snswedding2016

@@ashhtayy totally agree!!! I'll definitely report back after the BDR in September! Sean and I are so excited! We just realized that we haven't taken a vacation in a year so we're really looking forward to it. We are going back to PEI in Oct for a family wedding so that will be our last trip before the wedding. I think Sean's family might be disappointed we won't be back for Christmas but our wedding is just two weeks later.

@@ashhtayy haha I'm all about breaking rules that don't feel right for you. Like you said your wedding, your rules! I completely agree! I think a destination wedding in itself to some people is breaking traditional rules - so we're all rebels on here anyway! ha! I just looked back and I also started my planning thread 10 months out. I'm really glad I started it so early, it has kept me on track and when things have slowed down reading other threads inspire me to get back at it. I also had a lot planned early on so I needed to get that all down on "paper" to see what was left to do. Love your engagement photos!!! I love that they are winter engagement photos, I think it definitely makes them more unique. We had the same sort of situation where we had an offer for engagement pics for free, our photographer from Mexico is from Toronto and was here over the holidays so we also did engagement shots in the winter. Another photographer friend has offered to gift us a photography session so we're also going to be doing some summer photos. Just looking over your thread so far and I realize we have a lot of similarities - except for the long distance relationship….engaged in Oct 2014, family spread out = dw, picked Azul Fives, winter and summer engagement photos, started planning thread very early --clearly I can't totally relate to your thread so far!

@@ashhtayy Great planning thread so far! I love that he made you a scrapbook, that is so sweet and sentimental and something you will always have to look back on. Your reason for choosing a destination wedding was the same as ours. My fiance's family is all from PEI and now we also have family out West as well as in the states. We figured if most people were going to have to pay a lot of money regardless of where it would be in Canada, we might as well all escape and get a great vacation too!

@@acw271011 haha my niece is the same, she's also only 3 and gets little words here and there and then just belts out the chorus. It's pretty cute! I was babysitting the other day and of course we watched it and when we were done I asked her what she wanted to watch next while we played with play-doh, to which she replied without hesitation "Frozen AGAIN!!!" - lol! Although for a while, anytime she came over she would only want to watch happy feet - I've seen 1 and 2 more times that I would like to admit.

@@TinkerSofi The brochure looks fantastic and the props are so cute! Your guests will love them! As for the communication with the photographer I didn't go over too many specifics of shots but I did send him my list of groupings for family and friends. I listed every shot I could think of that was important to us to have (ie. bride, groom, parents, siblings or bride, groom, maid of honour, best man etc. etc.). I then listed it from most important to least important so that if we run short of time he knows which shots he should really try and get before time runs out. I'm also delegating someone to organize the group photos. I've done this for a lot of my friend's weddings, I would essentially do this when I worked in production so I became the "go-to" person for this job. I find that the reason wedding photos often run over is because even though you may be organized with a shot list, you end up spending so much time running around trying to find these people. So the person who is in charge of this will have the shot list get the people who need to be in the photo and then while they are taking their picture, they will get the next group ready on deck so on and so forth until you make it through your list. When I did this the last time for a friend's wedding, they finished early and had a ton of time to take their bride/groom photos and then ended up finishing 20 min before the reception was even supposed to begin….that's until we were taking the last photo of the rings and one of them slipped off my friend's finger went right through the crack of a deck….but that's a whole other story lol! Good news is that we retrieved it after fashioning some ribbon to a coat hanger!

