Well as promised, I am finally writing my review!!! It's not just on the wedding but the resort as well!!

Wedding Location: Akumal Hammocks

Wedding Date: November 2, 2011 @ 3:00pm

Dates Stayed: October 28/11-Nov 7/11

First, I would like to start off by saying that this place is HUGE and totally worth the money!!! There are literally people cleaning and maintenacing all the time keeping it in perfect shape. Also, the water.. I drank it, my hubby drank it, all our guests drank it and not one of us had an issue. Yes, the resort is huge but they have trollys to take you everywhere so it's not bad at all to get from place to place. The trolly for the Hacienda though is the big colored one!

FOOD

I'm going to tell you... the food, is OK. It's not the greatest, but it's not the worst either. At the 24 hr snack bars, they have pizza... SO greasy but definitly the best when your drunk lol. The nachos however are delicious! The al a cartes... The ones we tried were, Tequila, Dolce Vita, Frutos Del Mar and Mikado. Piece of advice BOOK YOUR AL A CARTES AS SOON AS YOU ARRIVE! They book up really fast, especially Mikado (its the Japanese one where they cook in front of you!). If you like seafood, go to Frutos Del Mar, the food is really good there and the portions are a good size for it being an al a carte. They also have an appetizer buffet which is great so you can fill up! El Piscador (however you spell it) is the other seafood al a carte, my parents went there with their friends and said it was not very good at all. Tequila also has an appy buffet which is good because their portions are SMALL and I didn't care for their food either BUT they have different flavors of tequila and you HAVE to try the chilli tequila unless you can't handle spice. If you can, try it! but only a half shot lol Okay so Dolce Vita is where we had our wedding dinner for the menu we chose the Caprese Salad to start, then the classic minestrone soup, we gave a choice between the chicken tartufo and half moons (half moons stuffed with cheese and tomato sauce) and for dessert tiramisu! The caprese salad was really really good. The minestrone soup I didn't like at all. The chicken was good, everyone liked it. Not a lot of people chose the half moons but the portion looked small. Tiramisu was delicious! Our friends also gave us their booking at dolce vita a couple nights later so we got to try some other things on the menu too. On regular nights they have the appy buffet. I chose the tomato soup this time and it was the best tomato soup I've ever had. Then I had the lasanga for dinner, it was really creamy and thick, didn't care for it. And I still had tiramisu for dessert. Lastly, Mikado... This is honestly the best al a carte we went to! The food there is so amazing and the show they put on was awesome! Not to mention bottomless wine!! Definitly book there, you won't regret it. Having said all that, the only person who had bathroom issues was my mom, but she has a sensitive stomach and it only lasted 2 days.

DRINKS

Obviously can't go wrong with all inclusive drinks, yes the cups are fairly small but none of us cared, their free! Just get another one ha ha. One of the groomsmens favorites was the "Ticket to Fly" basically a pina colada on steroids ha ha. Mango-tango, super delicious!! Hubby and I also loved the mojitos!

ROOMS

Our room was amazing! I'm not a big fan of no carpet but it seemed to work well here with all the sand tracking though. Pillows sucked. The AC worked, but not super super well. It was kept very clean too. Mini fridge stocked daily... ours was stocked with champagne (which is gross by the way). Also has pop, beer, chips and a tiny chocolate bar. They also stock you with 3 huge bottles of water. Bathrooms... ha ha the shower is so weird!!! It's half open glass... it doesn't close! You have to shower with it half open, its so weird but we made do. Our view was amazing which you'll see from my pictures. We were in villa 67. There's 3 villas close to the beach, they always put the brides and grooms in the beach villas (if your in akumal), with the hurricane they evacuated those villas but by the time we got there we were good to go! All my Akumal guests were in villa 62. Same basic layout! PS. The best english channel is 32 ;) A lot of people say on here there's no difference between golden and regular but I find there is. Golden guests get the villas close to the snack bar and beach etc. You get your own private lobby with a bar inside, it has free wifi so you sit relax, have a drink, and check internet things if ya want. And you get a welcome drink when you check in.. sorry but to me it's totally worth the extra $30. Oh and the safe is like $5 per day for a key to lock.. Richard and I got ours for free I think because we're the bride and groom ha ha.

