Moon Palace Wedding Review – 2/13/2011

 

DETAILS:

Date of Wedding: 2/13/2011

Ceremony:  Capilla Beach at 3:00 p.m.

Cocktail Hour:  Venado Garden at 4:00 p.m.

Reception:  Venado Terrace at 5:00 p.m.

Package:  Sapphire

Number of Guests: 24

Photographer:  Off-resort;  Sascha Gluck

 

TIMELINE OF WEDDING EVENTS:

2/9/2011 – 12 p.m. – Arrive at resort

2/10/2011 – 10 a.m. – Meeting with wedding coordinator

2/12/2011 – 11 a.m.: Ladies’ Lunch at Bugambilias and Golf Outing for Guys

–        6 p.m.:  Welcome Dinner at Arrecifes

2/13/2011 – Wedding

2/14/2011 – Honeymoon Dinner at Arrecifes

2/15/2011 – Leave for home

 

WHY WE CHOSE MOON PALACE:

When I discovered Bestdestinationwedding.com, I was actually researching weddings in Jamaica.  When we did more research, we figured it would probably be too pricey for most of our guests, so we decided to keep everything a little closer to home, which brought us to Mexico, and we chose Cancun because it was a place that everyone was at least somewhat familiar with.  I went through tons of reviews on here to try to find the best place, knowing that we wanted a golf resort since the hubby is a big golfer, and somewhere that was going to be really classy, all-inclusive so that once our guests were there, they didn’t have to worry about much, and we didn’t want it to be one of those $700/night places.  That made us decide on Palace Resorts, since they had a couple golf resorts, we decided on Moon Palace due to the location and the fact that they had the beach locations available for the ceremony.  

 

 INITIAL STAGES OF PLANNING:

Once we had decided on Moon Palace, we requested our date and time on the Palace Resorts Wedding site, which was confirmed within a few days.  We reserved our date only about 6 months before the wedding, so most of the timeslots were pretty full. 

 

After our date was set, we were quickly contacted by Janina Mendoza in the Miami office to get our contract signed and group booking set up.  In order to reserve the block of rooms for our guests, we had to pay for our stay in full (2/9-2/15).  We had decided on the Sapphire package when we requested our wedding date, but they went through and confirmed all of that again.  Janina was our main contact for about 3 months, at which point I confirmed with her that we would be hiring an outside photographer, we would be bringing our own real touch flowers, and that we wanted our wedding to be on the beach.  I had read a couple forum posts saying that when the bride and groom requested their ceremony location, they had already reserved another space for them, so I didn’t want to have any issues with that.  Janina helped us with the booking and all of that.  Whenever we had a question, sometimes it would take a few hours to get a response, and sometimes it would take a few days.  She was pretty quick, and anything that was “urgent”, she usually got to within the day.

 

About 3 months prior to the wedding, we were contacted by Valeria Vera, our on-site coordinator.  She sent a welcome letter with all of the details and options for flowers, cakes, DJ packages, ceremony music, menus, etc.  It was pretty easy to just go through and pick the things we wanted, and then email her back with all of our decisions.  We decided to use our 35-person restaurant reservation for a “Welcome Dinner” for all of our guests on the night before the wedding.  We also had Valeria make a 12-person reservation for a “Ladies’ Lunch” for the afternoon before the wedding, so that anyone who wanted to partake in more group activities could do so.  Valeria was up and down with the response times, she replied to most of my emails within a few days—some of them, I got an answer back within a day, sometimes it took about a week, but usually right around three days.  Nothing ever got to the point where I had to call her, and, like Janina, anything that was more on the “urgent” side got attended to pretty quickly.

 

WELCOME BAGS:

We decided that since our guests were coming such a long ways for our wedding, that we wanted to give them bags with anything they possibly forgot or might need.  We did a lot of research on the bags themselves, and ultimately decided to order from Zazzle.com, where we chose a stock photo they already had available, and then we were able to customize it a little.  We added our wedding date to the photo, but not our names (I never really liked the idea of them having to carry around a bag with our names all over it, especially because they could be used in the future for other things, so we just went with the date).  We went with the lower-end canvas bags with blue handles, and they ended up costing about $6/each with a few coupons we received by email.  We ordered 15 bags and were planning to do one per couple, and one for each single.  We also ordered 3” round personalized stickers for our “Too Much Sun” and “Too Much Fun” kits, which we put in the bags.  We mostly got travel-sized items for the bags; here is what was in each one:

Welcome Folder containing:

            -Welcome letter thanking them for coming

            -Itinerary of events

            -List of Restaurants, organized by lobby

            -List of included tours/excursions

-Pre-stamped, self-addressed postcard so they could send it back to us and that’s what we were using in place of a guestbook.

