chase414

They do not let you book excursions in advance. I'll send you my wedding website info later and it has all of the info on the golf on it. If you look at some past post on this thread you can see a pic of my cake and the cake for 30 is more like cake for 70. There was so much cake I had them serve it to the entire restaurant. Crashing at one of the bars is fine, but they don't serve food. If you do have it at one of the bars, I would recommend the Martini Bar outside. At least you'll have music. We paid the extra $800 for a private function the night before the wedding and had a meet and greet cocktail party for 2 hours, private bar and too many eats. We held it at the Cove Terrace and we felt it was worth every penny! We brought our own music. Good luck

Yes, you can bring your own decorations but they will charge you a set up fee.

Your room charge includes gratuities. However, at the salon and spa, I did tip extra. 10 to 20% depending on the service. We also tipped the bar tender and wait staff, $5 per person for our private events. And we tipped the waiter for our reception dinner $20. We also tipped our WC. We also tipped the bell boys and room service waiters. Bell boys $1 per bag and room service $1 As for the regular bars, pool side service and dinner throughout we didn't tip. Hope this helps. I think tipping beyond the already charged gratuities is really a personal preference and you should tip what you feel you want to tip. Hope this helps!

We had a travel agent as well but we were required to pay for our room in full in order to get the group contract. We were also required to pay for our wedding package in full prior to arriving at the resort. Our room was $433 per night because we went with the concierge room.

Hi Sarah, We married at the Chichen Gazebo and I loved it! (They may consider this the cove side as well) I have to honestly say that all of my events far exceeded my expectations! I brought so many of my own decorations and gave Karime (she was the best!) instructions on how I wanted everything set up. I was sure something would have been done wrong, but everything was set up just as instructed and perfect! The only thing, like I said, I wish I would have known earlier that our guests had to be at the ceremony site 30 mins early. But we had the music situation covered so it wasn't a big deal. If we didn't have the extra usb stick and music already, I would have had poor Jeff running around Playa del Carmen to get it. Some things you should know about the resort credits and your wedding contract: 1. If you purchased a wedding package they state that you can use the resort credit towards your wedding package. This is true but what they don't tell you is that they don't refund your money that you've already paid. What they do is put your money in an account that you can spend at the resort. This worked out for us anyway because we had over $2,000 in wedding extras, but if we didn't we would have had to find a way to spend the money. 2. If you have a group contract that states that they will be crediting you complimentary rooms post travel due to the amount of rooms your guests have purchased, don't plan on getting that money refunded to you either. They say they'll put the money in an account for you to spend at the resort or use for future travel. Jeff fought this and they are supposed to wire the money into our checking account. We're yet to see this money. 3. They just started a new 11% charge on use of your resort credits starting April 1st. If you booked prior to then this will not apply to you. However, they put it on your account and are supposed to take it off at the time of check out. Some guests had it removed others had to argue to have it removed. But they will remove it. 4. You are permitted to use $300 of your resort dollars at the fine jewelry stores but only on diamonds and gold. Also, you can negotiate prices in this store! Do not pay full price. You do have to pay 11% taxes. 5. You are permitted to use $100 of your resort dollars in the silver jewelry stores. Again an 11% charge. You can negotiate prices in these stores too. 6. There is no longer a limit on the dollar amount to be used in the spa. You can spend all of your resort dollars there. 7. Do plan on spending a significant amount of time in the vacation planners office to either confirm your spa apts or book them. I HIGHLY advise that you book your spa apts on-line in advance!! If you don't have the e-mail address to do this let me know and I'll give it to you. Otherwise the chances of getting the apt time you want is very slim! You can reserve your guests apts. on-line in advance as well and then when they check in they can go to the vacation planners office to confirm them and get their tickets. My only other words of advice that I can think of right now is DON'T BE AFRAID TO ASK FOR WHAT YOU WANT! I asked to have Tres Leches for cake and I received it. I also asked if they could dye the flowers in my bouquet hot pink and they did. I also asked for hot pink ribbon around our bouquets and they did that too! Everyone from the waiters, bar staff and assistant WC's went out of their way to make our events very special. Don't be afraid to ask any other questions and if I think of something else, I'll post it. Good luck!

