SMBride42012

Thanks for the advice!! I guess my main question is....since My Hubby's parents weren't able to attended and didn't get to see the ceremony, as well as my bridesmaids & groomsman didn't get to walk down and all. I felt the ceremony was lacking because of that. Shouldn't I do the ceremony over again!? I know some people would think its kind of stupid since we are already legally married. But really, we got legally married back in July in our hometown...so...the one in mexico was "just for show" too.... Plus, we will be doing pictures with everyone, since we don't have them from mexico. Then I am thinking we need to do the ceremony again for Lawrence's (hubby) parents. Then....just a small dessert reception sounds really fun!! I would never have thought about that! Time to start looking at this thread...We weren't even planning on doing an AHR..so now..I have to look into all the fun ideas for something at Home A Silver lining perhaps Thanks again for your help! Any advice or opions are GREATLY appreciated

Well Ladies, Everyone's worst nightmare...happened to me Hurricane Rina hit the night before my wedding. The day everyone was supposed to be coming in for the wedding. Only 10 of the 30 people were able to come. The morning we were leaving I checked the weather, as I did every morning for the weeks prior to our departure date. It was then I saw "Tropical Storm Rina" had formed. I was devestated. I was thinking at that point, ok...so it rains on my wedding. Get over it, and go on with life. Little did I realize that it would gain enough strength to actually cancel EVERYONES flights that were planning on coming down the day before the wedding. People that were not able to make it included the Groom's Parents, Brothers & My Bridesmaids, among others. The day of the wedding actually turned out beautifully. Not a cloud in the sky. Since NONE of my husbands family was able to make it down due to cancelled flights we are now having to do something in our hometown in addition to an At Home Reception. I am thinking we just do Pictures with everyone, then hold the ceremony, then do the Reception thing. Pretty Much......I am going to try to have a 2nd wedding on SLIM budget. We may not be able to organize that until next summer sometime. So yea, your worst nightmare happened to me. After many tears about the whole thing I have decided to take a deep breath and realize the way I had imagined it wasn't the way it was supposed to go. So ladies my question to you is...What would you do for something at home in my situation!? What is too much? What is too little? Since everyone got their money back bc there was a hurricane and the airport closed for more than 12 hours....would any of you consider inviting everyone back down to mexico to the same resort and trying it all over again!? Should I just have the at home reception in my hometown? I need ideas, Suggestions, ANYTHING! I haven't found anyone that had this situation happen to them, and I need some MAJOR advice! Thanks Ladies!!!

Well Ladies, Everyones worst nightmare...happened to me Hurricane Rina hit the night before my wedding. The day everyone was supposed to be coming in for the wedding. Only 10 of the 30 people were able to come. The morning we were leaving I checked the weather, as I did every morning for the weeks prior to our departure date. It was then I saw "Tropical Storm Rina" had formed. I was devestated. I was thinking at that point, ok...so it rains on my wedding. Get over it, and go on with life. Little did I realize that it would gain enough strength to actually cancel EVERYONES flights that were planning on coming down the day before the wedding. People that were not able to make it included the Groom's Parents, Brothers & My Bridesmaids, among others. The day of the wedding actually turned out beautifully. Not a cloud in the sky. The reason I am posting this post under Secrets Maroma Beach is 1. Becuase the wedding was at SMB and 2. because they did an AMAZING job of trying to help me in anyway they could. We had to start from scratch with the wedding because we went from 30 guests to 10. So we didn't have an outside dinner reception, we didn't do a DJ, and they gave us a portion of the World Cafe to ourselves for the buffet dinner they were holding that night. We got the cake at a discounted price, the cheapest wedding package for free, and since we had the ultimate wedding package orginally I got my hair and makeup, pedicure and our couple massages for free. They made a very sad, disappointing, and stressful situation much easier to deal with. Valeria was GREAT at keeping my parents, me and the groom content and in the know on what was going on. Since NONE of my husbands family was able to make it down due to cancelled flights we are now having to do something in our hometown in addition to an At Home Reception. I am thinking we just do Pictures with everyone, then hold the ceremony, then do the Reception thing. I am going to try to have a 2nd wedding on SLIM budget. I will let everyone know how that turns out. We may not be able to organize that until next summer sometime. So yea, your worst nightmare happened to me. After many tears about the whole thing I have decided to take a deep breath and realize the way I had imagined it wasn't the way it was supposed to go. So ladies my question to you is...What would you do for something at home in my situation!? What is too much? What is too little? Since everyone got their money back bc there was a hurricane and the airport closed for more than 12 hours....would any of you consider inviting everyone back down to mexico to the same resort and trying it all over again!? Should I just have the at home reception in my hometown? I need ideas, Suggestions, ANYTHING! I haven't found anyone that had this situation happen to them, and I need some MAJOR advice! Thanks Ladies!