Loofa

Pack of gum

Pack of tissues

Bug spray

Umbrella

Medium sized bag of Pretzel M&Ms

“Too much fun” kit:

            2 Individually wrapped shout wipes

            Tums

            Various sizes of band-aids

            Small bottle of Advil

“Too Much Sun” kit:

            Lotion

            Sunscreen

            Aloe Vera

            SPF lipbalm

 

The bags were a huge hit.  Everyone used them to carry their stuff around the resort all day, pretty much through the entire trip.  Most of them took them with them to keep their stuff together on tours and everywhere they went.

 

FAVORS:

Initially, our plan was to buy the little mini bottles of Patron Silver and tie a blue ribbon around the neck, but a few of our guests don’t drink, so we ended up buying packs of 4 bottles of hot sauce in the resort lobby, they ended up being about $2 each, then we just tied a blue ribbon around the neck of each bottle.  We gave these to Valeria before the wedding and she took care of the rest.

 

 

 

THE RESORT:

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from the resort, because I had read mixed reviews on Trip Advisor regarding the quality of everything.  Some people had said that the resort needed some renovations or that it was too ‘80s—that was not my thought at all!  As soon as we got off of the transfer from the airport, I was in shock.  The resort is absolutely beautiful and lush with trees and plants and flowers.  It was stunning. 

 

Check-in:

Check-in was pretty much a breeze, they even give you a little welcome juice and a flower, which I thought was a cute touch.  We arrived around noon and had requested an early check-in, so we didn’t have any issues.  If you are arriving before 3 p.m., I would definitely request an early check-in just to be safe.  A few of our guests were stuck waiting around the lobby for awhile because they didn’t request an early check in and they arrived a couple hours before the room would be ready. 

 

Sunrise Section:

Our room block was in the Sunrise Section, which I wasn’t too sure about because some reviews had said that this is the “party” area of the resort and everything is pretty loud.  We didn’t really have any problems with this at all, but we were in the Toronjas area, which is pretty far away from where all of the main activities and shows take place at night.  During the day, the Sunrise section was pretty quiet.  The pool and palapas were moderately busy, but there was always space for us.  At night, the pool bars were pretty packed, but it was definitely fun. 

 

Nizuc Section:

We made a few trips to the Nizuc section, since that’s where the wedding planning office is, and we wanted to try a couple different places to eat.  The first couple times, we took the shuttle that goes between lobbies, which is very convenient.  After a few times, though, we decided that since we were already so close to the Nizuc section, that it was actually faster for us to walk through the Nizuc rooms to get to the lobby.  Overall, I liked the Sunrise Lobby better than the Nizuc lobby.  It seemed like there was a little more to do there. 

 

Moon Grand Section:

We did not make it over to the Moon Grand side at all, mostly because there was already so much to do at the other two sections, and we were pretty busy with wedding events.  We did pass it on the shuttle that goes between lobbies, and it looked really nice, but we never saw the inside areas, so I can’t say much about it.

 

SPA/GOLF:

The Spa and Golf Club are really, really nice.  The Spa is inside the Golf Clubhouse.  My one complaint about it is that sometimes we were sitting around waiting for the golf cart to take us from the Sunrise lobby to the Spa/Golf for a long time.  It wasn’t a big deal after we realized it took that long, but the girls and I were all late for our nail appointments because we were sitting around waiting for the ride for over 15 minutes.  The guys who went on the group golf outing also complained that they were sitting at the golf clubhouse for over 20 minutes waiting for the cart to arrive and bring them back to the lobby.  It would be a nice walk, but if you have an appointment to get to like we did, then you don’t have time to walk it, since it’s a pretty long distance.  I will say that when the cart people do come, they are extremely nice.

