Our wedding review!!!

We have been married for 2 weeks and 5 days! We got married at the Barcelo Riviera Maya Palace Resort. It was incredible!!

Flight- A

I hate flying, but our flight from Vancouver to Cancun (with one stop) on Continental was very nice. It went by really quick and they were very accommodating with my wedding dress. They allowed me to store it in the first class closet. However, no flight along the way would upgrade us because of our wedding. They said too many people ask and they don’t usually do this.

Check in- A+

Check in was amazing at this resort. Because we were getting married we had the status of a premium guest, which means we were automatically taken to the premium guest lounge which was amazing. It was air conditioned, had a TV, computers with free internet, and ddrinks and snacks all the time. Plus, there were people there that would help you with ANYTHING you needed any time. Therefore, check in and check out were amazing, but so were all the other things they helped us with.

Room- A+

The room was absolutely amazing. The Palace is the fanciest of the resort, and I could tell in the room. We had amazing service and the rooms were always extremely clean.

Resort- A+

This resort is the most amazing resort I have ever seen. Every detail is amazing, the food is amazing. I would definitely go back to this resort. The only trouble with this resort is that it is so huge- it has 5 resorts in one, and we had 28 guests and they were all spread out among the resorts so it was really difficult to get together!! Every single meal we had while we were there was scheduled. It was totally worth it though because of how amazing the resort was!! If I could do it again, I’d make sure everyone was in the same resort or at least the ones next to each other.
The food was absolutely amazing. My Dh would plan for us to eat quickly at the Palace buffet before meeting our guests at other locations because of how amazing it was!!

Wedding Coordinator- A

Originally, we had a very brief resort tour in 2010 by Gabriella- we happened to stop by (we were already in the Riviera and decided to check out a few resorts). Even though they are so busy and have many weddings happening at a time, they agreed to meet with us, put us in a golf cart, and showed us around!! I don’t think I would have been able to plan my wedding without even having a slight idea of what the resort looked like so that was extremely great. Gabriella was super nice, but once we picked the Palace as our ceremony location, we were forwarded to work with Claudia Vasques as our wedding coordinator. She was the one we corresponded with through email for the next year. She was extremely helpful and although sometimes we got frustrated with the amount of time it took to respond, she always answered our questions. Also we got frustrated because a few times she would send me the document to fill out that I had already filled out and sent to her, so it got me worrying, but once I got there it turned out not to be as big of a deal as I thought.

Within a week of the wedding, I got an email from a new person, Lillian. She said she was “helping out Claudia” and basically was taking over things from there. She was the one we met and she was the one there for our wedding. As soon as we checked in she was there to set up an appointment for my spa appointments, my free massage, our bloodwork for our legal ceremony, and our meeting with her, which was the day after we arrived. Our meeting with Lillian was extremely quick and painless- we had already picked everything via email, but she wanted to confirm all of our choices. She had a folder with all the information I had chosen which made me feel very confident that she was going to do a great job on the wedding day.

I have to say- anyone that is considering not doing a legal ceremony because of the bloodwork- I think it is totally worth it. At that meeting, she said be at the medical clinic at this time tomorrow. We showed up, there was a doctor there who took our blood with sterile needles, and we were out of there in 5 minutes. That was it. TOTALLLY worth it.

Wedding:

Ceremony: A+

WE had our ceremony on the Palace (Coral) beach at 2pm. It was perfect for us. I had my and my BM spa appointments at 11am which was almost perfect if not a tiny bit rushed. We didn’t have much time to dress me but it ended up working out.

We were waiting and waiting for our ride (a golf cart) to come to pick us up for the ceremony. It turns out that the violinist was in a really bad car accident on the way to the wedding and wasn’t able to make it  L so we were waiting on a saxophonist to show up, so the ceremony ended up being about half an hour late. The ceremony ended up being absolutely perfect. I’m pretty sure it was super quick but I am told that I was probably in the zone and it wasn’t as quick as I thought it was!  It was the perfect beach location as there were no people around to spy on us and wreck our pictures

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Reception:

A

Our reception was at the Mariachi Grill. We showed up and it was very well set up and looked amazing. We had the head table just like I wanted, but there were tables that were set up a little weird, because I asked for tables of 4 people and they ended up giving us giant tables with 4 people at them, but only sitting on the outside facing in, which ended up being ok. It really did come out amazing. My only complaint would be that there was no air conditioning and a lot of my older guests ended up just hanging out outside where there was a nice breeze. The other thing is—we had 3 hours included in our package, and we added 2 hours to make a total of 5 hours for our reception which ended up not beign nearly enough!! I remember someone told me it was 10pm and we still had the bouquet toss, cake cutting, and garter thing left to do!!

Music-

We ended up going with an IPod for the reception music which was absolutely perfect. We really didn’t need a DJ. We also had a Mariachi band come in for 45 minutes which totally made our wedding. It was totally worth it!! They were awesome. They made the ladies do the Macarena and then I told the band that they should make the men do it too, and they were sooo bad!! Such a good memory!

Trash the dress- A++++

The trash the dress photo shoot we had was the most amazing day of my life (obviously aside from my wedding day!!). we had soooo much fun. We did the session the day after the wedding, and I think people thought it was our  wedding day because we were in our wedding clothes. We were taking pics by the pool and then suddenly we held hands and jumped right in!! People were soooo shocked and so amazed!! We had people crowding around cheering us when we reached the surface of the water!! People were coming from the other side of the resort just to watch us!! It was really neat. My wedding dress ended up cleaner after the Trash the dress than it was at the end of the wedding day, so if you’re considering it--- do it!!!!!!

Photography- A++ (Rhea Taylor Photography)

We quickly decided we wanted to bring photographers from home. We emailed a bunch of photographers and found Rhea taylor photography in Kelowna, British  Columbia (Canada) which is about an 8 hour drive from our town. They are a husband and wife couple who do photography, and they were offering for us to pay for their trip in exchange for their best wedding package (which is AMAZING). We ended up getting MUCH more than we thought we would- they are truly amazing people. They love what they do and they are so nice!! We ended up lucking out big time with them. We took some engagement photos at the ruins on a day we did a tour, they took some pics at the rehearsal dinner, and they were with us (the male with my DH and the girl with me) the WHOLE wedding day, then we did a few hours the day after for trash the dress. We have 15 photos as teasers so far, and we cannot WAIT to see the rest. They are amazing so far!!

Spa- A

The spa was very nice. My DH and I had an amazing massage incldued in the package which we took advantage of-- I was surprised at how much my DH loved it!! He had never had a professional massage before and now he's hooked!!

I had also had a manicure and pedicure free from my wedding package. I did the pedicure (which I wrecked 20 mins later by going snorkelling) and I already had my nails done at home.

The day of the wedding, they told us if we show up 20 mins early they might be able to start on us. when we showed up 20 minutes early, they told us we were early and would have to wait. then they started on me first (good decision) and ended up staring on the last BM 30 minutes late which really stressed me out since she has the most hair. They ended up doing an AMAZING job on my hair considering I have NONE and I was worried about what they could do. They exceeded my expectations and my hair was still in place the next morning!!

I loved the makeup they did on me, but they had one lady that didnt seem to know what she was doign do the makeup of my BM and did a HORRIBLE job. she looked like a circus freak. My BM was too polite and didnt say anything then had to redo it all back at the room. My makeup was flawless and my makeup artist was a complete perfectionist, which I cant complain about!! Thank god I was the one to get her that day (sorry bm!!).