My wedding was September 3, 2011. I don't have any professional pictures yet but I decided I better post my review before I forget everything I wanted to say. It's also timing out when I try and add pics so I'm going to write the review first and then try and post pics after. Overall we had a fabulous time and it was money well spent! My only true cons are that the food is just average, the pool area is very small (but great beaches), the communication with the wc's is very poor.

Wedding Coordinator - Claudia - A

I met Claudia during a site visit and she is very nice. Communication in the beginning was probably at it's best with maybe 2 week respond time it got worse as time went on but I'm not one of those super focus, psyched out detail oriented brides so it wasn't really that big of a deal. The one thing that disappointed me was that in the beginning told me that I could get fire dancers for my reception and a tequila tasting as an activity. Both of which she never found for me after numerous requests and to no avail I had not luck either. I was pretty sad about the fire dancers that would have been the coup de gra to a perfect wedding. LOL I must say that after my meeting with Claudia the day before the wedding I was completely at ease and with minimum direction she made everything absolutely stunning.

Hotel - B

The scenery at the hotel is gorgeous! Ocean view from everywhere. The hotel rooms are just okay. I've been to much more modern hotels in Mexico but I think they attempt to give you a more cultural experience. Now they do have some rooms that are very nice, due to a few issues with giving people the wrong rooms or being over booked. My in laws received the Presidential Suit in the pyramid (different from the presidential suite in the towers) but still a very nice room. We got locked out of our room the day after our wedding and they had to break the door down with a sledge hammer so needless to say they upgraded our room to a bigger suite in the tower I think it was room 6156, I must say that the guests that had dolphin view rooms were not really happy because they start working with dolphins around 6am so the whistles and such is a bit much after a night of drinking but if you have kids it may be worth it.

Restaurants - B-

Again very average food. Breakfast you can't really mess up. I have to say I didn't really try to many places for lunch it was usually the buffet at the world cafe or what ever special meal they cooked by the lagoon area. Himitsu and Seaside Grille were the best places. They had a pirates of the Caribbean night and I heard the food was amazing that night. Room service hamburgers and pasta went over very well with my drinking guests. :)

Makeup - Spa - B

I'm so sorry I can't remember the ladies name that did my make up at the spa but I brought all of my own makeup just because it can be very difficult to find the right shade coverage for black women so I thought I'd eliminate that stress by bringing my own colors. It was laid on kind of heavy and I felt like I looked like a porcelain doll but it wasn't anything a powder brush couldn't brush off. I just added some bronzer to put a bit more color back in my face and I was fine. I was a little disappointed that they wouldn't put on individual lashes but I had strip lashes as a back up so no real biggie.

One of my guests did my hair so I can't comment on that piece.

Photographer - Juan Navarro - A+++++++++

I was really disappointed when I found out that the hotel stopped using Juan but I splurged and hired him as an outside vendor. Once I get my pictures I'll do a review on him. But I can tell you now that just from the pictures I saw on his camera the photos are going to be AMAZING. He has got to be one of the most creative wedding photographers I've ever seen We will not have your typical wedding photographs and he went way over and above what he was paid to do. Again, even without seeing the pictures I have full confidence that it was money well spent!

Wedding - A++++++

I must say we have very few items set in stone prior to me getting there. I met with Claudia the day before the wedding (even that meeting wasn't schedule before I left the states) I asked for purple flowers, purple centerpieces with candles I had a few pictures but nothing that I was dead set on and everything Claudia came up with was absolutely wonderful! We flew in our DJ, I'm sure the hotel DJ is great but we are friends with one of the most popular DJs in our college town and it was much more memorable to us and our guests to have him there so we paid to extend the reception to 4 hours. Money well spent if you and your guests like to party because after you get through eating and cutting cake and doing all the traditional reception things you'll barely have enough time to party.

We had 62 people at our wedding so instead of paying for extra bottles of campaign for the campaign toast i just asked that they bring the bottle to our room for the getting ready crew. We had a blast the tequila shots didn't hurt. Claudia also brought the flowers about 2 hours before the wedding, loved them they were inexpensive and did the job. The decor was great I paid for two floral arrangements for the gazebo and boy were those amazing. They also reused them at the bride/groom table. Claudia threw in the white carpet for free, I heard it costs extra because it has to be cleaned more often then the red carpet but she didn't mention a price when I asked for it and it wasn't on the bill so that was nice. I also don't know if the lighting was included or not but they did have big colored lights flashing on the dance floor that was really nice. We had our reception on the patio of the towers and to be honest we had so much fun dancing I can't really remember to much else about the reception other than the waiters and bartender were awesome. They were really on top of all of our needs. Our colors were multiple shades of purple and black and the bartender made rounds of purple shots, the best drink I had my whole stay! 

From what I heard the food at the cocktail hour was great. We chose the silver menu and I'm really sad I didn't get to try any of it. We chose the silver buffet dinner and swapped out one dish for Chicken Suprema and they obliged. The wedding cake...not so great. Part of the problem I think was that they brought it out to early and it was just too hot outside because it was kind of mushy. It also didn't look anything like the picture but it really wasn't a big deal to me either. I must say that the churros WERE THE BOMB and my biggest regret was letting them clean up the desserts too early. The churros were like their own attraction.

Overall it was just a really great experience and it was the perfect setting for us and our guests. It was really laid back, informal and just good ole' fun. No stressing and no bridezilla and no unhappy guests. It was probably half the cost of what it would have cost me to have in the states and it was probably twice as much fun as it would have been, It's been 3 weeks and I'm still basking in the joy!!!!