TheWolferts

Maybe walk into your reception to one of the songs??

What if you walked down the isle to Marry Me and then used the Bruno Mars song as your recessional music? We went with a traditional song walking down the isle, but then used Amos Lee's "Sweet Pea" for our recessional.

I went through a similar thing with people whom I thought were good friends, really werent when it came down to it, so I know how sad you can feel when that happens. I got married about 10 months ago and it still stings me that some people acted they way that they did, but I can assure you that you will still have a wonderful wedding and that you will still have very happy memories associated with your wedding and friends that are able to make it and are supportive of your DW. It seems like you have a great fiance who really cares about making you happy, so yes, it's unfortunate that you have lost some "friends", but you are gaining a "new" friend for life

I felt the same way for our wedding, so if guests were ignoring their invitations that specifically told them if they got to bring a date, we were just going to tell them that we understand that this is a vacation for them and are certainly welcome to bring a guest; however, due to space limitations at our wedding events, we will be unable to accomodate everyone's guests. When it actually came down to it, if people weren't in a serious relationship, they didnt manage to convince a random friend or casual date to travel abroad with them, so we didnt actually have to tell anyone this.

They only allow 2 people to ride on your cart with you to the ceremony site, so my MOH and mother rode with me. I met my dad there, which worked out fine because he was able to escort his gf of 5 years to her seat before he walked me down the isle. Plus, they literally pick you up 5 minutes before your ceremony, so you pull up, hop off, and start walking down the isle!

I believer the voucher amount is calculated by how many rooms you book and by the lowest number of nights stayed. We had 17 rooms book for 4 or more night, but had 3 rooms only book for 3 nights, so we were given $750 towards our one year anniversary stay. Had the 3 nighters stayed for another night, we would have received $1,000 towards our anniversary stay. To use the voucher, you have to stay in a qualifying room for at least 3 nights. We are doing 4 nights, using our $750 voucher, but are still paying about $800 per person because you are required to stay in their most expensive room levels to use the voucher. I believe their anniversary stay vouchers have since changed, so I would check with your WC to find out the specifics.

My husband and I are doing just received our email reminder regarding our final payment due date for our 1 year anniversary trip!!! I cannot believe that is coming up in a little over 2 months!!! We are using our vouchers and discount from getting married at EDR to take a 5 day anniversary trip to El Doradoa Seaside Suites! I know it's quite a bit smaller, but we are so looking forward to getting pampered El Dorado style!

AllieH- I am pretty sure that there are restrictions of Royale guests using poolside chairs and swimup bars on the Casitas side. They generally dont enforce it, but I believe they can. I have read reviews that of people being asked to leave the Casitas pools, but I believe the resort only used that card because the guests were being too rowdy.

If I were you, I would try to wait to book a massage for someone else until you get there. Their Spa staff walk around the pools and beaches with really great specials. I was lounging by the pool with my fiance and a spa person offered us a 1 hour massage with a facial for 2 people for a total of $150! I think that option is almost double if you reserve it ahead of time with the hotel or your WC.

I would double check on the location as to where you can have your "reservation" as part of your package. I know in the past, the reservation is included in all of their packages, but they only hold the dinner at one restaurant, El Cocotal. La Isla is a rather small, but very popular dinner location. We stayed on the Casitas side and made reservations one night for La Isla and still had a 45 minute wait. El Cocotal is a great place for dinner, but is the largest of all of their restaurants, so they typically do their reservations at that location only.

Dont worry about what the weather forecast says! Weather channel forecasted a week's worth of rain while we were scheduled to be ther in May 2012. It even continued to say rain when we were down there... there was zero rain and barely any clouds! I think because of the tropical climate, the predict it as a possibility every day, but we didnt get any rain.