PRE WEDDING THINGS

Our wedding meeting with Eugenia was on Oct 31 @ 10:30. We didn't get a note, I had to go to the golden lobby and they called her for me. Basically, she had everything that her and my wedding planner went over, I just had my own copy and double checked everything. Was maybe 15 min long. We had a legal ceremony so my witnesses (4 of them) needed their passports and tourists cards, she copied them and that was all they needed to do. Same with us. We gave her our CD with music, fabric and shells (which they put on the cake). The CD, I was never sure on how many songs. I had 4. 1 for wedding party to walk to, 1 for me to walk to, 1 for signing and 1 for recessional. If your having a legal ceremony, have 2 songs for the signing, the bride and groom sign 5 pages and fingerprint 2, and all 4 witnesses each sign 4 pages. Takes awhile lol. Next she sent s to Arrecife to discuss our package. We got the Sunshine package ($975 USD) which comes with 10 free photos and I booked the videographer to do just the ceremony, edited video 15 min for $400 USD. I signed for the video and that was it, 5 min. Next we were off to the Hacienda for blood work... ADVICE: When their done and they give you the cotton ball... put pressure on the cottonball on your arm for awhile!!!! I did not do this and I had a bruise for like a week! And it hurt! Richard had no problems with his. I wasn't worried for photos, you couldn't notice at all. But just so you know!

We were going to do a run through at the ceremony site but Eugenia said it wasn't necessary, but I think it is and honestly, you can just gather your party and head to your site by yourselves and just mark where they need to stand at least, thats the issue we had was they didn't know where to stand. We also had a rehearsal dinner in the main buffet @ 6:00, so it was private for half hour, it was nice!

WEDDING

The day has come, I woke up at 730am and it was beautiful outside! My girls came up and they had shirts all done! Mine was white said "Bride Nov 2, 2011" on the bottom and theirs said bridesmaid and maid of honor! So cute! Once they were there with my mom we headed down for breakfast, my hubby was going golfing that morning which by the way for 9 holes, with the snack cart and clubs rental it was $55 each. So anyway, I accidentally saw him at breakfast so we just ignored eachother and carried on ha ha. We all ate til we were full! I wasn't nervous at all. Hair for me, Christina (bridesmaid.. also doing our makeup) and my mom was for 10am at the spa, BRING A PICTURE. Not going to lie though, we brought a pic for my mom and it looked nothing like the photo lol but it was still pretty! My girls hair turned out AMAZING! And I loved my hair too even though it wasn't exactly the way I pictures, it was still so beautiful. I paid for everyones hair and it cost me $85 for EACH girl and myself. We were all done by 1230, some makeup was done, but we had to stop to go have lunch at the snack bar. And seriously... it was so frickin hot out! Sun beaming down feels like it's frying you to death. OH RIGHT, If you want a fresh flower in your hair DON'T forget to tell the WC so she can order it!! I totally forgot, thought I had to tell the spa.. oops! They had to call Eugenia, it was around 11am at that time I told her I needed a white lily as it was sort of my veil, so she said she would order one right away and have them send it down, they come from playa del carmen. So, that was my one stress of the day. The flower didn't arrive til 2:10 wedding is at 3.. no big deal just need to put it in! Well, my MOH sittin thee trying to shove this thing in, my hair is like a net of bobby pins and hairspray, it was not going in at all. I start to get nervous.. 2:20pm my MOH and I decide we need to go to the spa... we book it down the steps (the spa is a 5 min WALK) so we jack someones trolly cart and race to the spa, get of and still have to run a good min to the spa... wait for the hair lady to come from wherever she was to put it in... she gets it in YAY... it's 2:35pm... we race to get a trolly, finally get on one and he decides to drive the slowest ever of my life... 2:40pm... still on the trolly stopping at each frickin villa FINALLY a my villa its like 2:50 we book it up 3 flights of stairs and I'm out of breath, sweating, makeup still good and on lol and now they have to shove me in my dress and lace it up.. I had my sister fanning me with her fan (thank god I chose fans over flowers for my BM) and someone else getting me water as my photographer is snapping away lol she was awesome though. So I'm sucked into my dress and dying, literally almost passed out. Sat down a sec.. it was already 3, went down to the cart that picked us up and went to the site (a 2 second drive ha ha) All my girls got out and hugged me. I;m still behind the bush so Richard doesnt see me. I get out and stand behind the bush where I start to feel faint again since the sun is beaming down on me so I sit down because thank heavens My hubby's Oma was LATE ha ha had to wait for her anyway, so my dad comes over and starts fanning me with my moms fan and this wonderful person, a bride that got married the day before me, runs over and gives me water, my savior! ha ha Before I knew it the ceremony was starting, I walked down that aisle just as it clouded over and got windy for me which was awesome cuz we were all dying at that point and well I was hot, got to my handsome man and it starts to sprinkle rain the tiniest bit, just enough to cool us all down. Apparently it's good luck! Half way through signing the papers it stopped raining, the sun came back out, the weirdest thing but definitly fate! The ceremony was perfect and no one even noticed I had a photographer there. Perfect day, perfect wedding. After the toast and arrecife got their shots, they all left same with Eugenia and we did our family photos with Vina (photographer) and did the rest of the photos, the lighting was perfect. If you want to know when the perfect lighting is.. before daylight savings (last weekend in october in mexico) it's at 5pm 530pm til about 6. Not joking its beautiful. After daylight savings which was when ours was the best lighting was at 4-430pm. And our dinner was at 5:30. We had more than enough time for photos. I didn't do a poolside reception because we had a huge at home reception but we did see one the next night and it looked really pretty! Instead we went to the disco at the hacienda. Because I had to wear my dress again for the AHR, I changed before going to the disco because your dress will most likely get dirty. They pour tequila down peoples throat there, drinks go everywhere, its not the cleanest place ha ha. We danced til it closed down though. Didn't get to bed til 4am! Awesome day.