Hi Sarah, Unfortunately, the swim up bar and brick oven pizza is closed. However, the waiters and waitresses can bring you drinks. And there is a snack bar open at the pool. They serve pizza but not from the brick oven. They also have a children's pool area with a really cool water slide! The cove side pool is 3x larger than the spa side. This may be a plus or a negative but there was hardly anyone at this pool. Probably because the swim up bar was closed. I really like the Cove lobby. They have a pastry cafe and a children's area near the front entrance with marshmallow lolly pops. The cove lobby bar area is much nicer than the spa lobby bar. They do offer babysitting services. The children's pool and children's clubhouse is fenced off so if you had them with the sitter it would be very safe. The resort is beautiful. Also, the breakfast buffet on the cove side is geared towards children. They'll love it, frosted muffins, homemade donuts, waffles, candy! The resort is beautiful and if you go to the front entrance roads around 4:30 or 5 you'll see the monkeys! They also offer a monkey tour on Mondays at 5pm. We didn't do the tour but we did go and see them on our own one day. Have faith, they may have it all up and running by the time you get there. Even if it's not I think all your guests will have a great time! The food at the resort is better than most we've been to! There are so many more positives than negatives

LOL, You have to laugh some stuff off. We had a different officiant. I don't recall any overly religious stuff. She did do a mexican reading that she said is done at all mexican weddings. It was actually very quick. We also had my sister do a reading, which was nice. Our officiant was a Mexican female and our funny story is that she and our best man were wearing the same pink guayabera shirt!

Oh No!!! He did mention to me that he did your make-up for the trash the dress and he didn't think you liked it. I forgot all about it until you just mentioned it. I only wear Mally make-up so I made him use my make-up for the wedding. But I was also on him about it every step of the way! Way back when, I used to be a make-up artist. I was planning on doing my own make-up until I met him and he did a trial run for me. I was thrilled with the result. Sorry you had such a bad experience with him. Oh and I saw your ceremony! We were watching from above. You looked beautiful!!! Loved your chair decorations

I almost forgot our cake! We went with the Tres Leches and it was wonderful!!! The best I've ever had. There was so much cake left over, that I had them deliver to all the other guests in the restaurant and that was so much fun! They also packed some up for our guests to take back to their rooms. Tres Leches is not a flavor that is listed for you on your paperwork. You have to special request it.

Wedding Day! We had a ceremony at the Chichen Gazebo. What I wish I had know prior to arriving (but worked out for us because we had music and an extra usb drive) is that your guests are asked to arriving to the Gazebo 30 mins prior to your ceremony time. They will not release you from your room until all the guests have arrived. So if you don't want your guests sitting around without music, bring a usb drive that they can use with the sound system at the ceremony. They may take other forms of music but didn't ask. I didn't end up getting out of our room until 4:10 and our ceremony was supposed to start at 4:00. The saxophone player was late! But it all worked out and it was all so beautiful. I can't wait til we get back our video and pictures from the resort! Our after the ceremony reception was held at the Pandero Terrace. I loved this spot and so happy with our choice of location! I'm also thankful, that I had a change in dresses! By the time the ceremony and photo session was over I was soaked. It was very, very hot in my gown. We also hired the Mexican Trio and had our fireworks at this location! It was wonderful. We had our dinner reception at the El Greco on the lower outdoor terrace. We had this area to ourselves and it was wonderful. After we sat down the waiter let us know that the chef would prepare a special menu of Filet Mignon and Grilled Shrimp for us! They had the champagne flowing all night as well. (I did request the lower terrace and wasn't sure that we would get it until we showed and saw that the area was set up for us.) Just a few more things you should know: The Cove side swim up bar is closed along with the brick pizza oven. The Rock Climbing Wall is also closed, but it made for a great photo op! And one more thing, Angel at the Salon did my hair and make-up! Also, knows how to apply false eyelashes. He's the best!! I love him. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask. I'll be more than happy to help in anyway I can. If you would like feel free to check out all of our photos at our photo share site. I have over 1000 pics on there between us and our guests! They're also broken down into event albums. They may give you a better idea on what the areas look like with decorations! www.tammyjeffreylaporte.shutterfly.com Good luck ladies!!!

Hello Ladies! We had an amazing wedding! Better than I ever could have hoped for. There was a total of 14 of us and the perfect size. We had a two hour meet and greet cocktail party at the Cove Terrace from 7-9 p.m. the night before our wedding and then we heading down to the fire show. The Cove Terrace was a great space with amazing views of the water and the resort. We asked for a pink signature cocktail for our meet and greet party. All of our guests were welcomed with a pink drink with the sombrero straw's we provided! It was really a nice touch. Here's a picture of our guest book table. Afterwards we all took pics with the sombreros. It was a great time.

We just had our wedding this past Thurs. The weather was perfect and so was every detail for all of our events! I'll write a review when we return and make an attempt with a planning thread. There were a few things that I wish we knew before we left but everything still turned out great. I couldn't be happier with how our wedding turned out'

We leave Sat. morning! Looking forward to seeing you and Bree! So anxious!

So happy for you Bree!!! Let me know how the weather is. We leave early Sat. morning! See you Monday evening!

Count me in! We're getting married next week at Aventura Spa Palace! I have a whole suitcase full of diy and purchased decorations to bring with us!