@@mlklovestory716 Thank you so much!! It feels good to get back in the swing of planning. I feel like I've been on a break for a while. Some of the American brides who have had their wedding at Azul Fives might have a better perspective than me. It's hard because I think generally the American trip prices are more expensive than the Canadians, that being said we do get less perks in terms of free events etc for the actual wedding. Our quote for January was $1630 (Canadian) for 7 days, flight included. How much are flights to Mexico from Florida? Also keep in mind if you like the Sky Terrace I posted in my thread, that is free of charge. It is much smaller though than the Sky Deck which is the one that costs $1700. As for dealing with Azul Fives/Karisma - it can be challenging for sure at times. Be prepared to wait for responses, it really depends on who you get as your wedding coordinator. My first WC was fantastic at getting back to me right away but then she went on maternity leave. I'm now working with a different WC who has been much slower but was the one to approve the terrace for me (when I was originally told I couldn't book it). Be persistent - if you don't get the answer you want and it is very important to you and you think you are justified in getting it, don't be hesitant to ask again. I did that and it ended up working out for the best. Working with Lomas (Karisma's vendor) is very expensive but there are great resources on this site on who to bring your own decor to save money or to rent it form Katy HK from Love and Lace. I also really like that Karisma has an online wedding builder where you get to log into your own profile and double check everything that you have set so far for your wedding. I know some resorts don't offer that and only rely on email communication. I also love that you can start planning right away, again I know a lot of resorts won't let you make your choices until much closer to the date. I'm a crazy planner (as you can tell) haha - so I loved being able to make all my choices up front! I hope this helps a bit! Let me know if you have any other questions. ....just saw my ticker....ahhh!!! officially less than 6 months!!!!

@@calgarybride2015 I was so happy we could both drop everything for a surprise date night! It was great! It's so true about the flower girl dresses vs. the ring bearer outfit. I had fun picking out the ring bearer outfit but once I made my decision I haven't kept looking. I'm still looking at the cute dresses they have right now - I really hope I don't end up buying a 3rd dress. haha! I was actually thinking about doing little bios or at least the connection to the couple and a fun fact for each guest to put in the OOT bags. I figure this will help connect everyone together the week of. When I went to my cousin's DW a few years ago I met my cousin's wife's brothers named Brad and Chad…I kept getting them mixed up all week. I think a little blurb would have helped me separate them in my mind.

@ steal away!!! My guests feel involved and I think they love finding out fun and embarrassing stories about us!

@@Meandhim you're getting so close to your big day!!! Can't believe your legal ceremony is coming up - how exciting!! So glad there is a silver lining to the whole AC situation!! Glad it all worked out for the best!

@@acw271011 @@yycbride2016 @@TinkerSofi Thanks ladies! The light blue is my favourite too - my maids of honour are going to be in that colour (capri -at David's) and the other girls will be in varying shades of blue. When we took our flower girl shopping to try on the dress for sizing, I was worried she was going to put up a fight. This girl loves comfort put her in socks and sweats any day! haha! Well she saw the dress and said she thought it looked like an "Elsa Dress" - Frozen is one of her many obsessions right now. I knew I picked the right dress when she got excited to dress up like "Elsa". I was looking over our budget last night and going over the wedding fund - as of right now with the budget we created, we can pay it all off! I'm super excited about this! I still want to put money aside for misc costs because those will always come up and hopefully I don't add too many things now that I know we can afford it. haha. I'm just happy to not be too stressed about all this. What really helped us was last year I was putting away WAY more money than I needed to for taxes and I inadvertently started a wedding fund.

