jenniferkuhr

Quote: Originally Posted by JHarris The beach is public access. So the photographer can meet you guys on the beach behind the resort. The street between the gran porto and royal dead ends into the pier for ferries. One quick warning about photos on the public beach!!! I had an earlier post about this after our engagement session in September 2010, but Playa Del Carmen has a "no vendors on public beaches" law without a special vendor permit. The law was put into place so tourists didn't have to deal with obnoxious interruptions every two seconds while tanning to buy jewelry, sunglasses, fruit etc like in Puerto Vallarta, but professional photographers are considered vendors too!!! Basically, we ended up getting stopped by the police, questioned and then fined and told we could not take any more pictures. (We still had amazing photos and everything was fine, just a wierd, awkward interlude with police carrying scary guns...) Not sure if anyone else experienced this, maybe it was just their mood that day to actually enforce it... Easy fix Solutions: 1.) Restrict your photos to the hotel part of the beach (we were nowhere near The Royal at the time, but made our way quickly after this happened). 2.) If you do get stopped, tell them the photographer is a cousin, brother, relative but NOT a vendor!!!

Hi Ladies! I am up and wide awake after too much consumption for my bachelorette in Playa Del Carmen (In Spanish: "la ultima noche de soltera") last night. All the gals went out bar/club hopping through a pre-paid group called PlayaCrawl. I think their website is playacrawl.com. SOOOOOOO much fun. It was a fixed rate of about $60 each, but the bride (me!) was free of course. We got in free everywhere no problem and had drinks included and waiting for us when we arrived. This was a GREAT option and the people did a wonderful job keeping everyone moving, dancing, together and having an amazing time (they are basically professional cat-herders...there were 15 of us!). I highly recommend, pass this info on to your Maid of Honor!

Hi Ladies! I'm here in Playa Del Carmen and everything is AWESOME!!! Bonnie, I beat you by a few days, our wedding is this Friday, July 1st at The Royal! Most of us are staying at The Gran Porto though, due to many guests with kids and we all wanted to be together. Our ceremony is at the little Chapel at 4PM at the end of 5th Avenue and then cocktail hour and party starts at 6PM on the beach. Its been so amazing, everytime I turn around I bump into a family member or friend I haven't seen in a while. The weather that greeted us was kind of crappy, but it was nice to see everyone having a great time regardless (kids still swim in the rain, others were just having drinks at the bar, everyone smiling and happy). The resort really goes out of their way to make you feel taken care of etc. Everyone is SO NICE!!! Now the sun is starting to come out so I am PSYCHED. American Airlines was great about hanging my dress on the plane. Getting through customs was a little nerve-wrecking but super easy. When they opened up our bags, Ryan made sure to tell them the total value of the contents was $200. (Yeah, right!) They cap it at $300 before they start making you pay fees (a bridal "trousseu" doesn't count, which I'm guessing means your dress and jewelry?), so we thought we would low-bar it and hope they didn't ask too many questions, which they didn't. I might recommend splitting up the contents though amongst other friends and family traveling with you so it doesn't look suspicious. They limit the amount of CD's you can bring in to the country to 30, and we made 40 for our OOT bags. Luckily they didn't spot them, but I would have felt better is we just had half that amount and someone else took the other half. We also made signs we put inside each bag that read "Regalos no comercios, regalos son para mi boda" (non commercial goods, for my wedding) and then the name and contact information for our on-sight wedding coordinator, with our names and the date/time of the wedding. We didn't need it, but it made us feel better to have it. We meet with our coordinator today. Hope it all goes well! SOOOOOOOO happy and excited. Jenn

Good idea about making it a "Bridesmaid task" to make sure people take them home! The good thing is that since they're name tags, you know who forgets theirs and can at least try to get it back to them. I went to a wedding where they gave away jars of honey and I ended up carting home 10 jars of honey for my dad because everyone left them behind (my dad is a bit of a honey bear...)

Here is a PDF of the hangover tags (I made it on PrintShop, so the only other format I could use to share it was PDF). I printed these on cardstock and folded them over small ziplock bags. hangover.survival.pdf

I leave for Mexico on Monday!!! I was a huge procrastinator too, and then luckily my school where I work went on summer break and I had all of last week to get the move on with this stuff! It takes time, start early!!! My wedding is July 1, 2011. The biggest thing is starting early so you can order things online and have them arrive on time. Try the words "reusable grocery bag" or just "grocery bag" or the words "strawberry" and "bag" Some will show up that are more $$$, it took a while to find these that were 10 for $18.

I think I just found them by search "reusable grocery bag" or just "grocery bag" but you might want to try the words "strawberry" and "bag" There were a couple listings for more $$$, it took a while to find the packs of 10 for 18.00.

Hi Ladies! I found these silver luggage tags on sale at Michaels Craft Store, $14.99 for 10 of them. SO cute! I used business cards to DIY my own name cards using my colors and logo. Then WONDER of all WONDERS! I found these amazing "Mr." and "Mrs." luggage tags at Bed, Bath and Beyond for 19.99. The best part is that they stand up on their own using the strap as a little prop. I LOVE them!!!

