shmanderz

Oh my gosh, 19 hours and 15 minutes until we leave for the airport!!! (Not that I am counting or anything! lol). We have to be at the airport at 4:00am which is crazy but we have a direct flight so we land in Cancun in the early afternoon which is awesome These last few days have been pretty stressful and I am SO ready to get to Mexico. I had some last minute changes and my wedding planner has been pretty slow responding which was really frustrating but he got back to me today and apologized and said they have been super busy with weddings. He sent me the all-inclusive package wine lists and the upgraded wine lists if anyone is interested (PM me and I can email to you). A lot of people in my group are big wine drinkers so everyone wanted to see the selection beforehand! I also added a last minute sound system from JSAV for the Welcome Dinner tomorrow night on the Palenque Terrace from 7:00pm-10:00pm. We have a musician friend coming over from Isla Mujeres and he was just going to play an acoustic guitar set but we decided to rent a speaker, amp, and microphone set up plus the function to attach the iPod music to the speakers when he is not playing. They originally wanted $450 which was crazy but I got them to remove the AV Tech Specialist because we didn’t need any help with the system and it dropped the price to $290 after taxes and set up fees. I thought I would share with you all if you are looking for a price break on your rental from them...if you don’t think you need the person there to help run the system it can be a good money saver! Packing has been a bit of a nightmare but I think we are going to make it work. If anyone is from Canada and is flying Sunwing it is definitely worth it to upgrade to Elite Plus (The bride and groom get a free upgrade if there is availability!). In the regular seats you are only allowed 20kg checked luggage which is only about 44lbs! (Not very much considering every additional kg that you are overweight costs an additional $20 and that can add up very fast!!) But in the Elite Plus seats you are allowed 30kg total which is almost 66lbs! Another good tip with Sunwing is when booking with a group, for every 10 people booked you get 1 additional 20kg checked bag. You have to contact Sunwing and get it added onto you file and they send you a voucher because you cannot add this on at the check in counter. This has been a life saver because we have all the extra wedding stuff packed into the free extra 20kg bag and then anything left over is packed in our regular checked bag which has the extra 10kg weight due to the Elite Plus upgrade. I know that probably sounds super confusing but anyone flying with Sunwing will understand J Anyways, if anyone has any questions about the hotel, PM me and let me know and I can respond to them when I get home! Our wedding date is May 10 and our group departs Beach Palace on May 14th. Me and my fiancé are Honeymooning on Isla Mujeres but I will be home and back online May 21 J Happy planning to you all!! -Amanda

I purchased day passes for 2 guests for our welcome dinner and then another 2 day passes for our photographers on the wedding day. On my Purchase Order from the hotel it only shows the day pass fees. There are no extra charges listed for them for the cocktail hour or dinner or anything like that.

My coordinator was Renee for the whole time up until last week when I was officially passed onto my on-site planner Mario and now he is taking care of us and will be the person we meet with when we arrive. Mario gave us our site visit back in December so I am glad to be working with him again! Renee was great as well, she was usually pretty good at getting back to me quickly and she even scheduled a few phone meetings when I had a ton of questions. It was nice to speak to someone in person! I would definietly reccomend planning a few phone calls with your coordinator and have lots of questions ready to ask. She would answer as many as she could and would email any answers later that she had to check with the hotel for.