 

Golf:  The hubby played golf twice while we were there.  The first time he went, I went with him because I wanted to get some sun and the weather was really nice and we wanted some time to ourselves.  The round of golf is included in the Vacation Dollars program, the balls, club rentals, and buckets of practice balls are not.  This wouldn’t have been a big deal, except for the fact that they had told us otherwise when we booked the golf in the lobby.  The balls were way overpriced, it was like $40 for a dozen of the cheapest balls they had available.  The clubhouse also ran out of tees at one point, so that wasn’t really convenient. After dealing with the golf clubhouse and actually getting out on the course, I will say that it was really nice.  The course is very well-maintained, and there are iguanas and coati mundi all over the place.  We actually had an issue with one jumping into our cart and stealing our beers, but being the tourists that we are, we thought it was pretty awesome.  The guy driving the cart that took us back to the lobby afterwards told us that they are all alcoholics because the tourists gave them alcohol, so now they steal it off of the carts.

 

Spa/Salon in the Clubhouse:  The salon is downstairs and the spa is upstairs.  Both are beautiful, but the spa is unbelievably beautiful.  As mentioned before, my bridesmaids and I were late for our manicure/hot stone pedicure appointments because the cart took forever to come get us.  When we arrived, they did an excellent job of fitting our services in the rest of the time left, and we were all really happy with how our nails turned out.  I definitely recommend the hot stone pedicure, it is only a few dollars more than the spa pedicure and it is totally worth it.  After the services, it was so amazing that I immediately booked an 80-minute couple’s hot stone massage for the new hubby and myself, and they were able to get us in (2 days in advance) for the time we wanted, which I was surprised at, because I had heard the spa gets booked pretty fast.  The spa is wonderful, they have a couple mineral pools, Jacuzzis, sauna and steam room.  They serve you fancy juices and have fruit available.  The actual massage rooms are also very nice.  The massages were fantastic!  If you have time, definitely go for a massage.

 

RESTAURANTS:

Like everything else, I had heard mixed reviews about the food from Trip Advisor and a few other travel sites.  I actually really enjoyed the food.  They had a ton of selection available.  There are so many restaurants that we didn’t get a chance to try even half of them.  The service at all of the restaurants was amazing!

 

Room Service:  We did the little breakfast card that you put out on your door and then deliver the food to your room a few mornings, and it was pretty good!  Everything arrived warm and delicious, and it arrived exactly when we requested it.  Besides using the card, we never really ordered any room service, but a few in our group had and they said it was really good. 

 

Bugambilias in the Sunrise Lobby:  This place was pretty much a staple during our stay.  It was easy to get to and the food was really good.  The lunch buffet is good, the dinner buffet is really good.  It is mostly Mexican cuisine in the evenings, and there wasn’t one thing that I got that wasn’t really good. 

 

La Gondola in the Sunrise Lobby:  We didn’t realize this place was here until the morning we left, so all we had here was breakfast, but it was definitely good!  I think most of the places pretty much have the same normal breakfast foods in the morning, but this one was just as good as the rest of them.

 

Mo-mo-no-ha-na in Sunrise Lobby:

…Or whatever you call it.  We actually didn’t realize this place was here until the wedding night when we were all out really late and were craving something different around 10:30 at night.  The food was really good.  As soon as you sit down, they give you a plate of different things like California Rolls and tempura.  The California Rolls were really good, that was pretty much all I ate, but everything everyone got, they definitely enjoyed.

 

El Manglar in Nizuc Lobby:

We initially went over to the Nizuc lobby because our friends said that Los Corporales was amazing and we had to eat there.  When we arrived around dinner time in a group of six, they said it would be another 45 minutes until they could get us in.  I guess it’s that popular.  Anyway, we didn’t want to wait that long, so we went right next door to El Manglar, which I think is supposed to be Italian.  I enjoyed it, but I didn’t really eat much this night.  It wasn’t any of our favorite place, but it definitely wasn’t bad.  All of their chicken dishes were good, but the pasta didn’t look so great.

