cole379

Hi Ladies, I have not been on here lately (sick again...must be the stress of the wedding!) but it seems like i missed a lot! lciz you looked AMAZING!!!!!!! Your pics are great and it is so nice of you to post and help us out while you are on vacation. I was originally working with N, but somehow I got transitioned over to Llenny. From my understanding, N is the Manager while Llenny is a Coodinator (scary thought of having N as your boss right!). Llenny is pretty good with getting back to me in a few days. However, after I filled out my wedding planner with ALL of the details I sent it to her and she rejigged it to format it her way. She sends it back to me and half of the details are missing! I had to type her an email listing 15 things again for her to add...and have not heard back. Although at this point I am just thanking my lukcy stars that I somehow got transitioned to Llenny away from N. MsBlissMpls I would be freaking out if I was you! Not sure how you are keeping so calm but good for you! I will keep my fingers crossed that it all will work out. I work as an event and wedding planner myself and I just wanted to offer some advice to all of the brides for your big day. First of all I think we all know by now that our weddings will not be perfect. Details are going to go wrong and there is not much on the big day you can do about somethings like if they send the wrong flowers or serve the wrong meals. Those things can't e fixed the day of. However, take control over the things that can be changed. For example, I am having my Fiance go down to the ceremony sight before the ceremony to see if they set things up right according to my site plan. If not, this gives my Fiance time to arrange decor, chairs etc or get them replaced with the right ones before we begin. I am having my sister meet my DJ in the lobby to make sure everything gets set up right and on the day of the wedding before I get hair and make up down my best friend and I are going to the reception site to oversee the set up a bit and that way if there are things that are wrong I can fix them myself quickly or at least tell them what changes to make! It is unfair that we might have to work a bit on my special day but I have put TONS of time and effort into the special details of my wedding and I would rather put in 30 minutes of my time to make sure what I can control I do then leave it up to them and be upset that they screwed it up! Now I am sure that not every brides cares about the details as much as some of us (there are days I wished I was more laid back but I figure in my job I am paid to care about the details so it is so ingrained in me!) but the way I see it, I put hours of my time in before hand so a tiny bit of time on the day of will be worth it. A lot of the things I care about to are things that have special meaning to me or I put in place to make sure we have a really great time. I am also glad that i hired outside vendors for DJ, Hair and Makeup and photographer since it is less the hotel has control of. Plus by bringing a lot of things from home I have saved my budget and also had some fun putting things together. i have also had to tell myself that on the day of to remember that those small details will not ruin my wedding. At the end of the day it is really about our family and friends coming together to celebrate our marriage and nothing else really matters. I love your attitude about it all MsBlissMpls because your attitude really reflects that and I think that is amazing. Issues like getting our money back if something goes really wrong (which I would fight for) can be worked out the next day, but on the day of the wedding the small details I am going to try to ignore since that is not what the day is about. However, if something major goes wrong I am not going to be paying for it! Best of luck to all the brides in our planning. I am so glad that we have had this board to connect us and keep us sane as possible before our big days!

Wow lciz so exciting...only a few more days! I have my fingers crossed that everything goes okay for you. That is very weird that you have not heard back. I have had several emails from the WC in the last few weeks. Maybe they missed yours? Can you resend it so that they at least get to see it before the big day? Put something in the subject line so they look at it right away! That is to bad about the MsBlissMpls. I know it sucks when you plan your whole idea around something and then have to change it. Hopefully you can find a solution you are happy with!

Who told you that about the bouquets and boutineers? It says on the excellence website you get both and in the form you fill out it list both seperate as a choice? It does feel like you get Nicole's and dimed. My wedding is in three weeks and there are so many details not planned!!!

I ended up calling (which for simple questions I want answers to I find a way better option then email!) and it is 16 per person per hour to extend the reception. Has anyone with the gold package booked their spa appointments for their free love bird package? How do we go about doing that?

Only to 10pm? What kind of party is that?!? Yikes I did not think it would be so expensive! I wonder if I could to do 11:30 what they would charge for 1 1/2 hours?

Hi Everyone! We are having our reception starting at 7 pm. I believe it would then go to 11 pm right (we are at the event terrace). Does anyone know the cost if we wanted to extend it to midnight? Thanks!

Would anyone be able to send me the cake choices (pictures) for the gold package? As well, with the gold package do you get 4 cold apps and 4 hot appetizers? I would email N but I am still waiting to hear about the questions I emailed her a week ago. My email is [email protected] Thanks!!!

Even though our wedding is small, we still decided to hire a DJ. We thought that all of our guests had to make sacrifices to come to our wedding and it is costing them a lot. To help show our appreciation, we really want to put on a good party for them! Instead of hiring the hotel DJ though we hired DJ Discomovil Cancun for $600 for 4 hours. They have been AMAZING to work with. We also decide to rent a dance floor from them for $500 They were cheaper then anywhere else we got quotes from. We are also getting cold fireworks and a few other things. He was so nice, even after N gave me the wrong dimensions for the dance area, he went to the resort and physcially got the measurements himself to make sure the floor would fit. Great! Just thinking about the flowers, has anyone considered getting an outside florist? I know there are some great referrals on this board. Would this be allowed if we just paid the vendor fee of $150? Just a thought.... I also read a review on trip advisor that said that wedding their daughter had at the resort was great...except for the flowers! Apparently they were all practically dead when they arrived at the resort. Can you imagine paying $430 for the orchid arrangment and then having it arrive looking like dead flowers!?!

