TheWolferts

Well we found a groupon actually to a Secrets resort for $1300 per person including flight for mid July, but I am very wary about the deal. I just have to wonder what is wrong with the resort that they would be able to offer such a deal for a 5 night stay during peak wedding season. I just dont want to take the deal and then get down there and they are doing heavy construction or the pool is being worked on LOL. The problem with Europe is the getting there. The flights are outrageous!

I think the default color is blue. I believe my cousin's Cocotal menu was blue as well and her wedding colors were orange and pink. We decided on a drink that we named Carribbean Crush. It had coconut rum, blue curaco and pineapple juice. Very tasty!

Here is the Cocotal menu they provide:

Jill- We had a signature drink at our cocktail hour. Valeria had to check with the hotel to make sure they had all of the ingredients to make our requested drink. They werent able to make our first choice, but they confirmed our second choice and even made one, took a picture, and sent it to us to make sure it was the color we wanted! The cocotal menu card is pretty plain. I will try to drum up a picture of it and post it here.

Murmel, I saw that you got married at Azul Sensatori. How does it compare to EDR? I know kids are allowed at the Azul resorts, but I thought I read something about there being an adults only section to the resort. Is this true?

My father in law passed away this past Saturday which in itself is terrible, but we were also scheduled to go on our honeymoon in 10 days. My husband doesnt think he would be ina good place mentally to honeymoon and I completely agree, but now we are stuck trying to find a place to go, preferably not in Mexico, later in July. The place we were originally booked (thank goodness we got insurance) is sold out that week, so we looked at our second choice Secrets Wild Orchid. If we book through DW.com, the cheapest/worst room is $3216, with the mid level room being $3966. If we book on the Secrets website, we pay $2900 for the mid level room, but there is a chance that we could get there and they could move us to a lower level room or even the sister resort next door. I kinda think we should take the chance and book through the site because the worst that can happen is we pay the $2900 and the demote us to the worse level room, so we will still be paying less than DW.com quoted us for that room level. Plus we have the chance of getting the better room. So 1) what is everyone doing for their honeymoon? and 2) What would u do in this situation?

Thanks!! Will do!

heydenay- I paid for our bridal's party's dresses and got them each a small Coach clutch (the outlets are amazing! I got 4 clutches originally $85+ for about $35. My husband paid for his guys Kennth Cole suits from Macy's, so he didnt get them anything else. I think the excursions are plenty! Thats such a great idea, because who really needs more stuff?! I am definitely a fan of gifting experiences over things. You and 2 other people will have transportation to the ceremony location, literally 5 minutes before your ceremony starts. Everyone else is forced to try and hitch a ride on a passing cart. It was about 50/50 for us finding a cart when we needed one. I had read on this board that one Bride and Groom paid a shuttle driver a good tip and he drove the bridal party all around to take photos all over the resort... we tried this and he basically drove away as soon as we handed him the tip... We had the onsite WCs set everything up, so I am not sure how early you can arrive. I would ask them ahead of time though because there might be another wedding at your location right before yours.

Just got some of our pics back! Here are some of my favs!

Hi Iberostar brides! My husband and I got married a couple of weeks ago at the El Dorado Royale in Riviera Maya, Mexico. At the end of our stay, the resort gave us a coupon book that is good to use on different resort ammenities for up to a year in case we make a trip back soon. For any brides that have already gotten married at the Grand this year, does the Grand do anything similar? If so and you already know for sure that you will not be using them, would anyone mind passing their coupons off to us if you arent going to use them?

I think traditionally the best man holds and distributes the tips during the the reception. Our best man did that as well, though with all the shots they were doing, that would explain how we ended up tipping the wait staff more than we intended!

We tipped the DJ $50, the wait staff at our reception $70 (that was on mistake, we meant to tip $50), the wait staff at our rehearsal dinner $80 (the same wait staff worked both the rehearsal and reception), the videographer $50, tried to tip our photographer $70, but she was a good friend of ours and wouldnt accept. Our minister was also a good friend of ours and wouldnt accept a tip. We fully expected to tip our WC; however, with the issues we had, we ended up not tipping them, as not only were there mistakes, some of the WC staff, not all, just had undesirable attitudes. I got the feeling that they expected to be tipped though. I tipped my hair/makeup stylist $20 because you already have to pay the 10% service fee at salon. Hope this helps!

