mrspfafftobe

Hi! I am planning a honeymoon photoshoot this winter in DR and are thinking of using Karina Jensen as well. We contacted her for pricing and she was much less (half the cost) than K.N. and her work looks wonderful! I would also like to hear feedback from anyone who has experience working with her.

I am incredibly blessed to have a sister who works in the beauty industry! She is a top hair stylist in our hometown so she did my hair and 6 others in our wedding party. My wedding coordinator told her that she should move to Playa and she would book all of her brides with her!! haha A month before my wedding I went to Sephora to get the right products to do my own bridal makeup. With only a $50 minimum purchase (I ended up spending $250 lol) you get a full trial by a pro and instruction on exactly how to do it yourself. I brought pictures of the look I was going for which was helpful. The person I went to was amazing with the application and knew exactly what she was doing and how to teach me to do it myself. I'm really glad I did it this way and now I have all the products and knowledge to make myself beautiful every day!

Hi Celebrate1106, We just had our wedding at Le Reve and it was amazing! It's not all inclusive but breakfast is included in the room rate - and the breakfast food is AMAZING and portions are very big and they serve it until 11:00am. Most people didn't need lunch or just got a snack to eat at the pool - like $6 for chips and guac or $8 for tacos to share. We hosted events with food/dinner and drinks all three nights our guests were there so they didn't need to buy dinner and many drinks were covered. Of course this means it was more pricey for us, but it made the rooms at Le Reve more affordable for our guests knowing their food costs would be minimal. It's possible to host an affordable weekend without staying at an A.I. I'd be happy to share any pricing if you are still looking for it.

We budgeted some tips when we were planning our wedding, but ended up adding a more because of the AMAZING service we received by EVERYONE at our wedding (hotel staff). We would have given even more if the nearest ATM wasn't a 15 min cab ride away. We did a buy out at Le Reve for 3 days in June and the service exceeded all of our expectations. It started raining during both our rehearsal dinner and wedding ceremony, and the Le Reve staff moved EVERYTHING inside and set everything up again each night in a matter of minutes. This in itself merited a hefty tip from us - they all did double the work! All of the hotel prices (Wedding services as well as food & beverage) were quoted inclusive of tax and gratuity, and we were told the gratuity would be dispersed to the staff appropriately. However, we were so blown away that we decided to add to the built-in service charges, and I wish we could have done even more. Here's the breakout for hotel staff: - WC and her assistant: $300 total - Food & Beverage Manager: $100 - Our favorite bartender: $100 - The other bartenders/servers: 5 boxes of nice Cuban cigars to share - Kitchen Staff: $50 - Property Maintenance Staff: $50 - Concierge: $100 Tips for other vendors: - DJ: $100 - Officiant: $100 - Musical trip for cocktail hour: $100

Hey everyone, we just had our AMAZING wedding at Le Reve and I posted some information about our vendors here: http://www.bestdestinationwedding.com/t/80388/vendor-reviews-for-le-reve-wedding More details about Le Reve, photo and video coming later

