FireyNurse

Hey! No worries! I loved every minute of our planning and wedding, I love sharing the details to help others! I just called the concierge and said I had my dress to be cleaned, you fill in the regular dry cleaning card and they send it away to be cleaned and then deliver it to your room about a day later. I even took more pics in my dress recently at home for a friends portfolio and because we were back in Mexico for our anniversary So i even took my dress back down and had it cleaned again!! Lol! This time it was 313 pesos or $24 us! Such a great deal! If I could get my junk together I'd consider doing all my dry cleaning there prior to coming home because its SOOOOO cheap!

Hey ladies! Glad to see some people on here actively planning! I miss my planning time! I was married almost exactly a year ago at the Barcelo! If you have any questions feel free to ask! We stayed at the palace and with the exception of about 2 other rooms everyone else in our party stayed at the Tripical/colonial. We spent a ton of time away from the Palace for our first week with our friends and the entire complex is actually really all amazing! Our date as Nov 28, Victoria was our planner. We had 22 people and went with the strawberry package because having a reception in the beach was a MUST for us. It did threaten rain a little on our wedding day (forecasted 40% chance of showers) and after I was nearly in tears over not wanting to be in a banquet hall due to rain we were offered the pool activity area Palapa. The grill receptions are beautiful! Our ceremony was in the gazebo and our reception on coco beach (the beach in front of the coco bar at the palace), our other option was coral beach and it is also beautiful! It's a little higher up from the water with bushes, not really on the beach with the waves lapping at the shore sort of thing. Also, as I saw your centrepiece, if you are looking at light weight options, I thought I'd share what we did. I wanted the beads in vases until I found a lighter weight example and copied it. It sounds odd but we used glass vases and then placed coloured cellophane in it (purple was our color) and then filled it with water and had a purple led light attached to an organza flower on top to illuminate it. Turned out perfect! Here's a pic: The teal bottle was our guest book message in a bottle thing, not a part of our centre pieces. Anyways, happy planning! Don't take anything all that crazy seriously because its soooo easy to change anything when you are at the resort, those planners are amazing and work miracles! Also...dry clean your dress prior to leaving, mine was big with ruffles and stuff and it cost 112 pesos or approximately $10 Canadian and it came out looking 100% perfectly brand new!! And it sure beats paying the crazy costs at home for cleaning. I'm happy to answer any questions if I can help!!

A What do you mean by sister resort, like Tropical/Colonial or Beach/Caribe? We were at the palace and our wedding stuff was all at the palace but our photographers were all booked on to stay at the Beach/Caribe because its the cheapest, they are allowed to be at the palace for the wedding events without a charge.

Hey! I had my hair and makeup done at the spa there, my girls also had their hair done, all of our hair was done very well, we were all happy with it and it help up well. My makeup was great too, I showed them some pics on my iPad and they did a fantastic job. They use am makeup, I brought my own eye lashes and mascara though and they put it all on perfectly! It lasted very well even through the heat! Here's a shot where you can sort of see my makeup close up.

We didn't do apps or cocktail hour, there was 2 hours between the ceremony and reception and we told the guests they could freshen up or just hang out and wait, apparently everyone just stood at the pool area bar (Coco bar I think it's called) and just socialized and drank. I chose the guitar and keyboard and ended up getting the violinist and keyboard on the day of the wedding. I can't remember when it was but I did choose the song cannon in D to be played and told the coordinator. If you are choosing something you think they might now know let your coordinator know sooner than later is my suggestion. I only chose the one song for me and said they could play whatever for the seating part and bridal party and It all sounded wounderful by the time I heard it on the video we got! They definitely made sure there was a difference in sound between the party and then my walk beginning.

We had the strawberry package and had ceviche to start, lobster bisque soup next, surf and turf for the main and the dessert was white chocolate raspberry something I think! I didn't eat any of the food choices as I had the vegetarian options instead but I heard nothing but amazing reviews of all parts of the dinner, even desert! The food was apparently absolutely incredible! For our cake we had the coconut flavour, we went with just the one that came in the package and it was more than enough (no one ate it), enough that we ate it for a week while keeping it in our room fridge! Haha!