I was really stuck on what flowers I wanted for my BMs as well and finally settled on matching their bouquets to the large hanging bouquets we had on the alter. I believe they were all white stargazer lilies. I had asked for the greenery to be sea grass only to tie in to my bouquet; however, I was horrified when I saw that they used that cheapy green fern filler crap instead. Also, I begged them to import white calalilies and they refused saying that they did not want to risk the flowers turning brown in transit and then having a pissed bride. We used white rose pedals in our centerpieces at the reception and those had started to turn brown by the time the reception started, so I have to believe them about shipping the flowers. My cousin got married at EDR and had a gorgeous bouquet of pink and orange flowers. Her BMs just had smaller versions of her bouquet, so maybe you could go that route if you have already settled on what you want.

We had our gazebo flowers moved to our reception and placed on the entry table with our place "cards" (my mom painted sandollars and my grandfather made us the tray). I had wanted callalillies in my bouquet because I think they are so classy and my parents used them for her wedding flower... but they were "out of season" so I picked white Iris and sea grass. I loved my bouquet, but for some reason I expected it to be bigger.

We had 40 guests and 7 tables at our reception, so centerpieces added up quickly! We ended up just using flower pedals, vases and floating candles. I believe they were $120 each, which is kind of pricey, but we did not want to have to fly down with 21 tall glass vases, so we felt like it was worth the price, especially given the high prices they had with full flower center pieces.

We opted to pay for the carrot cake (size was for 6 people) and I am really glad we did it. Yes, it was expensive and was barely eaten but I cannto imagine not having done the traditional cake cutting and feeding each other. Some of the pictures taken during the cake cutting are my favorite from the reception, so I am glad we got the cake.

Guacamayas has a show every night I believe at 9pm. They had a wonderful Cirque du Soleil-esque show, a karioke night which I found quite entertaining, and a few otehrs that we all enjoyed. After teh show is over, the bands or DJ tend to take over so dont count Guacamayas out for entertainment!

jnitschke- I liked the first one a lot! Are you bring your own faux flower petals?? We bought flower petals through Lomas and I think they pulled them from the roses wayyy to early because unfortunatey many of them were brown by the time our reception started If I were to do it again, I think I might go the faux route, especially because they are white. Other color flowers would probably fair better.

We planned a "Black and White Party" where we invited all of our guests to meet at the martini bar after dinner on their arrival day. We requested everyone where black and white, no color, so we had the feel that we were a group at a non-private location. I thought it worked out great! People liked the idea of the party, we had custom cocktail napkins made for the party and the bartenders used them for our group. Word of advise, make sure that you let Valeria know that you are planning something like this (if you chose to) and she can let the hotel know that they might need additional bartenders on hand to handle the large group. We were not able to have food at the informal gathering, but everyone had just come from dinner so it wasnt a problem. We all went to see the show andn the main bar after the B&W party and it was a lot of fun!

We opted for a small cutting cake and paid to upgrade to carrot cake... it was great!!! My cousin got married at EDR and had vanilla cake that was very dry, so maybe since we had a custom flavor, they made it more fresh!

No a good friend of ours was our photographer, but my cousin used Claudia Photo and her pics were amazing!

We splurged on a videographer and I am glad we did! We used Cancun Wedding Video (an approved vendor) and from what I have watched of our hour long DVD, I love it! I say "from what I have watched" because unfortunately my father in law passed away shortly after the wedding, so my husband is still too emotional to watch and I want to watch it in its entirety for the first time with him. I am hoping that in time, my husband can have more positive than negative thoughts about the wedding, which I know will be hard and take time since his dad was in such poor health at our wedding. That being said, I am sure that once my husband feels like he can watch the video, he will be glad that his dad was able to walk his mom down the isle and that we have it on video. Here is a link to a highlight video done by the same videographer we used (this is not our wedding, but its a wedding at el dorado seaside). As you can tell, the video produced is much more than just a point and shoot type of thing. They really did a great job of documenting our entire day and have some great voice overs of my husband talking about how we met and what he loves about me. http://cancunweddingvideo.com/dorado/lacey_logan/