For our rehearsal dinner at Toucanes, I got them to include the rest of the decor set up in the $150 set up fee for the lanterns. I did the math again on our cost per guest and it was actually almost $6 per guest for all of the events.

We held 32 rooms and had to put down $6,000 that would be refunded by the time we had to pay for the reception and other events. If we didnt book those rooms, we could reduce the rooms down to 23 rooms held and then incurred a $50 fee for each room we did not book under 23. We ended up owing $150. Trying to decide how many rooms to hold, especially knowing that we were charged if we didnt fill them, kept me up many nights! We had quite a few people that we thought without a doubt would be there but various things, like couples getting engaged and needing to put the money to their wedding/HM and my cousin having a baby 2 weeks before my wedding ruled them out as well.

Allie, I think she is quoting you a high price because they charge a flat fee of $150 to hang the lanterns at Toucanes. We had lanterns hung as well, but perhaps the difference in the amount of guests we have is making the price per person different. How many guests are you having?

I just got a response back from Valeria and apparently our onsite coordinator, Martha, reported back to Lomas Corporate that the DJ did not help her manage the flow of the reception. They also told me that its a common thing to happen when the DJ doesnt have another person helping them... first off, DJ Doremixx did have another guy with him helping him quite a bit from what I noticed and my cousin used a "resort approved" DJ for their wedding and it was one guy that basically didnt MC at all and messed up all of the wedding party's walk in songs. It was kinda funny though since they had picked"Kung Foo Fighting" for an asian friend of theirs to be introduced to and their spanish friend ended up being introduced to it haha. Now that I think about it, the DJ acted very annoyed while at the reception, yet was sooo nice during our meeting. I wonder if his demeanor was different because he had a run in with the WC staff prior to the reception? They obviously dont make it very easy for outside vendors to come onto the resort property for weddings. I think Valeria is making a point to say this because 1) she knows I post on this board and 2) they dont want to take responsibility for actually running the event themselves. Regardless, i dont care whose job it was to "run the reception", I just know I shouldnt have had to run it and I would think that if they had questions about who would be running it, the onsite coordinator should have asked me or our DJ who was going to be in charge of it and she could have shown up at our meeting with the DJ that was right outside of the WC's office. If it's not the WCs job to handle the timeline and events at the reception, than whose is it? What if I a bride didnt have a DJ??

Now that I obviously dont need my wedding dress any longer, I am thinking about getting it cleaned and selling it... though I have very mixed feelings about it and I dont know why! I will definitely ever need to wear it again and it does take up a lot of space in my closet, but I also get really sad when I think about not having it in my closet I bought it new for around $1350 and from what I have seen on this message board and others, it has been selling used for about $800. The cleaning looks like its going to cost around $250. While I know I wont make a ton of money off it, part of me thinks it would feel good to sell if to someone that may not have the budget to buy the gown brand new, but loves the dress as much as I did. What else is everyone doing with their dress after the wedding?

We invited about 120 people and had 38 people actually come. About 10 months out, I was freaking out that we had so many people that said they were coming and wanted to bring a date (at one point, 72 people told us they were definitely coming)... when it came down to actually buying the plane ticket and paying for the room in full, guests started to pull out of coming down for our wedding. It was obviously a little upsetting having been to many of our guests' weddings (in much less fun locations and for only slightly less in cost, i might add). It also got upsetting when guests that told us they couldnt afford the trip, then proceeded to post on Facebook about trips they just booked to other locations. We even had some people book trips to tropical locations and even Mexico after they told us they couldnt go to our wedding because of cost. It's hard to not feel hurt that our wedding wasnt their priority, but we were very appreciative of the friends and family that could make the trip. Overall, do not worry that your wedding will be too big because of people verbally telling you they are coming. I got to the point where I wouldnt let myself get my hopes up until the guest bought a plane ticket and had been paid in full.