We paid for our photographer to stay two nights so we did it the day after the wedding. Yup, we stayed up real late and then did a half a day TTD the next day and the pics turned out amazing! He picked us up at the entrance to the Palace and we went to a cenote across the hiway. If you are doing it off site it wouldn't really matter what day you did it because there would be no resort fees involved.

When I was married there they didn't care where the vendor was from, if they are on the property doing some type of business they either have to be guests for 2 or 3 nights minimum (depending on the time of year) OR you pay the fee. We had a photographer and a videographer and so we had to either pay two fees or get two rooms for two nights each, the two rooms for 2 nights each was just over $600 total so this was much more worth it!

We chose the keyboard and bass I think it was, there was an issue the day of so we had the keyboard and violinist and as much as I didn't notice much on the day of the wedding when I watched our video it sounded beautiful! I told them I didn't have one but that I wanted round tables with approximately 4-6 at each table. They were ok with me having no plan, I think they ask in case people have one.

Someone commented on my pic but I am not sure how to reply to their question on it on the mobile site so here I am posting it here and hopefully she sees it. These are my shoes...they were a really soft leather and the bottom is actually cork, and they were amazingly comfortable, so much so I wore them all day and night!! The brand is Flurries

We also did this and our people were split between the Colonial and Palace. We had welcome booklets for everyone with pictures of the people and who they were and a place for people to write in room #s. It seemed we often sat in the same area on the beach early in the day so people always knew where to find one another. The communicating with each other was a big concern for me before getting there but once we were there there were no issues. It seems like you are always telling people where you are going and what's happening but it works itself out

There's also a little market type thing on the Barcelo property, I know when I was planning about a year ago lots of brides were talking About buying their stuff there. I'm not sure what the price difference is between there to Playa Del Carmen's 5th Ave but my guess is stuff will be cheaper and you can haggle more in town. The Town is great to go to for an afternoon of walking around too!

I can't say that I know the name of it but I do know its not Coral beach (its down in front of the restaurants at the Palace) or Coco Beach (its in front of the pool area and two buildings of the Palace) or Playa Azul (it's the complete opposite of Coral and is located way down by the Beach/Caribe)...if you have a list of beaches you may be able to knock 3 off and figure it out by process of elimination.

The fee for the justice of the peace must be in cash, everything else can be paid by credit card. We paid with our Canadian visa with no issue, the exchange rate we got was fantastic too. There was confusion when they kept hitting ok and handing me the machine and I could read it so I would hit ok then it would say declined. The girl didn't speak much English so she just said 'declined, new card' and so after the wedding coordinator got involved I realized when they handed it to me I was to just put in my pin and then hit ok! All was good after that! Another thing we did in cash was we tipped the coordinator and staff who served us with cash. Cheers!

W We didn't so OOT bags, too much to carry down and expensive to do, we did have favors, ill put a pic here, we purchased the bottles from michaels with a 50% off coupon, had sand and purchased the seashells online, they were super inexpensive to make. We printed the cards ourselves too. And I'm not sure who was asking earlier, if it was you or not but here are our centrepieces. We brought them down ourselves, they are 2.99 vases from ikea, purple cellophane paper crinkled in them, filled with water. Then I made organza flowers and hot glued them to purple led lights (also bought for 50% off at michaels). Here are the centrepieces: And as for the playlist, thanks, our guests were very impressed by the song choices and we were happy with the way the dance party took off! It was a bit of work, but so worth it in the end as it saved us a TON of money!

Yup the big lights were set up with everything, no charge, or else we'd have been in the dark! As I said, the wrapped trees were never charged to us either. The Bride and Groom signs I actually made myself just printed the words on paper from word and put them in the frames, then hot glued our coloured ribbons on them!

Here are a few pics of our reception area, people can walk by but really we had no concern with people seeing us, we never noticed people in the darkness if they were watching. They aren't great but show a little bit And if you see the pic back a page or so it shows our cake and you can see the tree wrapped in lights. We weren't given any option either, just placed at coral beach. The day of the wedding when they told me if it rained they'd move is inside I almost cried! I was begging for different options and was told Coco beach was available if I wanted it. It's immediately on front of the Coco bar at the pool of the Palace. As for the picture where we are toasting, that was after we walked back down the aisle from the gazebo and it's kind of an open area in the downstairs of the lobby.