Maggietron

I had Andrea. She's new, although she told us that she had been there "a long time". When I got into a dispute with them over the Akumal site because she was insisting that it had always looked the way it did, the manager told me that she had only been there a few months and probably never saw it look any different. She did an OK job, but I wasn't thrilled with her. She tried to change every detail of the wedding on us, so you need to keep an eye on her emails. I requested the Jacuzzi pool, she booked us at one of the main pools. (The jacuzzi pool was totally the way to go, our guests were happy we insisted, it was pretty private and being able to dance in ankle deep water was a major plus). We asked for dinner from 6-8, she told us a week before the wedding that she had decided that 5pm was "better" even though we had a mariachi band booked from 5-545. We made her change that back too. We had the reception booked from 8-11, she tried to push it to 8:20-11:20 because she insisted that it would take 20 minutes to walk the 100m or less to the site from the restaurant. I told her to put it back, that I didn't care if we were late arriving at the cocktails, but I would not be paying the after hours fee for going after 11pm. My brother left the marriage certificate in the restaurant at dinner (I know. Worst man of honour ever lol) and Andrea said she had called and they didn't have it, but she would go down in person and talk to them. We waited two days and she never got back to us, so my brother went and asked and they had been holding it the whole time, I suspect she never asked them about it. She did make things run smoothly during the wedding, though. Our transport to the site was on time, when we kicked off our shoes before the barefoot ceremony, she had an assistant bring our shoes down to the site for us. When we arrived at dinner she brought the manager over to discuss which guests had allergies (The restaurant still served my allergic guest the food she's allergic to, but we caught it. That wasn't Andrea's fault) We had a trolley waiting after dinner to take us to the poolside reception and she came back at the end of the evening to see us off.

If you do this, bring your own certificate! They don't supply them for the symbolic ceremony and didn't let us know until the day before we left! We did $10/hour as the basis for our tips. so it worked out to like $30 for the bartenders and dj, and $50-80 for the coordinator, I'm not sure exactly as my in laws took care of it.

I got married there on Nov 11. The photographer did a wonderful job with the photos, although we did feel a little rushed (although that turned out OK, it was 30 degrees and by the end we were all sweaty and ready to be finished anyways!). The part we didn't like was the hard sell at our meeting to choose our photos. We had to sit through their pitch on the discount and freebies they would give us if we bought all 102 photos that they had edited for us. We politely told them that we already knew we didn't want all 102 and would like to go through them first before talking about adding to our package, but then we had to sit through the same sales pitch from his "supervisor" despite being completely uninterested. We ended up getting the included 15 pictures and booking an extra hour with 30 pictures for $400 USD before the wedding and stuck to our 45 included photos. They turned out fantastic, though! Additional photos were $15 each, and they had all sorts of other offerings (photo books, slideshows etc). The Akumal site has been painted since the pictures in this thread were taken (and it was repainted on Nov 10th because I threw a crying fit because it looked terrible and the paint was peeling off), it now looks like this http://imgur.com/49fBoLR (Don't know why the photo wouldn't attach!)

I hope that's in Pesos!

Thanks, @@calgarybride2015. The wedding day itself was lovely and our families are still raving about how great the wedding was.

So I got married on Wed at the Akumal site, and stayed at the Coba resort, and to be honest, I will never go back to that resort again. The wedding itself was lovely, but the customer service was absolutely terrible. We were not given any sort of VIP treatment at checkin, in fact we never got the welcome cocktail that I saw other guests getting, they never explained anything to us or told us that one of the snack bars was closed, they pretty much just gave us our key and sent us on our way. My Brother in law inexplicably got stuff addressed to me in his envelope. My in laws weren't given gold bracelets until day 5 and my parents never got them. For some reason they put rose petals in my sister's room one night. We had no robes in our room, two guests had no mini fridge, and one had no tv. One of our guests didn't even have a room, they somehow managed to lose one reservation from our group booking. My father and sister were given one king bed, while my aunt and uncle on the same booking were given two doubles. The dehumidifier we requested when we booked wasn't there. Then the public relations manager assured us it would be there the next day, then the concierge assured us that it would be there the day after that. It finally arrived the night before the wedding after my third visit to the front desk to speak to a woman who was terrified of me at that point because... I had just spent two days crying at the front desk because the wedding site looked terrible and no one would do anything about it. The resort told me that the Akumal site's new arch looked just like Tulum, so I assumed that it would look like Tulum's. The latest pictures from @ confirmed that, so I figured we were good. EXCEPT that at some point in the past year they painted it white. Badly. And they did not do any upkeep on it, so there were barnacles of some sort growing all over it, and the white paint was wearing off to reveal the brown paint underneath. It looked like it was ten years old, not less than a year. And no one would listen to me. The wedding coordinator insisted that I was just confused, it had never been brown and had always looked like that. The front desk wouldn't let me speak to a manager who had any actual authority and kept passing me around to people with no authority to do anything. I kept hearing "that isn't my department, I don't even know what you're talking about". After two days of fighting with the resort I finally got the wedding coordinator to look at the pictures we had taken and told her that we needed to find a way to fix it or cover it up or something and she got the Akumal hotel manager to paint it, which was all I had been asking for for two days. I didn't care if it was brown or white, but somewhere in between was not an option. The wedding itself went wonderfully under the newly painted structure, and the cocktail reception at the Jacuzzi pool was fantastic, but the service at Le Gourmet was ridiculous. I confirmed with the manager and the server that the best woman was allergic to mango when we sat down and would need a different dessert. And they served her the mango dessert. I pointed it out again and they took it away and just didn't give her anything. Classy. And then the cake. Oh, the cake. The massive freaking cake that could have served 200 people. No idea why they charged me for a second tier and then brought me a 20" round cake, but whatever. Except that they dropped the cake topper face down in the cake, then just stood it back up and hoped no one would notice that where the cake topper should be, there was a white blob of icing that was roughly the shape of two people? My man of honour took care of that one, they were apparently just going to leave it but he made the manager wipe it off. Remember that dehumidifier we requested? Well, it flooded our room twice. The first time was in the morning and we just called the front desk and went out and when we came back everything was cleaned up. The second time we didn't notice until we got back to the room at 11:30pm. No one answered at the front desk so we walked down there and told them that our room was flooded and they told us that they couldn't do anything about it. We asked how could the resort not have anyone working nights that could use a mop and she spoke to the manager, who said they would send someone to clean it up. Except that he didn't. And they didn't bother telling us no one was coming. So we sat up until 1am waiting for someone to come mop up our flooded room and no one ever came, and no one ever answered the phone at the front desk. So while the wedding itself was lovely, I will never go to another Bahia Principe resort because their customer service is terrible and they will repeatedly lie to you to make you go away.