Oooo What a question to ask me since I have been working on my welcome bag ideas and buying things for MONTHS and MONTHS! I don't have pictures, yet. I was going to wait to assemble them all down in mexico (they are in pieces right now). But an overview of them. I bought canvas bags for about $3 a piece. ( I will post where I got everything from in my planning thread) Ironed on my Logo by Allurements by Rebecca (found her on this forum) I have done a Beach & Hangover kit that includes Chapstick, Sunscreen, Tums, Bug Spray, Advil, a first aid kit (bandaids, antibactieral..etc) Hand sanitizer. I have a few other things in there but can't think of them off the top of my head. I am putting in a welcome booklet that has all the info about the resort, a schedule of events, a welcome letter, and a crossword and wordsearch all about Bride & Groom. We have pens and pens with the welcome letters. I also have pashimas in each bag, one for each lady that has a tag on it "to have and to hold and to keep you from the cold" We included a tervis tumbler w/ hammock on front (the #1 thing we splurged on, but they are really nice and have a life time guarentee) I have a few other things that I have put in there, but I am at work and I can't remember everything! I will be sure to post my planning thread on here for everyone We leave Monday!!!! Woooooooooo

Yes, That is exactly what I did. I setup my wedding package with Valeria (my wedding coordinator) and then contacted juan to work out a deal with him. It worked pretty well. At least so far. I will see when we arrive next week how everything flows!! I will let you know how it goes

Thank you Everyone!! All of my guests loved them and they said it got them VERY excited about our upcomming trip!!! We leave for mexico in one week!! Yay!!!

I hope this can answer your question... I am getting Juan (The resort Photographer) for five hours with every single picture he takes on a CD with NO printed pictures and all reprinting rights. For this he is charging me a total of $1611.00. However, I have a credit of $724.00 with my ultimate wedding package. So outside of the wedding package I am paying. $887. Was he trying to charge you more than 1600 total?

Yes! They work great!!! I actually set some off these past weekend and WHAT FUN!! They burned for a good 5 minutes in the sky!! It was sad to see the last twinkle of the distant light to go out, but WOW it was REALLY cool!! I am still SO upset we can't use them for the wedding. BOOOO!!

www.theskylantern.com has sky lanterns that use a wax film instead of a fuel cell. You can even put them in your Carry On!! I ordered from them some floating lotus flowers and sky lanterns (even though our resort doesn't allow it). I looked into it ALOT thinking I would somehow manage to still release them when we are down there. I will let you know if I decide to do it, and how it goes if I do! The customer service was amazing!! And feel free to email or call them with any questions you have, they get back to you very quickly! I was quite impressed with the quality of their products as well! Hope this helped!!

