tygrrlily

@@shmanderz - Fantastic tip about the buffet swapping! Thank you!

Hello ladies, my wedding is at the Beach Palace but the Moon Palace thread is a bit more active! I'm currently looking into my photographer and videographer and I am really dreading paying the $800 vendor fee. It seems like Del Sol has a good relationship with them and just require day passes; is this the case with any other photographers as well? Wondering if anyone has had any recent luck in not telling their WC and just obtaining day passes for them? I figure worse the hotel could do is just slap on the vendor fee last minute. Good idea/bad idea? Thanks!

I struggled with this too but ended up putting it fairly bluntly on our website. Tried to be polite but also wanted to convey that we really wanted people to book with us. So much so that we're even planning on redistributing our credit for room bookings back to the whole group (we wrote that too). I also stressed that the rate we were offering included airport transfers. I cobbled some stuff together I found from the forum, and ended up writing this before all the booking details and rate info: Our wedding will be held at the all inclusive Beach Palace Resort. We have negotiated a great group rate through our wonderful travel agent, Vanessa Martinez, and she has secured us the best possible pricing that includes direct round-trip airfare, transfers to and from the airport, and all-inclusive hotel accommodations. By booking through our travel agent, you will be included in our Wedding Party and will not have any extra fees that might be added by the resort for attending any of our events (including our wedding). We would really appreciate if you contacted our travel agent for your resort booking as we have a contract in place, and there are group amenities and benefits that we will get for our group bookings. So far we haven't had any questions except from my cheap sister who keeps sending me expedia prices.

@@pddcmc - Have you started contacting photographers yet? A lot have offered to call or do a skype conversation if you prefer instead of email. Personally I've been looking at photographer's portfolios and keeping that in mind with price. I'm also trying to look at as many albums as possible (and the whole album - not just the 10 best pics they put in their blog post)

@@shmanderz - Thanks for the breakdown! That's awesome. I can't wait to hear how your wedding goes! Is Del Sol the only company we can get away with just paying day passes for photographers? They are unfortunately priced higher than we'd like to pay though I love their work. I've read a few stories about people just not telling their WCs and just getting day passes the day of for their photographers and videographers instead of paying the exorbitant $800 vendor fee. Wondering if this would work?? I want to bring in an outside photographer and videographer, but $1600 in vendor fees is nuts

@@1BeachBride - Yeah, I'm not going to wear my actual dress. I just can't bring myself to even though they say it doesn't wreck it. I'll just bring another flowy dress to get the same effect. I also want to resell my dress after if possible, so I'm going to try to maintain its condition

My ceremony and reception are on a rooftop terrace - I'm definitely rockin heels haha. i like those barefoot sandals a lot though so I'll look into them for beach pics!

@@MrsSheppardToBe - Definitely plan your own bachelorette w/ your close friend and maybe get your mom to host your shower! I don't think there are any rules about who hosts the shower, and mothers actually often do! I'm the organizer in my circle of friends and I already know I will be doing a lot of the planning for my bach (they are used to me organizing everything!). Haha isn't this the truth! I deliberately didn't ask either of my sisters to be in my bridal party because I knew it'd be way too much of a headache! As it is, my sister is the one stressing me out the most so far about the wedding constantly complaining about the prices and telling me that she is going to book on Expedia instead!

Haha I think my posting has dropped at least 50% after I hit 150. I felt kind of bad that a lot of my contributions before the 150 were "Thanks for the tip!" and "Welcome!" and "Great!" You can do it ladies!

Kristy, those look awesome!! She did a great job

Oh that would be amazing! We were trying to work out our budget, and I thought we'd have to pay extra for any people over 30! We are aiming for the 75+ room nights

@@shan0487 - Wouldn't that just be for the 30 people included though? What if we had more? Thanks

@@Meandhim - You're very close! Just keep posting on everything haha

@@mazarin - You should definitely get down if you get the chance. I know a lot of the resort chains offer a 3 night promo where you can do a site visit, and the cost is deducted from your final wedding cost! So you just basically pay airfare

@@aliciadaub - I think you need to have a group/wedding contract in place to benefit from the promos. Do you have a travel agent? They should be able to guide you through the process

Thank you!! After all that stress, we finally decided to go with Beach Palace our original venue and are hopefully booking it and locking it down tonight! Thank you for all your help

I found ruching really flattering or some type of gathering on the skirt. My dress has BOTH haha so maybe that's why it helps. I'm not sure your budget, but check out Provonias, Enzoani (including Blue and Beautiful lines) and Martina Liana/ Essence - they all had beautiful lace dresses! The one I got is lace as well (a Monique Lhuilier sample!) Yes this happened to me too! I stuck w/ my gut fortunately and got the dress I couldn't stop thinking about. One of my friends and my sister kept pushing me toward another saying I looked better in it. My best friend reminded me though that at the end of the day, I had to choose the dress that made me feel best and most beautiful. I'm very glad i listened to her!