Our photographer was a good friend of ours and she came down with her husband for a few days before our wedding, so she had plenty of time to walk around and scope out places to take pics. My husband and I also just noticed places around the resort during our stay there prior to the wedding and made sure that if we wanted a picture at that location that we told our photographer. The main areas that we took pics were by the main lobby, they have a bunch of palm tress scattered around the path, so we took bridal party pics there. We also took bridal party pics actually standing on the rocks near the white beach gazebo. I cant wait to see those pics! Our photographer said the waves looked amazing splashing up behind us. I took pics with my BMs and family underneath the Casitas archway (the one not on the beach). It was very shaded and the light came through the trees, making it look so pretty! My husband and I did some "no look" pictures before our wedding... meaning he didnt want to see me before the wedding so we went to the stone bridge behind the lobby and he stood with his back to the other side of the bridge. I then walked up behind him and put my arms around him ,but he wasnt allowed to see me. My mom came with it said that the big grins we had on our faces was so cute! Overall, the entire resort is gorgeous so I wouldnt be worried about finding beautiful places for pics!

Woops, forgot to mention that we did meet with Ivan earlier in the week and I thought he seemed very well-organized and professional. It was almost like he was having a bad day on ourw edding day.

I'm hoping whoever they send for your wedding is a bit more enthused to be there as well! I did not need to bring any CDs since he had all of the songs we requested in his library, so I just made sure to fill out his spreadsheet that he gave us that detailed all of the songs we wanted to hear, so he could be sure to have them ready. I have heard that he does have the capability to download songs on the spot if he doesnt have them. Quote: Originally Posted by ElDorado2012 Oh, boy - we have DJ Doremixx booked for our reception. We aren't going to actually have Ivan, apparently he was already booked for another venue, so I guess I'll just have to pray that whoever we end up with will perform better than it sounds like Ivan did for you... That is such a bummer that you had a negative experience with him. Did you bring CDs with you that you gave the DJ at your pre-wedding meeting? Did you actually meet with Ivan at that meeting, or was it someone else?

So I heard back from Valeria regarding the issues we had with our onsite WC staff and they are going to refund about $105 for the issues we had with our cocktail hour. So yay for that! Secondly, in regards to my having to manage our entire wedding, our onsite coordinator basically blamed the DJ for not helping her out with maintaining the timeline I had outlined for both her and the DJ to follow... regardless of whose job it was, I know it shouldnt have been mine, so Im still a little peeved about that. I have even had quite a few guests say that they noticed how much I had to instruct the DJ and WC staff. I am really kinda bummed about how our DJ worked out because all read TONS of reviews about DJ Doremixx and I have to say, he didnt quite live up to those reviews in my opinion. He mainly looked bored and annoyed that I kept having to come up to him... and I was annoyed that he wasnt running or MCing the reception as we had discussed or how other brides had raved about. I had read something on this message board about a "fake" DJ Doremixx that has been advertising himself as the real DJ Doremixx, but was in fact not the real deal and wasnt DJing up to a very high standard. I almost wonder if we were duped?? Third, they claim that the desert we were served was in fact what we ordered... which is odd to me because I ordered something that had 3 different parts to it and I had assumed that it was the same dessert my cousin had at her EDR reception, which was supposed to be a small, long plate with 3 different mini desserts. Instead, what was served was a chocolate mound of gelatenous pudding. I had a few bites and I did not taste any of the mango coulis or creme brule, so I am still looking into what they served us vs what we ordered. I am trying to find a pic of the desert they served, so hopefully our photographer got a pic!

The onsite wedding coordinator will work with your DJ and bridal party to have everyone lined up. We did give the DJ and our coordinator the order and names of each couple we wanted introduced, as well as their "walk out music". Our bridal party's walkout music was great, but our music was wayyy off and our entrance was soooo awkward! If I were you, just make sure your coordinator and DJ have a list of your wedding party names, order of introduction and music and it should go great!

Allie- Our total set up charges for the rehearsal dinner, ceremony, cocktail hour and reception ended up charging me about $5.50 per guest.What are they quoting you? At first I thought it would be nice to save some money and have friends and family take care of some of the set up, but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted myself and our guests to not have to worry about setting anything up, and I think it was definitely worth it to just show up and have everything ready to go.

No problem! It was pretty warm at Toucanes, but there was still a breeze. My fiance told me he was glad that we were having our reception indoors during the rehearsal dinner, but I have to say, the Salon Dorado seemed even warmer because it's a large space to keep cool and the waiters and guests are constantly going in and out of the doors so the minimal a/c in Salon Dorado escaped quit quickly Knowing that now, I would have opted for an outdoor wedding since it felt just as warm and not nearly as pretty as Toucanes. When is your wedding?