We just got married at Dreams Tulum on June 11, 2011.  We had 47 guests, seven of which stayed off site and were required to buy half day passes.  Dreams Tulum was a lovely resort.  The grounds are very well manicured and we only had a few hiccups.  The air conditioning broke in the main restaurants one night, making dinner a very hot uncomfortable affair.  A few people changed rooms due to weird smells--the newer part of the resort is definitely way better than old.  The mosquitos were brutal this time of year--have never had a problem with mosquitos in December thru April on my trips to the Riviera Maya.  Make sure you bring bug spray if booked in June.  There were no mosquitos in my room or anything like that though...just walking through the lush greenery and in the evening on the beach.  My poor son came back from the kids club with over 20 mosquito bites.  The kids club is kind of off the beaten path location wise, but he had fun there.  The staff there was very accomodating and friendly.  He did some cool things and it was nice to have him out of our hair for awhile.  Sorry my review is so ADD. 

Check in was great--champagne and cool towels.  We did have to wait for our room for several hours, until 4 pm. but we just started eating and drinking.  We greated all of our guests in the lobby with gift bags when they arrived as well.  No one seemed to have any problem checking in.  They really appreciated us greeting them as well. 

RESTAURANTS

We ate at all the restaurants at least once.  We were least impressed with Bordeaux--the french adults only place.  We liked portofino--try the beef tenderloin.  Our favorite was the Japanese, the sushi was great and the restaurant part was fantastic. By far, our favorite place to eat.  I just wish you could order sushi at the Japanese restaurant.  We had sushi appetizer first at  Goban and then went to Himitsu for dinner.  The Mexican place was good as well.  Try  the Suppa de Lima (chicken lime soup) and the chicken mole.  Super good.  I would give the food easily an A- or a B+.  Avoid the world cafe for dinner at all costs. It is terrible. 

Rehearsal dinner was at carribean night, which was fun.  Reggae music and dancing and some pretty decent food.  They had us four tables set up together for it.  Super fun. 

THE WEDDING:

We purchased the ultimate wedding package and then payed extra for each guest over 20.  It came to about 6000 dollars total.  The only extra stuff we got was 2 bridesmaid bouquets and they charged us a set up fee for paper lanterns at the reception on the beach, and a set up fee for having over 45 guests. I hated getting nickel and dimed, but I expected it going in.

These are photos from the resort photographer.  We ended up purchasing the cd of all of his shots.  We wish we would have purchased more time.  That is our biggest regret.  We bargained for a better price for the CD pictures.  We got the 50 as part of the ultimate wedding package, but wanted a CD of the outtakes.  They wanted to charge us 790 dollars for it.  We got them down to about 500.  Sorry I can't figure out how to rotate the pictures.

The video is a little bit cheesy at the beginning--some canned imaged of the resort.  But I am so thankful that I have it.  It really does a good job at capturing the ceremony.  We opted for the symbolic ceremony to save money on blood work and what not. 

The ceremony itself was exactly what we had planned.  We had a friend who is licensed to marry people in our state do the ceremony which we had written ourselves.  It was perfect.  It was a little hot for our guests however.  We wished we would have handed out cold towels or bottled water.  We did pass out fans though--they didn't do much to beat the heat.

We had our reception on the beach and it was amazing...minus mosquitos.  We hired DJ Bijan who I give an A plus.  He played great music and didn't talk too much.  He also did the music and sound for our ceremony as well.  He even brought a microphone for our officiant so everyone could hear.  He timed the songs for the walk down the aisle perfectly.  (I walked down the aisle to Here comes the Sun by the Beatles).  We also had tons of toasting at our reception with it. 

The wedding dinner was the best meal we had there. We got the prosciutto--rave reviews, the green salad--only okay, and the surf and turf--amazing, plus the vanilla puff pastry with cognac sauce--never  ate I was too busy dancing. The wedding cake we got was the three milks cake with strawberry filling.  It tasted delicious, but we ended up getting in a big cake fight with all our guests.  Though I think they charge a little too much extra per person for an all inclusive resort for each dinner.  A little exorbitant if you ask me. 

We payed DJ Bijan until 10:00.  He stayed until 10:30.   We had plenty of time to dance and enjoy our wedding.  Our wedding was at 5 pm.  Cocktail hour on the lobby terrace at 6 and dinner on beach at 7.  I was worried about running out of time.  We were fine. 

Cocktail hour was okay.  mariachi band was fun.  Ran out of appetizers in less than 10 minutes because I only ordered enough for 20.  I wanted the champagne to be served at our dinner and we did have a problem with that.  They refused to serve it to us because they said we had drank it our cocktail hour--which we had not.  Several people had ordered champagne at the lobby bar, that is all.  To do it again, I think I would skip cocktail hour or have it at the same place as the reception...in our case on the beach.

Flowers--had a huge miscommunication issue with flowers, but it was more my fault than anyone elses.  I told her I wanted green purple and white flowers, but NOT the ones in the flower guide.  I wanted a darker green color.  She ordered me the ones in the flower guide.  They were fine, just not what I had in mind, and I saw some other brides with phenomenal flowers so don't worry too much about flowers.  Don't go offsite or anything.  The resort florist is good. 

All in all we had a fantastic wedding.  I liked how far off the beaten path Dreams Tulum is.  We were not flanked on either side by tons of mega resorts.  It felt more private somehow.  I wish my guests would have gotten more upgrades, because we really had a huge chunk of property taken up, but oh well.  

We took a group trip to the ruins.  It was very nice, but unbelievably hot.  Wear your swimsuit--beautiful beach there and great place to cool off.  I would give our whole experience an A- or B+. 

only negatives

mosquitos

champagne issue (this was totally annoying in the middle of our reception natalia came up to me and I really didn't care to do business during our wedding)

flower miscommunication

rocky beach--but seriously go down a little ways there is a beautiful beach there