FireyNurse

I am excited to see your pictures! I am interested in the Purple Finger starfish! Will you ship to Canada? Thanks and Congrats on the wedding!

Perfect! Thanks for the tip!

I put their app on my iPhone, and whenever I am in the store and need something I check for the coupons. Or before I go to the store I look online and print off the coupons I can use and that way if there's a few things we need I give coupons to the FI to use on some stuff and I use the others on other things We don't have a ton of options for craft stores in Canada, or Calgary at least so Michaels has been a lifesaver!!!

Thanks! The sand in our bottles is from Mexico too! We got engaged there and brought sand home to do message in a bottle invites but we ended up doing boarding passes instead. I searched high and low for mini bottles for the favours and Michaels ended up coming through for me (lol) with a set of 18 which I used my 40% off coupon on and got them for a steal of a deal! I am surprised at my DIY's and am so happy I decided to give them all a try!

I bet people will book, they tend to drag their feet for whatever reason! If you search around on here you will see other brides have also posted about being in the same situation with worrying about amounts of guests/no guests. The way me and my FI looked at it was WE will be there and WE matter the most! We are also not having an at home reception so this is the only time to celebrate with us, and after lots of thinking about it we were ok with it if not many people showed up. I say keep your chin up and people will eventually book, and in the mean time if you need to vent come on here and do it with us )

I have figure it out! Here they are, right side up! And our wedding favour - I love the mini starfish!

This is the stuff for our message in a bottle guest book, we will also put up a few small frames with pictures of us on the table with this set up.

I feel your pain! We sent out Save the Dates a year in advance letting people know our wedding would be destination and details would follow. We searched high and low for the best rates for our guests and sent out our invites and then after our invites went out it seemed like no one cared to book! It was SO frustrating! When is your wedding? If you went with a travel agent he way your "contract" is with the travel provider will depend on how long your prices are locked in, we didnt have a contract but FI and I had to place deposits for ourselves and then 30 trips were held at our rates for people to put deposits down within 90 days, after the 90 days prices were not guaranteed and could have gone up, maybe thats what your agent is talking about. For us $200 deposits were due by May 1st and the remaining amount due at the end of September. We had some people, including FI's mom who put down deposits within 30 minutes of the deadline. We weren't sure what was stopping people from booking either, it was the weirdest thing!

Great to know! What exactly do you mean when you say "be very clear" ? I have my alterations for my wedding dress scheduled with her (because I didn't know anyone else to do it) and its scheduled for Nov 5. I am SO nervous to have my dress altered but it has to be because it doesn't fit 100%, in general its taking in the sides, putting on a belt and doing the bustle. Thanks!

Hi Karen! I know exactly what you are going through, I have also stayed at the Grand Sunset Riviera Maya at peak season and paid hundreds less than the Palace...from what I have researched and also heard from people who are familiar with both resorts, the Barcelo Palace is much more superior to the Sunset...I will be able to speak for myself and let you know after I am back in December We are getting married on Nov 28th and decided to go with a travel agent to help with booking our group. I had a VERY hard time with the rates we received because my FI and I are the price watchers and last minute travellers typically. We have people from Calgary and Toronto coming and our rates were as follows: Calgary Palace $1719, Calgary Colonial $1483, Toronto Palace $1615, Toronto Colonial $1385. We felt giving people the option to spend more or less would be perfect and everyone seemed to really appreciate it! I know to people who are used to traveling and booking last minute online like we also do usually these prices are high,and I thought so too but I can assure you that these prices were fabulous for a group booking that is started months and months in advance! We searched high and low and with every single provider and these were the best at the time of quotes in Feb 2012. There are different ways to do your wedding booking, though, and we gave people the option to book with the group or on their own. All but 4 are coming as a part of the group. With our group we will all be on the same direct flights and will also be staying in the same buildings at the resort. Yes I know that if you search now, 40 days out from our departure date you can get a cheaper trip and I have been watching this all along and just now the prices are starting to somewhat lower for some providers and not others...also some providers no longer have any trips available on our date. To be exact, on itravel2000.com the Palace from Toronto is $1492 right now, $123 cheaper than our rate and Calgary is $1872 for the Palace, so $153 more than our rates. By doing this lat minute booking for your whole group you risk not getting rooms at the resort you want, not getting direct flights, etc. It all depends on how you want to book and have your guests book. Trust me, this is the most expensive Mexican vacation we have ever booked, but we decided we had to give a little for our wedding in order to get exactly what we wanted, which was the Barcelo! Cheers!