Well thank you!! I can only thank BDW and all of the other brides ideas! I will be sure to link my planning thread and review to this thread when I have them complete. I figured I would share the activity sheet I also included in the Pretravel Packets (I dropped them at the post office this morning) that is not pictured. Above is the file if you have enough "activity" on the site to access it. For all the others....this is copied and pasted so you can see the content! Secrets Maroma Beach Weekly Activities Overview Monday – Sunday 8:30 am - Yoga @ Gazebo (Monday-Friday only) 9:30 am - Jungle Bike Tour @ Sports Zone (Monday- Saturday only) 10:00 am - Stretching Class @ Gazebo 10:00 am - Basic Spanish Lessons @ Barracuda Bar 11:00 am - Kayak Tour @ Beach 11:00 am - Darts Tournament @ Sugar Reef 12:00 pm - Water Aerobics @ Main Pool 12:30 pm - Pool Volleyball @ Main Pool (Wednesday-Sunday only) 3:00 pm - Bungee Trampoline @ Beach 3:30 pm - Swim-up Black Jack @ Main Pool 4:00pm - Beach Soccer @ Beach (Monday & Thursday only) 4:00pm - Beach Volleyball @ Beach (Except Monday & Thursday) 4:00pm - Wine Tasting @ Wine Cellar (Thursday only) 4:00pm - Cocktail Lessons @ Sugar Reef (Saturday only) 4:00pm- Basketball @ Sports Zone (Tuesday, Thursday & Saturday only) 4:30pm- Dance Lessons @ Gazebo 9:30pm - Caribbean Show (Thursday) 9:30pm - Urban Soul Show (Saturday) 10:00pm - Karaoke @ Desires Lounge (Thursday) 10:00pm-1am - Music Mix Dance Party @ Desires Lounge (Saturday) **Note** Above is just an overview of a FEW of the activities offered by the resort. *** Activities subject to change. *** You will get a full list of activities delivered each day to your room. There will also be changes to the schedule to reflect Halloween activities. Upon your arrival, you will also receive a list of activities Lawrence and I are interested in, please join if you wish! If you can't access the file, to make it go along with the Starfish theme ( I am all about being cohesive, probably to a fault .... I put a watermark of a Starfish I found online. (So it barley shows in the background) I can't wait for my guests to recieve these!! Activites Final.doc

I know!! I got the luggage tag idea from another BDW bride. She did the same thing, made them on her computer and then use a laminator to finish it. You can get the laminating pages and the rubber string attachments at office depot. I think i spent a total of $10 in total on the pretravel packets. (We had a lamintor from my mom's old job at the house to use). I am still waiting on an activites list of all the things going on while we are down there the week of our wedding. So I can give our guests an idea of what is going on and they can plan! Hopefully my WC gets that to me in the next few days! I am dying to get those bad boys in the mail

Well, Since I can't use the wishing/sky lanterns, I decided to ask about the floating lotus flowers. https://www.theskylantern.com/shop/watergardenlanternbr/whitelotuslanternsslighlyrustywire-p-444.html?cPath=35 My WC said YES!!! So we are going to get one for each guest and have them light them, make a wish for us, and set them in the pool at the reception. They should burn all night, and I think they will create a really cool effect. The WC was a tad concerned they would have to keep lighting them as it is very windy. I am thinking of getting LEDs to put in them. Anyone know a cheap place to order 30 of these?? I will be sure to post pictures of this when I return. I figure some other girls that have been told no to the sky lanterns, may be into the idea. Happy Weekend Everyone!!

I am getting married at Secrets Maroma Beach and they are NOT allowed. I have also read the post that says the beaches are public. I am so tempted to get them and walk about 1/4 mile down the beach (where there is just jungle) and releasing them there. I guess my biggest fear with getting in trouble is REALLY getting in trouble and being hauled off to Jail in Mexico. That would be the WORST. I am so back and forth...Suggestions anyone?

No! I sure don't! I guess since he is recommended by the resort, they will not charge me to use him. I was afraid I would lose that credit ($724) because I am paying him directly, but she said its not a problem and I can use that alloted money for something else! So it all worked out really great! I know Cancun Video does the wedding video, but I haven't heard about them pulling any shady stuff at the end, so I am leaving that portion of the package the same. I am still back and forth between havnig the maricahi band during the cocktail hour, or just having music playing, and use that money for something else as well. I am thinking most of the money will go towards flowers, centerpeices, and the beach bonfire the night before the wedding. I am sure all of these decisions will be made once I am down there and can see a total cost and what she can work with me on. I am ALL about bartering, and it is usually done best in person! So I am ok with waiting on the small details until we are down there, so I can save myself as much money as possible!!

I have the same question about how you attached the starfish to the raffeta. I am guessing a hot glue gun. That is how I attached my starfish to my wedding invitations! Here are the invites & the thank you notes if you haven't seen them in another post I made