@@Monikab which resort? We're at Coba and having the filet with mushroom chardonnay sauce, gourmet salad, white asparagus soup and passionfruit parfait at Le Gourmet.

I ended up finding someone on Etsy who can do one up in a few hours, then I just have to hope that I can get it printed on thick stock paper in time!

Well, I am freaking out. Despite asking repeatedly, I was just told NOW, 24 hours before departure, that the resort does not supply a symbolic wedding certificate. WTF? I asked like three times and each time she just deflected or said the minister will supply it, to which I kept replying that we are bringing our own minister so I need to know if they supply one. Any ideas where I can find a symbolic certificate on a super short timeline?

Leaving in less than a week. Did anyone worry about the dj not having any of your "must play" songs? Should I compile a must play and a do not play list for the dj?

I'm planning on going barefoot. 3pm ceremony.

@@nicolesal we're getting close! Are you ready?

You can pay with up to 1500USD, the rest must be charged or paid in Pesos, I believe.

The package includes the photographer for the ceremony and champagne toast only. we're paying $400 to tack on an hour of photography after the ceremony.

What is everyone doing for tipping the day off the wedding? I was thinking we would tip the WC, band, dj and bartender, and I was thinking of using $10/hr as our base. So the band only plays 1hour, so $10 each. The dj and bartender are hired for three hours, so $30 each, and the wedding coordinator I'm assuming will be there from the ceremony until we start drinking, 5 hours, so $50? Does that sound fair?

@@ChristiLynn Another user said $450, but we haven't figured out exactly what that "privatization fee" means.

You'd probably have to get in touch with the resort to find out. Since I booked they instituted a charge to privatize an area for a reception, but I don't know if that would be included with your package or if the fee is mandatory.

Does anyone know what the Hibiscus Pool is? That's where we're booked for our reception. @ The link to your Coba Photo Tour in the first post no longer works.

@@N50mys it was $90 for that white fabric draped across the back?

@@StephHing Check the first post, Tsleege updates when she takes new photos.

That's what I'm doing. Is anyone else getting really, really frustrated with this resort? My wedding is less than 2 months away. Since I chose this resort, I spent weeks fighting with them to get the Akumal site because they made it luxury after we already had our deposits put down. Then they tried to change it back to the Gazebo and I had to fight them again. Then they tore down the Akumal structure and replaced it with the same one I didn't want that matches the Tulum site. Then I book my appointments with the photographer and spa. No problems with the photographer, but the spa is having issues because the wedding ceremony is at Akumal and we're staying at Coba. They keep transferring me back and forth between the two spas when I've requested the Coba spa. Then they tell me to send the booking form, which I did three months ago. No reply or confirmation, so I ask them to confirm our appointments, and they start asking the same damn questions again about where I'm staying, so I again tell them that I requested an appt with the Coba spa, at which point they send me the stupid booking form and tell me I need to fill it out to make an appointment. So I email my wedding coordinator, Andrea. I tell her that the spa can't seem to confirm my appointment, and can she please find out if my appointments are booked or not. All she does is forward my email to the spa AGAIN, but without the attachment. THIS SHOULD NOT BE THIS HARD. Not to mention that all I really want to know is the timeline. I want a 3pm ceremony, music in the lobby from 5pm to 5:45, dinner at 6 and reception 8-11. I don't care about all the details, they will sort themselves out. I just want to know that the dinner and reception are reserved so I don't end up having to switch everything after I've told all my guests the timeline. As of right now, all I know is that the ceremony is at 3pm.

@@emigrayson We're doing Unforgettable, then we're having the included guitar trio play at the lobby bar an hour before dinner instead of paying for a cocktail hour. We won't have reserved tables or anything, but I'm not too worried about it.

For me, it made the most sense to get unforgettable and add on the private reception with dj because I didn't care about a lot of the extras that came along with the romance package. Now that they've added a fee to privatize the poolside reception that might not be the case anymore.

We decided not to do favours or welcome gifts and are paying for the entire wedding group to go to Xel-ha on the last full day at the resort. $1900 USD for 24 people and 2 kids.

Quick question: We have two kids coming, I think they are 9 and 11. Do they HAVE to have a kids meal, or can they have the adult meal instead if they want? An 11 year old may prefer a steak to chicken fingers or spaghetti.