First a non-wedding update: Sean's been working on a huge renovation project and it has been really crazy busy for him the last couple of months. He hasn't had a day off in weeks and finally had one on Canada Day which was really nice but he was so exhausted that it really wasn't enough. Yesterday at work my boss randomly asked me if I was busy that night and if I wanted tickets to the U2 concert! I quickly called Sean and he was able to leave work a little early to make the concert! It was so nice to have an impromptu date night and just be in the moment, not thinking about work or wedding planning. We had such a great time and drank a bit too much ...who thought a concert on a Monday night was a good idea! lol! Now back to planning...again I feel like things have been so slow moving but yesterday was 6 months until we leave for Mexico so I think hitting the official 6 month mark is making me kick it into high gear! Flower Girl - so you know how I already bought an outfit for my flower girl well the curse of shopping too early has hit me. I couldn't help myself I really have been trying not to keep looking for alt. outfits because I know I'll get suckered in. Kids clothes are just too cute to pass up sometimes. I was shopping for our flower girl's little sister who was just born on June 20th!!!! One of my maids of honour had her second baby and now that she's here I've been looking for options for her too. Baby Gap was having a 40% off sale and I found a really cute dress for the little one but then I saw the perfect dress for our flower girl that fits with our colour palette and it was also 40% off...I couldn't really pass it up. It actually works out because she's growing faster than we anticipated. She's 3 and so we bought her a size 4 but she actually fits the size 4 perfectly now. We ended up going with a size 5 because she'll definitely be growing in the next 6 months! Here are both of them... This is for the tiny one who will be 6 1/2 months This is for our flower girl I still need to find them shoes but I just saw these on gap website Bridesmaids -we're slowing getting the dresses together. My maid of honour who just had her baby at the end of June is now starting to think about dresses now that she knows she'll be able to try some on... . My other maid of honour has her dress and so does my cousin who is a bridesmaid. I have one other bridesmaid who is narrowing down her search as well so I think we might take a group trip out to david's to make sure all the colours work together. Here are the options so far (keep in the mind the online colours can be quite different from the actual fabric - you david's brides know what I mean). Here is our colour palette again: I'm leaning towards option 1 but I'm going to wait until I see them in person to decide. Here is a photo of the david's swatches my cousin sent me. The far left is malibu and the dress in both pics in the top right corner is also in malibu and to me they look very different, so I'm curious to see what it all looks like in person together. 3 out of the 4 are david's dresses and the fourth one is already purchased so we can at least bring it with us to the appointment. I'm also trying to organize a bridesmaid day to do brunch, maybe put some OOT bags together, they all want to help and I've been doing most of the shopping and planning on my own so I want to plan a day to include them. oh and maybe we'll sneak in a viewing of Magic Mike XXL just for fun...hahaha! Website/Facebook Group - We just started doing a bridal party feature on our wedding website and wedding facebook group to get everyone excited for the trip and to introduce people to our bridal party before our wedding week! So far the response has been great! I started with one of my bridesmaids and then we'll alternate between bridesmaids and groomsmen a couple times a month (since we have more bridal party members than there are months left until the wedding!! eek!). This is what it looked like: Today's wedding party feature: Pamela (Bridesmaid) Connection to the Couple: Friend of the Bride - We met in grade 9 at Woodbridge College (yes, that was the name of our HIGH SCHOOL…) Fun Facts: Pam had the coolest sweet 16 birthday party on a boat, we survived math in summer school that we voluntarily took (yep - crazy!) and I will forever be made fun of by her entire family for finding black pepper on a pizza too spicy!! Although my love for the arts began at an early age, Pam was the one who encouraged me to join the drama club with her, which led me to Stage Management and as they say, the rest is history! Love you Pam! ...and yes that top left pic is us at prom...haha That's all for now!! Until the next planning update... @@TinkerSofi I just realized the response I wrote to your last message was never posted! Sorry! I was on my phone and sometimes this site doesn't cooperate with me when I respond on my phone. gah! Yes, the transportation offered is a private bus which will only be our group and will take us directly to Xcaret. That's one of the things I like about this group rate option. I'm still trying to figure out numbers. Hopefully it all works out. I decided to keep both the place mats and the napkins and to decide closer to the date. The place mats weren't that expensive and we can use them at home anyway if we don't end up using them for the wedding. Still waiting for a sale at Clare's for that robe...

@@TinkerSofi You are so so close - just over a month to your big day!!!! So excited for you! I hope your items arrive in the mail soon! As for the hair - I know for me, I have to have my hair up. I always think I'll like it down and half way through dancing I throw it up in a ponytail, not the look I want for my wedding. haha! I also over heat easily. That being said my best friend like you likes her hair down and envisioned it that way for her wedding. She had two weddings one here in Toronto and one for her family back home in Mexico. She had her hair up for the Toronto wedding and really didn't like the way it looked, even though everyone thought she looked amazing. She did it half up for her Mexico wedding (also in August - and nowhere near water so it was even hotter!) and she loved it and didn't find it too hot. I think it's like your dress, go with what you love even if it might be a bit hotter. Like acw271011 said you could always put it in a different simple style to put it up during the dancing so you can party all night!