Hi Ladies! I just finished putting together my Welcome Books and they are AWESOME! I thought I'd post templates and pics here, since they are very Gran Porto and Royal-specific (getting married at The Royal, most staying at Gran Porto due to the kiddos...). I made them on Powerpoint slides, with 4 copies of the same page to a slide. I had color copies done at Office Max during a special deal they were having for $0.35 each. I then slipped them into little photo brag books I found at Dollar Tree for $1.00 each. (make sure the Office Max people chop off 1/4 inch from the top or bottom so they don't stick out!) These took a LONG time, but hopefully I've saved some time for all of you! Getting photos of everyone was tricky, but honestly, facebook/google-stalking goes a long way... The pages: 1.) Welcome letter 2.) Itinerary 3.) Map 4.) Getting Around Tips 5.) Catamaran logistics 6.) Photo of Catamaran 7.) Restaurants at Gran Porto 8.) Gran Porto Activity Schedule 9.) Playa Del Carmen Hair Salon Info 10.) SPAzul prices 11.) Who's Who from both sides facebook (add more pages as needed- I had a TON!) 12.) Peso/Dollar Exchange 13.) Photo Upload Information on Snapfish 14.) Questions/Comments/Concerns Contact 15.) Final Photo and Quote from our song Here is the template: [Oops, unfortunately, the SPAzul price list and the Gran Porto activity schedule won't upload onto here! You wedding coordinator should be able to send these, though. Too bad, they looked so cute in the book, I had to delete them from the template so this would fit. Oh well. I also took out Catamaran logistics and the photo to save file space] gran.porto.royal.welcome.book.template.ppt gran.porto.royal.welcome.book.template3.ppt

I am SOOO excited I just finished my OOT bags. BIG shout out to all the wonderful ladies out there who I begged, borrowed and stole ideas from. We made 40 of them and are bringing the following over from the States: 1.) 40 reusable coral red grocery sacks that fold into a strawberry (Amazon.com for $18 for 10) 2.) 40 Welcome Books using color copies cut to fit into Photo Brag Books ($1.00 each at Dollar Tree, $10 for 40 wallet-sized photo reprints for the cover, $95 for color copies at 4 to a page, 24 pages total, 10 copies of each page- more detailed post on this later) 3.) 40 Soduko Puzzle Books ($1.00 each at Dollar Tree) 4.) 40 Hangover Kits (contents for each include 5 packs Exedrin, 2 packs Pepto Bismo, 1 pack gum, 2 packs Gatorade Mix, 2 ginger chews, total was about $150 from Amazon.com, Costco and Trader Joes) 5.) CD of Music from the Week ($30 for the CDs and CD Labels at Office Max, $8.00 for the CD cases at Dollar Tree) 6.) 40 bottles of Hand Sanitzer ($20 for 2-packs at Dollar Tree) 7.) Key Card Holders w/Lanyards (completely forgot what website, but super cheap, less than 50 cents each) Total spent on OOT bags for 80 guests (40 bags, assuming 2 to a room) = 465...so about $11.60 a bag. Not bad, huh? PM me if you have questions, these were so much fun to make! But, seriously, if I didn't have summer vacation being a public school employee, I have no idea how anyone does all this cute stuff. It takes WORK! Start early!!! More templates and Pics to follow... Good Luck to all other OOT-Bag-Making Brides!!! ~Jennifer

You look amazing! So funny, I was just signing on to choose my boudoir pics I want to have printed to give to my FI, and of course got distracted by this forum! I need to choose quickly though because we leave a week from Monday...Aack. We just finished assembling 40 Welcome Books and they are THE CUTEST! I am very excited by them. I'm going to post pictures and templates soon, but we I basically did them using Powerpoint slides divided into four of the same pages, cut them up and slid them into little mini-photo-albums from the Dollar Tree. I love them! Now we're both too zonked to move. Lots of little pages and albums everywhere...

Oh boo. I thought it just happened automatically. Sigh. I was SO excited to download templates and I leave in 2 weeks! Ack!!!

What is UP with the obsession? I promised I wouldn't be one of those brides. I even bought a "budget wedding" book determined to save money wherever I could. And now here I am, obsessed with finding the perfect reusable cloth bag, and making little hangover kits? We are whipping one another up into a frenzy! We've all gone mad! But man, these ideas are so cute and so fun and I get really excited doing something sweet and thoughtful for everyone who has helped me get to this point in life. Whew! It will all be worth it. Just breathe....and smile....breathe....and smile

I got the idea for my ring bearer pillow off etsy! How cute is this?

Man, I am three weeks away and I wish I started all this planning earlier! Whew! For all you Newbies, get started NOW! Here’s a few things I’ve learned from wedding planning so far: Wedding colors are tricky. I picked hard-to-find colors (coral and teal) and it seems everything comes in more basic colors like light blue, royal blue, navy, purple, pink, orange, green. Just a thought to consider when choosing colors. Dance lessons!!! This has been the MOST fun of preparing to get married. Expensive…but SO worth it! It IS possible to get an amazing but less expensive dress. Keep searching. There is a reason people go with traditional bridesmaid dresses…they are easy to match with the rest of the bridal party. I went with just regular gowns from Nordstrom’s and had to find out the hard way NOTHING comes in that color (coral!!!) DO NOT write anything about your registry on Save the Dates or Invitations….TACKY! I thought this was a given (this advice is in every wedding book ever written…), but I’m finding tons of people are making this mistake and it just keeps rubbing me the wrong way, especially now that I'm in the wedding planning process myself. Any other BDW ladies have some good advice to share?