EXCURSIONS

We didn't do a lot of them. A couple people did the mayan ruins and said it was a lot of fun and interesting. On the Friday after the wedding a bunch of us did the snorkeling tour at the resort. It's a 2 hour tour, go on a speed boat across the water, then you snorkel for about an hour, it's $50 USD each, or $52 if you use credit card. I would recommend this trip for sure. It's not too long and it's a lot of fun! We saw a baracouta, about 3 or 4 sea turtles and tons of sweet fish and a couple sting ray. Definitly worth your money. They take pictures for you and you can buy the disc after for $35. We did because the whole boat (holds 14 people) was basically all our friends and family except for 2 random people lol. My dads cousins as a wedding gift paid for us to go on the Adventuras Maya. It's a snorkeling excursion, all day one. You have 3 stops.. 1st is a lagoon to snorkel in or like an hour and 20 min, it's cool and all but we saw way more interesting things on our other snorkel trip. I get cold really fast so being in the water for that long I started to get cold especially since it was still like 10am when we were done. 2nd stop the underwater caves, really really cool but FREEZING water. then lunch. then last stop is the mayan sacrafice which is just like a pond lake area with a 15 ft jump and a small zip line into the water. Honestly, not worth what she paid ($230 for both of us). Between the 2 I would have done the first one. Thats all we did :P This isn't an Excursion but we had a couples massage on the beach done by the spa (paid for as a gift from one of my bridesmaids) and it was sooo relaxing! it was 50 min, for $200 for both of us. soo nice. do it.

ARRECIFE

We had our meeting with them on Nov 5 @ noon... They showed us our video (they took the CD of songs and used that in it) the video turned out beautifully, I love it, we showed it at our home reception, a lot of people cried apparently lol. I almost cried and I didn't even cry at the wedding ha ha. So, Martin was our photographer, he was really good. He took 70 photos, we got to choose 10.. now its 10 of the CEREMONY ONLY. They take a couple shots after which are not included. Anyway, their work is so frigging good that I couldn't choose, but I couldnt pick all because for all of them minus the 10 free would have costed us $796 USD :o no thanks. So we narrowed it down it 15, it sooo hard cuz their so good. So we ended up paying for 5 of them which costed us $74 extra. If you're using them, and have it in your budget, go for it, their really good and you won't be disappointed.

PHEW, I think that's it? I'm sorry it's so long but I didn't want to forget anything! If you have any questions though just email me or pm... email is [email protected]

I don't have my wedding photos back yet from Vina, she is working hard on them lol But I can show you guys my photos that I took of the resort and just our trip in general! Once I get the wedding photos back I will for sure add them for you!!! Update: Here are our wedding photos :) enjoy! https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150512597966050.367143.513216049&type=3&l=b750a4669c

Here is the album of our trip :) https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150366958521050.346820.513216049&type=1&l=05ab141ff0

Crystal & Richard Malicki