ironman

There were definitely bottles of booze in there, but I couldn't find any mix anywhere. It wasn't clear if you poured your own and then asked for pop/soda or something from a server? There was also open bottles of wine and champagne you could help yourself to.

Perhaps you could do your dinner in the buffet for no added cost? They could section off a portion for you? And then use your reception time for speeches/dancing etc?? Maybe they'd let you use your dinner for 25 for a rehearsal dinner or something.

We brought down our own photographer, so we decided to use the resort photographer during our cocktail hour only (so there isn't any bride/groom photos since we were off taking pictures elsewhere). Except for the few I'll post below, all of the photos are very posed family/group shots. I'm still happy we used this service during cocktail hour, rather than skipping it entirely (since we couldn't swap it for anything). Our cocktail hour was in the Orange Lounge. Another thing I should add is that we got the photo book in the mail last week. I found the colours in the book to be quite off. All the photos had a bit of a yellowish/orangeish hue. Did anyone else notice this?

We brought a photographer down with us and she charged us less than this! I don't think you should have any problem finding someone under this budget. We did a symbolic ceremony and I was concerned about not being able to understand the officiant, so we asked one of my brothers to do it! I loved it, as it was so much more personal and we got to write the entire ceremony ourselves. We purchased our lanterns from justartifacts as well. We also bought the LED lights for them from the same website, and in Castaways the lights made a HUGE difference. I've posted some photos below with the dimensions. I have no idea where these originally came from though. That is very detailed! I just got a bag of petals and let my flower girl do the rest! We had no luck swapping things either. The only thing they did offer for us was for the private shuttle to bring us to a different resort where we went for a mini-honeymoon after, rather than back to the airport. We didn't use the videographer at all, and since we brought down our own photographer we had the package photographer take pictures during cocktail hour, since we were off taking our own photos. After seeing the resort photographers pictures I'm happy we brought our own down with us.

Our ceremony was at 3 PM, and I went for my hair at 10:00 AM. I wish I went even earlier so there was more time for getting ready/before the ceremony photos and lunch. Definitely extend the reception. We paid $700 and something for 39 adults, but it was 100% worth it.

It took me awhile to figure out that images and attachments need to be done differently. Adding images to posts is not as straightforward as it was previously, but I've figured it out now (by uploading and posting using the "Image Gallery")

