teli73

I've never posted before, but I have been reading this forum since I decided to get married at BBPD over a year ago. I've found it super helpful and very reassuring when previous brides gave glowing reviews so I decided I would post about our wedding. We got married on May 24th and it was AMAZING! Elizabeth was our wedding coordinator, and she is fantastic. We met with her on Tuesday before the wedding and finalized all the details. Although you may feel that things are getting lost over email, they definitely are not. She had every detail, and after an hour I was fully confident that everything was going to be great and was ready to enjoy my vacation. On Friday the 23rd, we did a private welcome reception on the Chill Out rooftop. I really enjoyed that because it was our first chance to get all of our guests together. Our wedding was on the larger side (78 people), so it was good to have a get together prior to the wedding. We also were able to rent the ipod sound system so we were able to have our own music playing, and we got the cigar roller. My husband loves cigars so that was a big hit. We also handed out our welcome bags and gave everyone the weekend itinerary. The rooftop is such a beautiful spot and great for photos. On Saturday my maid of honor and I had our hair and makeup done at the spa. I was a little nervous because I am quite fair and don't wear too much makeup, but I showed them a photo and they replicated it. They did an amazing job. I would definitely bring pictures though because I don't speak Spanish, and if you don't there might be a bit of a language barrier if you try to describe. I showed her the picture and that was that. We got married on the beach at 3PM. Our ceremony didn't actually start until 3:30 for some reason, but they gave us an extra 30 minutes for our reception which was awesome because I was not ready to stop the party. We had a cocktail hour following which was good for us because it gave our guests something to do while we took photos, and our wedding location was a bit far from the main lobby. However it's nothing special so if your wedding is closer to the lobby and depending on the amount of people you could just go to Bar Carey and spend the money elsewhere. The resort train came to bring us to the reception. It was decorated with balloons. It was so cute. I think the guests got a kick out of it too. We used the DJ through the resort and opted for just the DJ without the MC. We didn't do the cake cutting or garter/bouquet throwing so really all we needed was someone to announce the first dance, parents dance and speeches. We had the best man do that and it worked out perfectly. The DJ was a little weird at first. During dinner they played loads of U2 songs back to back. But not even U2, U2 covers. They also played Madonna's Poppa Don't Preach which I think an odd song for a wedding (I'm gonna keep my baby???). So that was a little weird. I did ask Elizabeth if they had my songs that I wrote out and she assured me that after dinner they would play those. Which honestly worked out better because they did and I got to dance to all of them not miss any while eating. Also we laughed about it saying that because my husband's last name is very Irish they must've thought he looooooves U2. They did eventually play our songs and it was great (they do tend to play dance versions of everything so we did get a dance version of Guns and Roses Sweet Child of Mine but everyone still went crazy). The food was really good, better than the resort restaurants. We did the tomato mozzarella salad. It came in this awesome cheese bowl. We had tenderloin and creme brulee. Our cake was vanilla and lemon. Everything was yummy. The desserts come out really quick at the end and get taken away quite quick. I didn't even see the creme brulee but made sure to get a bite of my wedding cake! The train then took us all back to the lobby. We had everyone meet at Strikers then we moved on to the disco. Since we had so many people, we also decided to do an excursion on Sunday. The resorts excursions were really expensive since they were by person. Instead we used SeaPro divers and rented a 55 foot catamaran which had capacity for 80 people. The cost included pick up and drop off at the resort, and a four hour boat trip. The bat trip took us snorkeling for one hour, and the guide dove down and would pick up starfish and sea urchins an pass them around. Then they took us to a natural pool which was a sand bar with no seaweed or waves where everyone could swim and they served rum drinks on floating trays. When we got back on the boat they played music and everyone was dancing so it was like a second wedding. It was a great excursion, and my guests loved it too. The trip lasted 4 hours in total. Just thought I would share some areas where I saved some money. We really wanted program fans since our wedding was on the beach. To get 80 done was pretty expensive ($250 to $300) so we found this and printed them ourselves for $40 http://www.wilton.com/store/site/product.cfm?id=934968A4-423B-522D-F6469FF103281EA2 . For our gift bags I went to Oriental Trading's website. We got these at less than a dollar a piece http://www.orientaltrading.com/large-hibiscus-tote-bags-a2-34_737.fltr?Ntt=hibiscus and they were large. Great as a beach bag, and my guests used them. It was awesome to see everyone carrying around their bags on the excursion and around the resort. Hopefully this review helped. Sorry so long. The resort is beautiful. Everyone kept commenting how clean it was and how much there was to do. Elizabeth is awesome. She will make the day run smoothly. You will have the wedding of your dreams. Oh one more thing. I did use Tropical Pictures. I know a lot of people are hesitant about using them, but we had Sofie and I though she did a great job. I have attached some pics. You can see our decor and cake too.