Hey! No problem...I totally know how you feel. I was so overwhelmed before but trust me, it will all make sense and become easier. One tip I have is to make a wedding binder and print every email coorespondance, write everything down, make copies of every contract and purchase order so when things get confusing you have one area where all your info and resources are located. The process is painfully slow with the resort and sometimes thingss take weeks to get done so you sort of forget about stuff while you wait for a response. My wedding binder has helped me so much! Here are some answers to your questions: 1) We are not doing a DJ. Me and my sister put together a bunch of different playlists (Welcome dinner, cocktail hour, dinner music, party/fiesta music, etc). Our MC is a friend of ours and he has all the info on when to switch the playlists and stuff. We put all the songs in order and have told the MC not to shuffle the mix, that way during the reception it starts of with music for everyone and stuff the oldies will like and then builds up to more party dancing music by the end. I think it will work well. Once I have the music finished I can post the playlist songs we chose if anyone is interested! We rented a sound system from JSAV which includes a speaker, microphone, ipod connections, mixer, etc. We added an additional speaker just to make sure everything was nice a loud. Here is the breakdown of the sound system costs: $209- Basic Audio wedding package $35- extra speaker $335 Basic Lighting Package fopr dancefloor with robotic light tree + lighting for Lounge Palms $100 Gobo and Gobo design fee $220- Labour and Delivery $143- tax For the welcome dinner we are just bringing an Ipod speaker (we have a really loud one) and then our friend is playing acoutic guitar. We made a Welcome Dinner playlist for this night. 2) The South Sky Terrace is the south pool area on the rooftop where they have all their wedding receptions and events. (The North Sky Terrace is the pool side that is closer to Cancun hotel zone point and they keep that area open for hotel guests everyt night). One thing to note that since they keep the North side open you will see the odd guest coming through during your event because the womens bathroom is on the South Sky Terrace side. During our site visit we were told about that. 3)I am bringing a TON of stuff from home! lol. I have an entire extra suitcase of decor and stuff as well as all the welcome bags and contents. I was shocked with the prices of centerpieces ($50 per centerpiece for a very basic centerpiece!) so I got crafty and put my own together. For the welcome dinner we are having an imperial table (one long table for everyone) and we are putting out a ton of electric candles down the center of the table. Just keeping it simple and soft and glowy. For the reception we have 4 round tables for guests and I put together centerpieces with electric candles and white pencil starfish around a small metal pail with a candle inside and we are going to fill it with sand from the beach. I found these round placemats in the exact same blue color as mybridesmaid dresses so it will tie in everything nicely. I posted a photo of it in my gallery if you want to check it out. All in all I think I spent about $60 on electric candles and mayb $20-30 for everything else which is a great price that covers table decoration for both my event nights. 4) As for getting everything there safe I got some bubble wrap and packed everything in boxes and packed them all tightly in the suitcase and covered it in bubble wrap. I also put a note ontop of everything listing the contents for airport secutiry if they happen to open it up and dig through it (I am sure 20 or so electric candles looks very odd when x-rayed!! haha.) I plan to get the person at the check in desk to put a fragile sticker on the bag too if possible. There isnt a ton of stuff that can break but I just dont want it tossed around, etc. We are flying direct to Cancun so I hope that minimizes the chances that the bag gets lost in transit...but I just try not to stress about that and think positive!! lol Oh and here is a another tip when choosing your buffet menus! You can swap out stuff you dont like and add things from other menus. The only restriction was that you have to take away something to add something. You cant just add things. For the welcome dinner we chose the Buffet Yucateca: We swapped out stewed pumpkin and added roasted potatoes We swapped out butter sugar bread and added Ceviche We swapped out marble jelly and added Petit Fours For the reception dinner we chose the Buffet Cajun: We swapped out Beef escalope and addedd Sirlon Steak with Blue Cheese Sauce We swapped out Apple Tartlet for tropical fruit tartlet And we also added Garlic Bread (This was not an issue to just add this because it was small) The menu choosing was a hard decision for us until we learned we were able to swap stuff so I hope this helps anyone struggling with it!

@@LindsT Sorry my computer is messing up. I had posted another response and dont know where it went! lol We have 27 guests so we were able to reach the 75 room nights. With that we got the free cocktail hour and free 2 hour reception on the wedding day. We added two additional hours onto the reception which works out to be $360 total ($60 per table of 8 for every additional hour). The free event includes premium bar service, buffet dinner, tables, chairs, linens (Standard white table decor). We also are making use of a free event on the first night. We are having a welcome dinner on the Palenque Terrace from 7:00-10:00pm. It includes all the stuff listed above. We have a friend who lives on Isla Mujeres who plays guitar so him and his wife are coming over for ther dinner and to play music. I had to get them guest passes. I also ordered 2 strings of paper lanterns from Zuniga for lighting during the dinner.

@@LindsT Del Sol is definitely more expensive than most but their photos are so amazing! We are paying $4000 for 5 hours. Photography is really important to my fiance and I so we pretty much went into the wedding planning with an inital plan to spend the majority of our budget on a crazy good photographer. We had to pay 50% upfront which was a bit hard at the time but now that it is almost 6 months later our $2000 bill remaining doesnt seem that bad! lol I just try to not think of all the money that has been spent so far and it makes it easier now, haha