you ever have your locations in writing from Karisma? The supervisor is Fabio. Call the wedding department and ask for him. I don't have his contact details. Sorry. Thanks! We selected Chill (where Bree had her wedding), in part, because we heard about Bree's wedding when we were there for a site visit (which was totally random!) and it was a smaller, private area. They are now saying that they cannot close the restaurant for us (and it's a Tuesday night). I made sure that I got everything in writing with them, but I never realized that I did not get the options for the private event from them - and it never occurred to me to ask. The sheet from Tiffany listing it as our venue apparently wasn't a "confirmation" in their eyes. Hopefully I'll be able to get it all straightened out, but it's pretty ridiculous. I hope they don't try to do the same thing to you!

Quote: Originally Posted by suzannepdc I am supposed to get married in 6 weeks - yes, 36 days. are you freaking kidding me?! um, or 42 days. I apparently cannot multiply!

PLEASE HELP! Tiffany is pulling the same BS with me as she did with Wendy/Taylor regarding the location of our private event/reception. AGH! Does anyone have the number/name of her supervisor? I am so livid - they are trying to blame it all on Francisco who is no longer the WC at the hotel. We went on a site visit and they are trying to say that becuase he didn't leave any notes in "our file", etc. that we cannot have this space - um, no. I am livid. My TA is trying to work this out, but I may need to do it myself. Azul Beach brides - do any of you have a print out of the reception options before they recently changed them? Since I didn't think they would screw with me, I never thought to print out the options that were available back in November! I am supposed to get married in 6 weeks - yes, 36 days. are you freaking kidding me?!

Quote: Originally Posted by taylorwd Amybermuda, How many guests do you have? If it's less than 50, I guarantee they are going to try to move it. I want you to be prepared!! Apparently, they're running at occupancy now and since the Terrace seats 80, they can't afford to close it off for less than 50 guests. It overloads the other restaurants is their claim. Not to harp on this for everyone out there that this doesn't apply to, but it just blows my mind that they're doing this. And so close to the date. Initially, our options were 1) The beach up to 50 guests 2) the Wave Lounge as long as it's under 25 (We have 28 and they refused to fit a seated dinner in the Lounge b/c we were 3 guests over the limit) or 3) the Blue Terrace. Now, it's 1) the beach 2) the wave lounge with the same restrictions, or 3) a semi-private dinner in the Blue International Restaurant. So, anyone that wants a private reception with over 25 guests but less than 50 is totally screwed, unless you want your reception directly on the beach!! OMG, I'm sorry I'll stop ranting until I have an update on the situation... We are having our dinner/reception in the Mexican restaurant - there are only 18 of us. I decided against the Wave Lounge because I do not think it is big enough, so I wouldn't try to get 28 people there. Stick to your guns. Do you have the originial sheet that says that you have the Blue Terrace? I understand where they are coming from with the issue of being at capacity and taking that dinner space away, but honestly, it's not your problem and it's something they can deal with in the future. I haven't talked to Tiffany in awhile, but our money is coming due soon too (about two weeks), so at least I won't be surprised by these changes.