I am sitting in the lounge at Le Reve writing this review because I want everything to be as fresh in my mind as possible! Here are a few thoughts about the vendors we used for our Le Reve wedding. Since we are still here and have a few things to wrap up, I will write a separate review on Le Reve later. We also worked with del Sol for photography and PlayaWeddings for videography, but I'd like to save those reviews until after we see their work Transportation - Mayan Hospitality Services We worked with Raffaele Pata of Mayan Hospitality Services for airport transfers. Raffaele was great to work with via email leading up to the arrivals. Raffaele himself was even at the airport to greet us when we arrived! He wasn't the driver but it was really special that he was there - totally unexpected. In general all of the transfers went well, except for one coming from the airport to Le Reve. The driver dropped off four of our guests at the resort next door (Azul Fives), then left before anyone realized it wasn't Le Reve. While the distance between the two hotels is short, it would have been impossible to walk on either the dirt road or the beach which separate them with all of their luggage, so they had to call another taxi. The expense and delay this caused was inconvenient, but if that's the worst thing that happened, we are still very happy. Overall I would strongly recommend working with this company. Alcohol Purchase - La Europea We negotiated a corkage fee with Le Reve, meaning that we bought the alcohol and paid them to open and serve it (beer, wine, liquor). We bought the alcohol form La Europea, a store in Playa del Carmen that works with distributors to sell their products. Having corkage was important to us for a few reasons: 1) The open bar packages Le Reve offered didn't include the kinds of alcohol we wanted to serve - even their most premium package didn't have a few liquors that we knew our family wanted 2) It was a lot less expensive than buying an open bar package. While these are major points, it was a really big headache for both us and Le Reve. Our contact at La Europea was very unresponsive. We thought that he would consult us on how much and what variety we should buy for our number of guests, but basically we had to do all of the research and figure out exactly what we wanted to buy, then he gave us a price. We ended up not finalizing everything until the day before we left for Mexico, which needless to say added some anxiety that we did NOT need at that time. We ended up having a LOT of extra alcohol. We are able to return unopened bottles of liquor and red wine, however, which is nice and in my opinion the only positive to working with them. If I had to do it over again, I would either stick with the open bar despite its cost (soo much easier for everyone!) or just go to Walmart and buy everything ourselves so we would have control over the situation rather than waiting to hear back from someone. I think Walmart's prices were better, too. Flowers - Vanessa Jaimes The flowers at our wedding were absolutely gorgeous and we got so many compliments on our floral arrangements. The most beautiful part was our floral arch which I actually didn't get to see until AFTER the wedding because it started pouring the minute my bridal processional was set to begin and they couldn't move the arch inside Yes, everyone was seated and waiting for me and had to make a mad dash inside!! But anyways, Vanessa did an incredible job. I think she gave us more flowers (for centerpieces, cocktail table arrangements, etc.) than we were supposed to get which was really amazing (thanks Vanessa!). My only one complaint is that my bouquet did not have one of the flowers (hydrangea) I requested (or if it did, it was such a small quantity that it was unnoticeable). Hydrangea is expensive in Mexico so I was a little annoyed, but Vanessa more than over-delivered on everything else so I really cannot complain. The most amazing thing about Vanessa is that she was able to take our ideas, our pictures we shared - and make the final result EVEN better than we could have imagined. She also provided some smaller centerpieces for our rehearsal dinner which were beautiful as well, and also less expensive than other local florists we had quote the job. I am really gad we worked with Vanessa and would highly recommend her to future brides. Decor - Planner 1 Almost all of our decor was DIY (napkins, table overlays, etc - we brought 9 suitcases with us!) or provided by Le Reve, but we hired Planner 1 to install 20 star lanterns hanging from the trees around the pool. They had the best price for this and Fernanda was very easy to work with - very responsive and kind. It is probably due to the availability of electrical outlets, but all the lanterns ended up hanging from 2 of the 6 trees, but they looked great nonetheless. I did see a few stars randomly sitting on the floor (unlit) in the corner of the dancefloor which surprised me, but we were happy enough with the others. We did a lot of research on decor before deciding to bring things with us, and overall we thought Planner 1 had the best options and "taste" in decor and would highly recommend them to future brides. Minister - Enrique Monroy Enrique is such a kind man and we were so happy we found him for our wedding. We also had a legal ceremony, but basically the judge was called up just to collect our signature and fingerprints, and Enrique did everything else. A few of our guests also commented how great he was. He also works with the Palace chain I think and he is a VERY busy man - we were lucky to hire him at the last minute. DJ and Lighting - Plug in Audiovisual Andrew and I are NOT dancers - In fact we spent the majority of the reception far away from the dancefloor - so the DJ/music was not important to us. Our wedding coordinator at Le Reve (Arlenis) recommended Agustin from Plug in Audiovisual and we blindly booked him with no research or comparisons. He was AMAZING! All of our guests were raving how great he was for the dancing portion of the night. We basically gave him a list of all the dance songs to play (we got requests from our guests in advance) but he was incredible mixing and transitioning, etc. Everyone said it was an awesome dance party, which was especially surprising since we are not dancers! The company also provided all of our lighting, which included the reception and dance floor areas. They were even able to create a custom gobo with our monogram to project on the dance floor, which turned out AWESOME. Our photographers got a great shot of it, and as soon as we have the photos back I'll post it! Arlenis mentioned a long time ago that they have an exclusive partnership with him for weddings at Le Reve so unless that has changed I'm not sure you can book him elsewhere, but he is great. She said he does about 90% of the weddings at Le Reve. If I had to do it over again, I would stick with the open bar package - In fact, Le Reve has informed us that they will not be doing corkage anymore for future weddings. That's it for now, please let me know if you have any questions or if you need contact info!