 

Arrecifes in Nizuc:

This was by far our favorite place for dinner, although we only went there once—for our welcome dinner with 24 other people.  We both love Brazilian steakhouses, it’s our favorite, so we were excited that this place was here.  Basically, you go up to the salad bar and get everything you want, then they bring around meat on giant thick skewer sticks and give you whatever they have: chicken, turkey, prime rib, filet mignon, veal, pork tenderloin—everything!  The meat was fantastic.  This is a definite must-try while you are there!

 

Palapa Barracuda in Sunrise:

We just tried this place for lunch, but it was really good!  Lots of different kinds of chicken and meat, and it is a really cool set up, being a palapa out by the pool.  Definitely recommend it!

 

Swing Bar in Sunrise Pool Area:

We stopped by here on our first night with a group of friends.  Instead of chairs, they have swings to sit in—really cool idea!  It is just a bar, so there isn’t much to say, but the set up is really cool!

 

Lobby Bar in Sunrise:

We were here almost every night.  The service is amazing and the booze is pretty good!  There is a piano that some guy comes to play at night, and he is really good.  Then around 10 or 10:30 some girl came to sing every night and she was pretty good, too!  She sang a lot of popular American songs and classics.  Definitely a fun place to be with some friends.

 

MEETING WITH WEDDING COORDINATOR:

We had some issues in the beginning with this because we thought we would be getting some kind of notice from the wedding coordinator about where we were supposed to go and what we were supposed to do, but all I knew was that I had asked Valeria about when our meeting was, so she told me 10 a.m. on Thursday.  Well we ended up having no idea where to go—apparently the wedding office is over in the Nizuc lobby, which we didn’t know until we had to ask a bunch of people, most of which had no idea.  Eventually we got there, about 15 minutes late, but we did get there!  Once we actually met with Valeria, everything went very smoothly.  I had forgotten some of the things I brought from home that I wanted her to use, but I ended up bringing those back to her later.  We gave her our favors, our serving set, cake topper, and centerpieces.  We went over all of the emails we sent back and forth, and basically just confirmed everything with her.  She showed us on a map where the ceremony and reception would be, went over all of the charges with us, and sent us up to the photography room to talk with the person in charge of that, because although we were opting out of the included photography, we still wanted the included videography.  Looking back, there were some things that I should have covered with her that I had assumed that she remembered from our emails—the champagne toast that is normally at the end of the ceremony, I told her I wanted to move to the cocktail hour because I thought it would be better for pictures.  She had forgotten and we all ended up doing the champagne at the end of the ceremony.  A minor detail, but it was my fault for not going over it with her.  The meeting with her took about an hour. 

 

LADIES’ LUNCH:

Valeria had no problem setting up a reservation for us when I had asked her if we could have our special “ladies’ lunch” the day before the wedding, where all the girls who would be at the wedding could meet (if they hadn’t already) and get to know one another while the guys went out and golfed.  We arrived a little late for the lunch reservation (probably about 15 minutes, actually), but the table was still set up for us in the back of Bugambilias by the window.  The service was great, as it usually was, and we pretty much had at least one waiter attending to us at all times.  We were really happy that they were so willing to set the table and reservation up, since they normally don’t do reservations.  We figured buffet was the way to go, since the bridesmaids and I had a spa appointment and hour and a half after the lunch reservation, so we wouldn’t have to wait for 15 girls to order and get food.  This turned out GREAT!

 

WELCOME DINNER:

We used our 35-person reservation for what we called a “welcome dinner” at
Arrecifes.  We didn’t have a rehearsal, so we felt weird calling it a rehearsal dinner.  We really just wanted to be able to spend a little more time with everyone with another group activity and to give everyone some time with us between running around trying to do wedding stuff, but we made sure that they knew they didn’t have to come if they had any other plans.  Everyone who attended the wedding showed up.  Let me tell you…we were so impressed with how they took care of our giant party here.  They put us in the back where there is a small lower level, which made our dinner pretty private, although we were still part of the restaurant.  We had initially asked to be out on the terrace at Arrecifes, but since the weather was iffy, we decided to move it inside.  They had two or three waiters attending to our 24-person table the entire time, and made sure when they had new racks of meat, that our table was the first to be served.  Everyone was talking about how amazing the food was and how wonderful the service was here.  We were very pleased with how everything turned out.  Having the welcome dinner over there also gave us a chance to show all the guests the Nizuc side of the resort, so they would know how to get to the wedding if they came by the bus shuttle, since the wedding was over on the Nizuc side and we were on the Sunrise side.