REPOSTING THIS WITH IMAGES, RATHER THAN ATTACHMENTS! HOPE YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING NOW! Here's my planning thread! My husband and I were married in December 2013 at the Now Jade Riviera Cancun Resort & Spa. I can't believe how quickly our engagement and wedding planning went by. I enjoyed it, but certainly felt stressed at some times! I hope this info well help some of you lovely ladies (and possibly men!) while planning your destination wedding. Enjoy every moment! Save the Date Chris and I are both quite athletic and have done many events and races together since meeting. We thought it would be fun to take an old race bib and edit it to say “Mr and Mrs”. We used Wedding Paper Divas to make these postcards. (http://www.weddingpaperdivas.com/). The website was great to use, we loved many of the templates and they looked great! We sent out a further reminder when we neared the end of our group booking deadline. In an attempt to not totally be annoying and nag our guests, we tried to include a cheerful (cheesy) photo to help make it a bit more fun of a reminder. Here’s the fun photo we emailed out. I believe this was early April and there was still a ton of snow where we were living! Website We used iWeb to make our wedding website. We bought a cheap ".com" to use for forwarding and used the free storage that our internet provider gives us as the host. We sent out the website information on our Save the Date cards, but I don’t actually know how well the website ended up being used. Invitations Again, we used Wedding Paper Divas for our invitations and response cards. My fiancé and I are both huge in to sports (him cycling and running, myself triathlon), and we’ve done a many long bike rides together over the past few years (I’ve done two ironman triathlons since we’ve been together!). We thought the tandem bike for our invitations was a perfect representation! Looking back, I wish we had just done online RSVPs, rather than spending money on return postage for the response cards. It may be more traditional to do paper response cards, but I’d totally recommend to skip this “tradition” for your DW. I hummed and hawed a lot about the wording – which is why I’ll post them below. Hopefully seeing what we decided to write will help someone else with their planning! Pre-Trip Mailer Luggage Tags I purchased 50 clear “Badge Holders” from amazon.com (Advantus Proximity Badge Holders, Vertical, 2-3/8 x 4-3/8, Clear, 50 per Pack (AVT75451)) and used a Vistaprint template to make the inserts. We used a thin ribbon to tie off the tags. We had to play around a bit with the length of ribbon, as well as the knots. You don’t want them too short, or too long! Sorry for the glare! (on the front in the bottom left it says “We’re going to Mexico! December, 2013) If you live in the USA, Vistaprint has awesome groupon deals which would have saved us a bundle. I had purchased one of these, but unfortunately wasn’t able to apply it to my order in Canada. After going through the whole process of designing everything and then finding out we couldn’t use the groupon (and groupon refusing to give us a refund!), I was annoyed and just purchased them when Vistaprint was having a “sale” – although it wasn’t anywhere near as good as the groupon deal. Note – you can’t tie the ribbon too short, or your guests might have problems looping it on to their bag! Pre-Trip Brochure We used a Vistaprint template to make up our brochure. We wanted to include wording on the brochure for our guests that “their presence was the only present we hoped to receive from them”. I think I “borrowed” and edited some of the wording from previous brides. Thank you! Note – I just erased our personal contact info from the bottom left – we didn’t actually leave that spot blank! Welcome Bags Canvas Bags I ordered 30 canvas bags from CheapTotes.com for 88 cents each (http://cheaptotes.com/canvas_tote_bag_8.html). We ordered (and were charged for 30, but they ended up sending us 60! My mom is artistic, so she was happy to take this task on. She originally purchased fabric paint that she purchased from Michaels, but wasn’t satisfied with the colours, so she ended up using acrylic. The stencils came from http://www.americanhomestencils.com. Note – The price was right, but I don’t expect these 88 cent bags to be very durable, and I wouldn’t recommend washing them after the paint has been applied! Welcome Notes I purchased some bright, fun coloured blank cards from Michaels, a tandem bicycle rubber stamp and ink pad to make our own welcome cards. Inside the cards we wrote “Dear ___, The wait is finally over! Welcome to sun, sand and relaxation! We hope your week in Mexico is full of fun, adventure, new friends and great memories. Love, Kim and Chris “. Sorry for the shadows, but you get the idea! Travel Mugs We purchased 50 stainless steel travel mugs from Discount Mugs (http://www.discountm...s-with-handles/). We were able to save huge on shipping by having them sent to one of my brothers who lives in the USA. If not, shipping to Canada would have been something atrocious. I worked with Etsy seller DavetDesigns to make the labels. We ordered 56 x 3” custom made stickers for approx. $33 USD. I totally took a guess on how the 3” stickers would fit on the mugs. I recalled reading something from someone who had ordered 2” stickers and she recommended a bigger size, but of course I couldn’t find that info again when I went to order ours. I think the 3” worked out well. 2.5” would also be a fine size for the mugs that we had. We had a few issues with the stickers “rippling” when we put them on because the mug was slightly curved. Fortunately we were able to smooth these all out, and again, I think they look great and I did see people using them! One thing to keep in mind – 50 mugs takes up a LOT of suitcase room. My parents kindly brought them down for us, but we had to pay for an extra bag on the plane ($20). The style of mugs we purchased do not stack together! Other Welcome Bag “Stuff” We knew that we definitely needed something else in our welcome bags. My parents arrived to Mexico before us, so we had them stop and pick up a bottle of wine for each (adult) bag. We ended up spending about $10 on each bottle, and ensured they had a screw-top! I know we’re at an all-inclusive, but sometimes a nice glass of wine is hard to come by, especially for people who have to put kids to bed and then they sit in their rooms in the evening! For the kids we put in Angry Birds coloring books and crayons, stickers, as well as a beach ball each. When I went back to the Dollar Store to buy more beach toys/inflatables it wasn’t the right season and they didn’t have anything. If you want to make any purchases like this you might need to plan accordingly! I also found a template for a little activity book for kids. I found it at http://lovelyindeed.com/diy-activity-book-free-printable/ and printed and bound them (using ribbon) myself. It was a super cute (and easy!) DIY. Kids T-Shirts For fun (and since they were pretty cheap on Vistaprint), I used photoshop to make my own images of a Flower Girl and Ring Bearer t-shirts that I had seen online for inspiration. So, the quality of the Vistaprint t-shirts isn’t the greatest, but for a few dollars, it’s probably about what I should have been expecting! I put these in the kid-specific welcome bags that I made up for my niece and nephew. Okay... I'm going to have to take a break while I work on the rest (and I might wait until we have of our professional photos). But stay tuned, the best of the stuff from the wedding itself is still to come!!!!