I can't believe I haven't seen this thread before! We are leaving for the Barcelo in just 40 days! YUP I am SO excited! Our wedding is November 28th, 2012 at 3pm at the Palace Gazebo! We have 26 people booked, most staying at the Colonial and a few at the Palace. We will be staying two weeks at the Palace! We have the Strawberry Passion package because we wanted the reception on the beach. I forget all the choices we made for our reception food but the main meal is Surf and Turf, I know that much! Our coordinator is Victoria and she's been good so far. We also booked Juan Navarro, we loved his work since the day we first saw it and he is super reasonably priced! We also booked PlayaWeddings to do videography after seeing their videos and hearing from several past destination brides who didn't have their day filmed and wished they had. Here's a tip for getting around the $500 fee (as we were going to have to pay $1000 because of the two vendors), go to Barcelo.com and sign up for mybarcelo, they send out deals every so often and you can book your vendor two nights at any of the 5 resorts there (we booked the Beach for our two photogs) and we saved ourselves $400 by doing it this way! The rooms were each $297 total for the two nights - much more manageable than the $500 for them to be there for the day! I have the centrepiece emails and the menus as well if anyone wants them I can send them to you if you give me your email. Because I am done all the planning process with the coordinator already if you have any questions about the process of that let me know and I can try to help out! I am SOOOOOO excited our wedding is getting so close! Happy Planning Palace Brides!

Hmm I am completely unsure of why all but one of my photos posted sideways....once I figure it out I will try to repost them right side up! (if anyone has suggestions on how to fix this that would help too because my pictures have never done this before) Cheers!

Our wedding is fast approaching so I am managing to get some of my DIY projects finished up! We are doing a message in a bottle guest book so this is our write up in a frame with our wedding colours as the matting on the sides: Here is the bottle and paper we will have set out: and my FAVOURITE so far are the wedding favours I'm not sure why the camera couldn't get a picture of the writing on the velum but the saying on the card is: "As precious as the oceans treasures, Too strong from anyone to measure Two hearts joined together, Sharing their lives forever!" Thank You for joining us on our special day!

I messaged the spa to confirm the appointments Victoria, our planner, had already made for us just in case and the lady from the spa is super quick to respond and great to work with! Which is great news for anyone having issues with response times! I had previously read about people giving their hair or makeup to their mom or bridesmaid/maid of honour so I asked to give my mom my mani/pedi as my nails will all be done before I get there and they said there is no transferring services. I am not sure if this is new, but she said I can get a different service for myself instead such as a facial or body treatment...not sure if extra charges are involved though - will see when I get there in 40 days!

Oh what a great idea with darker linen, I never thought of that!

Beautiful dress and totally unique! We aren't fans of the baggy linen thing either, its not my FI's style at all! Also, we wanted something more formal with no flip flops sort of thing. I can't post what I am wearing just in case the FI snoops! LOL! But for the rest of our party.... the fiancé is wearing something very similar to this with a grey vest and pants and white shirt and purple tie: and our guys are wearing grey pants the same as FI's and a purple shirt the same colour as our girls' dresses, without the vest. The vest style with no jacket over top, in my opinion, isn't for all shapes of men, but if the fit is right it looks fantastic! I have also told them that as it will be totally hot there we can casual-it-up a bit and they can roll their sleeves up, but I will be pre-rolling the sleeves so they still look clean! lol! My girls are wearing this dress http://www.henkaa.com/sakura-convertible-dress-short-plum-purple.html#.UH12MmgTs00 In case my link doesn't work here is the pic as well. It is convertible so I figured the two of them can each find a way that best flatters them and wear it that way and be comfortable. Happy Planning!