That is crazy about the flowers! But I can't believe it since we are doing the EXACT same thing. OH NO!!! That is an insane amount. If we got the gold package, can we not just pay a price to upgrade. At least that way it is not over $400 but may only be like $200? Same with the bouquet? At this rate my table will only have one centerpiece! Can someone else also send me the list of flowers for centerpieces please. My email is [email protected] It is to late to change things for us now I think, we already based everything around it. However, what I think I may do is just the orchids for one centerpiece and incorporate other flowers as well into the wedding. Crazy!

Hi Ladies, I can't believe it is getting so close to our wedding dates for most of us! I am also SUPER frustrated with the slow response time. I find it frustrating because we are in the home stretch. I have so many questions and am not getting the answers! I finally did hear back about the decor rentals. You can use Planner1 with no vendor fee or rent through the hotel. I am not sure which one we are doing yet because I am still waiting to hear back from her about the cost of certain decor stuff at the hotel. I hate the waiting game!

Hi Everyone, Just a couple of things to add...and a need to vent! We are going to premake up our tip envelopes and then just not seal them. That way if we need to change the amount we can do so. Then I will give them to someone to hold onto at the reception like my father. We are having our ceremony at the beach, cocktail at the X Lounge and reception at the Event Terrace (same this as the convention terrace). We love how private and beautiful that area was. I have my dress but no fitting yet! Now to my vent...urgh... been corresponding with the wedding cooridnator. Today she sent me back a confusing email. First she said that they only have round tables at the venue. Huh? Like every picture I have seen of weddings on the event terrace, almost all of the weddings have long rectangle tables? My whole vision goes with the long rectangle tables so not sure how they used them before and don't have any (or do we need to rent them?) Second, Gustavo gave me the name of two companies to rent decor from. Gamanteles and Planner1 events. Looked at both for prices for things like tiffany chairs, dance floor, linens, lounge set etc. I assumed that since they gave me those names as companies they use, no vendor fee. Today she said that for Gamanteles (the cheaper quote) we need to pay a vendor fee. What?!? is it $150 per person or per the company? Cause if like 4 people come to set up decor that is a huge amount in vendor fees! If I use Planner1 Events is there a vendor fee? To avoid the vendor fee for things like decor rentals, do I have to order right with the wedding coordinator? So frustrated as just getting a response back takes like a week and then it gives you a lot more questions!!! Plus I already had everything ready to go with the decor companies! Can someone shed light on this?

I saw the review on trip advisor too! I also heard back from the new wedding Manager. I emailed her back and also had my travel agent confirm all of our rooms just to be on the safe side! I am sure it will take some time before she has us all sorted out but I think that as brides we are all pretty organized which will help her, help us! I actually work as an event planner as my day job so sometimes I find it hard to plan a wedding from far away. Being crazy detail oriented can actually work against you a bit in this situation! I know that all of our weddings will be great and I am so grateful that we have this board to help us vent, share information and ideas. I appreciate everyone updating us with the information they found out. It really can ease your mind to have people in the same situation trying to help each other out!

Hi Ladies! I have been MIA from the boards for the last little bit. Life has been very busy and crazy for the last few months! I have been following the board and just been catching up on the posts. We are also getting married on April 17, 2012 and I can't tell you how frustrated and dissapointed I am to here that Ileana is no longer with the resort. Originally I started planning with Yamina, then Ileana, then Gustavo, then back with Ileana. Now to find out she is gone is so frustrating!!! Mostly because we already had arranged for some things and made special arrangments and everytime I start working with someone new I have to reconfirm everything! To be honest if the deals and arrangments that I had with the others are not honoured with the new coordinator (I have emails to prove everything) I will be very upset and have a big problem with the resort. The other problem is that with only two months to go I need to start getting some answers to my questions, and it seems like now I never can get those answers! Plus it worries me that what if the new coordinators or managers quit before the wedding or take over and are so overwhelmed that our weddings suffer. It is just a lot of added stress now to a process I already find very stressful and frustrating! What would have been nice is for the resort to send the brides/grooms out emails letting us know what is going on and provide us with the new contact email for our new contact at the resort insteading of just not hearing back from anyone and then finding out it is because they no longer work there at the resort from this board! That would have eased my mind a bit but I guess that is asking for to much!

Hi guys, I had asked Ileana about an outside DJ but from what I remember reading somewhere in the info she sent me, outside djs are not allowed and you now how to use the inhouse dj. I would check with them for sure. If DJ's are allowed I would also like the contact you have as that is a great price! Has anyone just rented the soundsystem from EPM and brought an IPOD?

Hello, I want to get a customized wire hanger. I have been looking on Etsy for ones that I like the writing. I remember reading a long time ago that a lot of brides were buying their hangers from one specific supplier who did a great job. I believe she even had times of the week when she would sell them at a discount? Can someone let me know if they bought a hanger and where they got one from? Thanks!