We ordered the "Too Much Fun, Too Much Sun" packaging from www.papermart.com. They are actually called "pillow boxes" and ours are the frosted white variety. The labels are from Paper Source and we printed them at home. Hope that helps!!

Here are some more pictures of recent DIY projects: Simple place cards with meal choice: Fish, Steak or Chicken? (These match the pictures on our RSVP cards) Some framed signs we made.... for our guest book, cigar bar, and alcohol bar respectively.... Up close of one of the frames. It's hard to see in the picture but there is a transparent background design on the picture.

I wanted to share something with all of you. I was starting to stress out about our ceremony script and exactly what would be said on our wedding day. Although we are having a legal wedding in Mexico, with a judge, we decided to hire a minister as well who would hopefully guide us and make suggestions for this part. Our hotel (Le Reve) put us in touch with Enrique Monroy who is an ordained minister with experience in religious as well as non-denominational ceremonies. While we haven't met him, we are SO excited to be working with him. Here's why: the entire ceremony script, except for a reading (sonnet by Pablo Neruda) that we asked him to add, will be a complete surprise! He gave us the general outline but then said the following: "We prefer not to give you the actual words of the ceremony, to maintain the special glow of surprise & unknown, we always prefer that the bride & groom listen to the words right at the moment they are getting married, and not before. Trust me, you will not regret it." I get goosebumps just thinking how special this will be. I know this isn't for everyone, especially since your wedding day is such an important day, but me and my fiance are SO excited about and energized by this! His words say it all - it will maintain the special glow of surprise and unknown. I just wanted to throw it out there that is IS possible to have a great ceremony without stressing over every word of the script. Trust me, I spent hours in the ceremony script thread, and there are some amazing ones out there, but it doesn't have to be difficult. Think about it!! I will post a review after the wedding on how it actually went - I hope it's as special as we are expecting.

We bought the coasters on eBay from a seller named drivingbo­ardgamer. They have a bunch of different quantities available at great prices!

Thanks! We are going to set up the cigar bar away from our indoor reception space on the beach bar at Le Reve. We are just going to lay out the cigars we ordered on the bar along with all of the supplies - matches/lighters, cutter (not sure if that's the right word?) etc. We aren't having a cigar roller - ours is pretty low key. We are also making a cute framed sign which details what kinds of cigars you can choose from - as soon as it's done I'll post a picture!

I agree Matt!! I tried to start a thread with our DIY projects but it won't let me (maybe the pics are too large?) Anyways, I was able to upload pictures our projects to the album in my profile. Check them out for DIY inspiration on menus, welcome bags, cocktail straws, coasters, and matches. Pics of our invitations are also in there as well. http://www.bestdestinationwedding.com/gallery/album/view/id/35736/user_id/42691

Our wedding is coming up FAST and my fiance and I have started on our DIY projects. I wanted to share them here for ideas and inspiration! Let me know if you have any questions or are looking for sources - we found all the materials online for very reasonable prices. We re-purposed the stamp to make custom coasters for the welcome cocktail party!