Do you have a travel agent yet? Have your received your trip quotes yet? I would start there to make sure it is in your budget for the time of year you are looking for, if so then I would inquire with the resort about wedding date availability. Where are you based out of? I'm from Canada so we book our flight and hotel package as one. When we booked our wedding we put down a deposit with our travel agent. Our deposit held spots for the bride and groom as well as 30 seats on the plane and 15 rooms at the resort. If you want to hold more you would need to put down extra deposits. We also put down a deposit with the resort to secure our wedding date. Our deposit was $200 for Azul Fives - not sure how much it is for Barcelo. I would imagine something similar. Have you checked out this thread? http://www.bestdestinationwedding.com/topic/16876-barcelo-maya-palace-brides/page-464 I'm sure the Barcelo brides will have lots of info to help you out! Happy planning!!

Everything looks so beautiful! It sounds like you had such an amazing time. I can't wait to hear more!

Congrats! It looks like you had such an amazing wedding week!!! I'm also using Photos in Cancun and even more excited after reading your review. My communication with Derek and Lorena has been great so far and they are such sweet people to work with. Can't wait to work with them on my wedding day!

So happy to hear the dress fitting went well! You look gorgeous! That train is to die for! I burst out laughing just now reading "Mr. Charles" …I laughed pretty loudly and woke up Sean beside me. haha!

@@veryvalentine Congrats!!! You look stunning!!!! Can't wait to hear the rest of the details when you get back! Enjoy the rest of your trip!!

@@TinkerSofi Love your photos! Looks like you guys had an amazing time!! I agree I think do your best with rehearsing your first dance but if it becomes too much pressure it isn't worth it to be stressed about it. Sean's a great dancer but he also finds it very hard to remember choreography (and he's in the arts! ha!). Maybe by you saying this to Juan it will alleviate the pressure he's putting on himself and it may all fall into place anyway. Regardless you will have a beautiful first dance as husband and wife no matter what it ends up being!

So I was at Champagne and Cupcakes tonight and they actually have a couple more white dresses than I remembered. She's got a couple of simple and very elegant flowy white dresses ranging from $150-450. If you can get past the intense perfume smell Abercrombie has some really cute white dresses (not sure if that is too casual) and I walked by Club Monaco today and they was a beautiful long white flowing dressing on a mannequin in the window. The more I go shopping the more I think i'm going to end up wear white all week long in Mexico…there's such cute stuff out there right now! ahh must stop shopping!!

@@JoannaBanana There are so many pretty casual white dresses in stores right now. There are a lot of short ones but I've seen a fair number of full length dresses as we. I got my dress made at Champagne and Cupcakes on Queen West but they also sell off the rack dresses and they have this really pretty full length white dress that would be perfect on the beach! I've been eyeing it and I might still get it to wear another night - haha! I think it's around $150-160. It's simple but very pretty, light weight and flowy.

@@TinkerSofi sounds like you had a great time in Vegas and a well deserved vacation from wedding planning! Love that you guys went to see Chippendales! I went to Vegas 5 years ago for my best friend's bachelorette and we went to see "The Thunder from Down Under" lol! It was highly enjoyable!!

@@JaeD sorry to hear that you are having issues with your TA. I really do find that this is such an important part of the wedding planning and it makes all the difference to find a TA that works for you and that you trust. You may want to check out this thread about TAs in the GTA. I posted a review about Karen Lantigua at myweddingaway.com who is my TA and I love working with her. There are some other great suggestions on this thread as well. Happy planning! http://www.bestdestinationwedding.com/topic/79184-best-tas-in-toronto-ontario/

Oh yes! I'll add her to the list!

hey ladies! Yay so glad the date seems to be working out. I'm pretty sure the rooftop patio should be ready for Aug 14. I'll keep you all posted. They should be up and running by July 1st! That's the plan as of right now anyway. It's a huge space so if it is open then we'll have no problem getting a table. Just starting to do a headcount - I have 6 total so far (including me) do I have that right? @@acw271011 @ @@krystalball @@Meandhim @@deecol Am I missing anyone??

Love your thread! Everything looks great so far! I'm also doing a range of blues (more on the light end) for my colours and letting my bridesmaids pick their own dresses as well as long as it matches the colour palette!