 

THE WEDDING DAY!:

Salon:

The day of the wedding, the bridesmaids and I had hair appointments around noon, so after breakfast we all headed over there to start our hair.   All of our hair turned out really good.  I had read some mixed reviews about the hair, but we all came ready with photos and were all pretty happy with the result.  I really—really—liked mine.  I just had her do loose curls all over, and it turned out great!  Two of the bridesmaids came with photos of what they wanted, and their hair turned out great.  The other bridesmaid just kind of explained what she wanted, and her hair turned out great as well!  We didn’t really have any issues with a language barrier or anything, but I guess there are probably some people there who might, so bringing photos is probably your best bet.  We all did our own makeup, so nothing to review there.

 

Pre-Ceremony and Ceremony:

The horse carriage showed up around 2:45 with the wedding coordinator and her assistant.  They also brought the bouquet I had picked out (we did real touch and brought them with us, but the bouquet that she brought actually turned out way better than it looked in the picture.  It was beautiful and I almost decided to use it instead of the one I had made). 

 

I chose to have my mom ride in the carriage with me, and the FOB, bridesmaids, and photographer all jumped in the cart with the wedding coordinator to be taken over to the ceremony site.  Meanwhile, we drove around in the carriage and then waited around a corner for everyone to get situated and for the other girls to walk down the aisle.  The coordinator gave the carriage driver the signal over a walkie, and we headed over to the beach site.  The music started and FOB helped my mom and myself out of the carriage, and walked us down the terrace steps.  I had my mom on my right and my dad on my left as we were walking down the aisle, so the wedding coordinator left enough room for us all to walk down together.  The set up was beautiful, the blues were beautiful, everything was perfect!  We had the harpist playing, and everyone just loved it! 

 

The pastor was amazing.  He spoke perfect English and everything he said was beautiful.  Everyone could understand him perfectly.  When it came time for us to speak, he held the microphone up to us.  I was really happy with him and the words he had chosen. Everything went very smoothly.

 

Cocktail Hour:

Immediately following the ceremony, we did some photos with our entire group, and then family shots.  Then everyone walked over to the Venado Garden where our guests had some drinks and appetizers while the wedding party did photos on the beach. 

The one issue we had (which really wasn’t a “problem”, but everyone was kind of like “what the heck is this?”) was that they were painting the dance floor as we were all walking by the terrace to get to the garden during the cocktail hour, then everyone was kind of thinking “is it safe to dance on now?” since we were all dancing on it about an hour later.  It seemed dry by the time we did any dancing, so it wasn’t really a concern later on.  It just looked weird walking past it and they were still working on it.

 

The appetizers were really good, and they had an entire bar set up for drinks.  They also had a few high-top tables set up, and they had some flowers on them and some blue linens.  I hadn’t even requested anything like that, they just took care of it all.  I was really impressed with how they had set it up for us without us even asking for the extra décor. 

 

Dinner and Reception in General:

When we were done with photos, everyone stepped up onto the terrace, where the tables were set up beautifully!  I had mentioned to the wedding coordinator that we wanted a T-shaped table with the bride and groom at the end, and then the guests down the length of it, since I thought it would look weird if we had only a couple round tables of ten.  It turned out perfect!  She also threw in some blue table runners (without us asking) which made it look even better.

 

The food at the wedding was amazing!  We got tons of compliments on it.  We went with traditional Mexican options, and then requested they added a few options from the other menus, which they had no problem with at all.  Everything was buffet style since it was outside, and there was TONS of food, and everyone kept going back for more since it was so good.  We didn’t really have issues with it getting cold or anything. 

 

We didn’t do any speeches because our bridal party was kind of shy and weren’t really keen on doing it, so we just had music playing (previously prepared by the hubby on his iPhone, and we just used the iPod hookup) through dinner.  There was a technician there pretty much the whole time to watch over it.  Had we known he was going to be there, we would have stressed over the music a lot less.  The music system sounded pretty good.  We just went with the cheapest option for the hookup.  We let the technician know when we wanted to do the first dance, and he got it all ready for us and then announced it, which we thought was pretty cool because we weren’t really sure how all that was going to go. 

