REVIEW TIME...
hotel: Now Sapphire
date: may 4 , 2018 WEDDING
guests : 31 including us
package: Divine
RESORT: I had stayed at this resort for vacation 4 years ago and during that time i saw a lot of weddings done there. The resort is beautiful , everyone is very kind. They only have one restaurant that requires dress pants for men , but all the other ones don't require that. The food was pretty good overall.
BEACH: There was a lot of seaweed . You saw workers constantly trying to clean up the seaweed but they couldn't quite catch up since there was so much of it. I didn't mind at all and still went swimming in the ocean several times.
WEDDING:
LOCATION CEREMONY: Tequila terrace , originally i had picked the tequila beach but there was so much seaweed , where the chairs would be set up there was going to be a big pile of it on the left side of where our guests where going to sit. At times it smelled kinda fishy , therefor i decided to move it to the tequila terrace last minute, that way you can still get the beach view but not all of the seaweed.
LOCATION COCKTAIL/RECEPTION: Tequila Terrace
TIME OF EVENTS:
400-430PM : ceremony, champagne toast and a little mingling/hugs happened right after
430-6pm : family photos/our photos
6-7 pm : cocktail hour
7-8 pm : dinner
8-10pm: cutting the cake and dancing- We added one additional hour (ends at 9pm usually)
WEDDING COORD: Ramon - he did such a great job, he was so kind and really captured the look of what i was going for. If you have him you are in great hands!
HAIR AND MAKEUP: I hired Sara Tamargo and her team to do my hair and makeup as well as my moms and my mother in laws. I had Esther and Selena from her team and I can't recommend them enough!!!! They did a beautiful job , my makeup lasted all day through sweat and wear and my hair held up all night!!! Go with them you will not regret it , i promise
MUSIC: I brought our own speaker and rented theirs. I bought a JBL CHARGE 3 speaker for the cocktail hour and dinner portion of our wedding. I created a playlist through spotify and faded the songs , they have that option if you pay for their monthly subscriptions 9.99 which we did. That way the music doesn't sound choppy , it flowed smoothly. The speaker worked great but I'm very happy i decided to rent their sound system for the dance party 8-10pm. It was very loud and came with lights and a person that would handle your iPod and volume for you. Again we created a reception playlist on spotify with all of our songs and had everyone dancing all night!!! no one even realized we didn't hire a DJ since it appeared that we did with the guy handling the speaker. I highly recommend, if you have the time and want to save some money this worked out AMAZING.
PHOTO: Adventure photos. I requested Ana Lozano since i heard great reviews of her in the past. She was AMAZING ! Request her she did a beautiful job directing us and with our photos!! WE got the DIVINE PCKG + AMBER+ 1 HOUR EXTRA. TOTAL OF 74 PHOTOS. it was perfect for us and she captured from the ceremony until the end of the cocktail hour.
CEREMONY: Symbolic. We had Soccorro . I never met her prior to walking down the isle, except through a few email conversations prior to. I told her i wanted the ceremony to be religious and she did a FANTASTIC job. She didn't tell me what she was going to say prior to as to she wanted it to be a surprise, that kind of worried me at first, but she really did a great job . so no complaints at all. We also had the guitarist playing during the ceremony and he did wonderful , but i do not know his name.
COCKTAIL HOUR: I loved that by pushing everything back one hour and adding the additional hour that we had time to enjoy cocktail hour with our guests instead of missing it by taking our photos. Food for cocktail hour: fried shrimp wrapped in bacon, puff pastry with sausages, fried chicken taquitos, spring rolls. I didn't personally try any of it but everyone did and stated how good everything was !
DINNER: We had the divine pacakge and i picked some options from the eternity package. App: Ceaser salad so good! Soup: tortilla soup so good! Entree: surf n turf and chicken supreme with almond sauce pasta, again soon good!!!! only one guests complained about the surf n turf since their steak was really rare which i felt bad about, but everyone else mine included was cooked perfect. Dessert: warm apple tart so good! The food was very very good !! No complaints
Cake: Chocolate cake very good, no one ate it since everyone was full. Do not upgrade on the cake we did not and are happy about not spending more money on it!
Dance: look at comment above under the music section:). Everyone had a blast we rented out their sound system so worth it, and everyone danced all night.
ADVICE: dont upgrade the cake no one eats it, don't worry everything will turn out beautiful trust me ! Don't look at the weather i did and i instantly regretted it since it said it was going to rain everyday and it didn't , i highly recommend renting out their sound system.
Any questions ask away