@@kcole123 - Pretty! Definitely try it on!! I'm drawn to mermaid/trumpet/fit and flare styles too, and I was really afraid before I tried them on that they wouldn't look good because I'm NOT tall and skinny. But, they actually look great on me! I think it's because I do have some curves and the dress shape is was really flattering (I have a defined waist and fairly large hips). I thought that type of dress would overly emphasize my hips, but it actually makes me look more womanly if that makes sense. One of the sales people told me that tall and skinny people actually don't look as good in that style, because they tend not to have defined waists. I'd have totally gone shopping by myself and I was actually tempted to do it a couple of times because I felt bad about dragging my mom and best friend to all my appointments, and my mom started annoying me haha . But she really wanted to come along to all of them. But you do get a good gauge of what looks good on you once you start trying them on

I was lucky to have people to shop with, but I did find in the stores the sales people were actually pretty honest and helpful. Some of them even were like no way to some of the dresses before I said it . Also as Lhills mentioned above, if there's another bride in the store, they'd probably be happy to give their opinion! Maybe you can go and try some on, and record the names of the ones you are considering so you can send the styles at least to your friends/family later. I wish all stores allowed pics too. I found dresses that looked great in person looked awful in pics, and sometimes even vice versa! I will admit to sneaking some pics at one store, but I ended up buying the dress afterwards! I just needed to see how it photographed Good luck!

Hello ladies, Does anyone know the cost if there are more than 30 guests for the ceremony, cocktail and dinner? Also, what the cost would be if anyone books outside of the room block? Thanks!

Does anyone know the cost per person if we have over 30 guests? Or if they book outside of our room block?

Hi everyone I'm hitting the point where I'm so super stressed about this whole planning. We are trying to balance so many different factors, and I'm finding it hard to come to a good decision. Up until now, I was pretty set on Beach Palace and am still moving forward with that. The problem with Beach Palace is apparently availability is limited - so what happens if they run out of rooms? We're going to reserve a block of 10 rooms, but we may need more than this. We also don't want to reserve more right now because we are putting the deposit down for each person, and if we don't fill them, we're out that money. I'm also still afraid the costs might be a bit high for my guests. I think we got a great rate for the place, but I do wish it were $100-$200 less. I'm also worried about things like guests booking outside of our block, etc. because that will impact any perks we get as a wedding. Palace also has really high vendor fees and I know I'd want to bring in outside sources for photography, videography and maybe flowers. We'd also have to pay extra for things like extending our reception, etc. It seems like they nickel and dime you everywhere on resorts. I've also been considering going off resort because we can get more for our money. I recently found the Grand Coral Beach Club in Playa del Carmen and I think it's a fantastic beautiful venue and I'm considering it now for a Thursday (they have great Mon-Thurs) promo. The reviews here are all good. We would save on things like vendor fees, but we would have to hire a wedding planner probably which might offset that. This would probably help alleviate some stress for me though. Our guests would stay in Playa del Carmen, and we'd have less stress as they wouldn't be pressured to book with us and could even stay at a different resort. My fiance is adamant on is golf/green fees being included because his family and friends play, but that really limits our choice because most of the golf resorts are pricier which is a factor for my family and friends. And ideally, i still would like to have most of us stay in the same hotel so I'm very torn. AHH - any advice? Any suggestions on resorts or venues or anything I'm missing? I tried to talk to my fiance about this but he got stressed after 10 minutes, and I'm like this has been me for the last month! And I thought destination wedding planning was supposed to be easier?

Ohh I have MIke Cantrell on my list of potential videographers! Have to look into this more If I do it at Beach Palace, apparently they're approved vendors so I won't have to pay a vendor fee! I think they do really great work too so even though their prices are a bit high, I think it'll be worth it But I'm still mulling it and actually considering doing it my wedding off resort now at the Grand Coral Beach Club - and I'm looking at your hotel as a potential one to stay in! Does the Gran Porto Real have high vendor fees?

@@forevertogether - I'm going to use Styling Trio That's awesome they'll do that. I've been in contact w/ Dean Sanderson too but still deciding. Who is your videographer?

I'm from Toronto too! Live downtown and work midtown-ish @@acw271011 - Thank you! It happened pretty quickly. I have to say this site is even BETTER being able to see things in threads now haha