 

Cake:

A little while after the first dance, we cut the cake.  The cake was VERY pretty!  There were a few cracks in it (I believe from the humidity), but no one really saw them except us.  I had previously given the wedding coordinator our cake topper at our meeting, and they took care of everything (no additional charges or anything).  We did one layer chocolate and the other layer vanilla.  We both only really got a tiny bite of the cake since we were so busy running around talking to everyone, but we remember it being pretty good!  It wasn’t the best cake we had ever tasted, but it definitely wasn’t the worst either. 

 

After the reception

Immediately following the reception, most of our group wanted to go out and have some more drinks at the lobby bar (our favorite place, apparently!), so we did that, and the bartender ended up bringing us a few special drinks as the newlyweds.  They put a few tables together for us, and we took up about half of the place, but it turned out really fun and it was a nice way to unwind now that the wedding was over.  After we all sat around and visited for a couple hours, some of us went over to Momonohana (I will never get that right) and had a bite to eat before everyone headed back to their rooms.  

 

DVD: 

When we met with the wedding coordinator, I wasn’t even really sure that we wanted the videographer there since I thought he would just be in the way, and I figured the DVD would be really cheesy.  When we received the DVD, though (a few weeks after the wedding), we were SO happy that we did it.  It turned out GREAT and really caught all those moments we didn’t even think about or might have missed.  He got video of everyone standing around talking before the ceremony, the pastor showing the guys what to do, family mingling, etc, then it shows the entire ceremony and then some video afterwards of us walking on the beach (ok, that part was a little cheesy, but he still did a really good job!)  If you get the package and the videographer is included, DEFINITELY DO IT!  I love that we have it.  One thing to add, if you are not still at the resort three days after the ceremony, you will have to have the DVD shipped to you, which is another extra $60 or so.  We had left the day before it was ready to pick up, so we had to have it shipped to us.  Still, definitely worth it!!

 

THE NEXT DAY:

The day after the ceremony, they served us a pre-chosen menu served to us in bed (we had already gotten up because we did our trash the dress session with the photographer at 7 and so we pushed back the breakfast to 9).  The breakfast was amazing with special juices and mimosas.  You get to choose the menu before you go, and you can choose as many things as you want, so we really had a table full of food.  It was a special touch. 

 

After breakfast, we went to the spa to have a couples hot stone massage which was amazing.  We definitely recommend it! 

 

Since we were married at the resort, we qualified for the “honeymoon package” which we registered for at one of the vacation planner desks earlier in the week when we happened to be passing by.  Definitely do this!  We got two free t-shirts, a fancy honeymoon dinner, a honeymoon cake and a bottle of chilled sparkling wine in the room when we got back, and a rose on the bed.  The dinner was a special four course dinner at Arrecifes (our favorite place!) but it wasn’t the traditional food they serve there, it was something fancier.  They brought over wine and a “honeymoon cocktail” (which was amazing by the way), and then a few other cocktails… so before we had even eaten anything our table had about 8 glasses of alcohol on it.  Not that we were complaining, but it was definitely too much for us to drink!  The food at that special dinner was really good, too.  They did a salad and a soup, then a steak and potatoes and a special honeymoon dessert.  We really enjoyed it. 

 

OVERALL EXPERIENCE:

 

We absolutely loved staying here and loved that we had our wedding here.  Of course at the time, we were a little stressed out (that was due to lack of planning on our part…there were a few things we had forgotten), but looking back, Moon Palace was beautiful and they really did an excellent job with the wedding and with our stay overall.  If we had to do it all over again, I think we would definitely do it all the same—except maybe with a little more preparation on our part!!

 

**For photos of our wedding and entire trip, feel free to visit our wedding photo sharing site that we set up for our guests and us to exchange and share photos.  We thought this was a good idea so everyone could see everyone else’s photos without having to bother with emailing them.  Our professional photos are also up there!**

 

Andrewandamandaweddingphotos.shutterfly.com/pictures