Sorry this is so long, but I know how much everyone wants to hear every details. I wasn't able to get the photos loaded here, but you can see them here: www.tinyurl.com/lundywedding

Overall, it was an absolutely perfect week, the wedding was incredible, and there is nothing we would change. They really do know what they’re doing when it comes to weddings.

The Resort

The resort is beautiful. The décor is very modern, and the resort is clean and well maintained. Most of the staff were extremely friendly.

Friday: We arrived late at night, after a flight delay and then issues with customs. We checked in at the Preferred Lounge and had amazing service ( I wish I could remember her name!) The lady told us the room she really wanted to give us would be empty the next day and we agreed to move rooms in the morning. We had some drinks in the lounge.

Sunday we met with Pilar in her office to go over all the details in the contract and hand off all the wedding items. We were able to make some last minute changes without much trouble.(Note: I did all my planning with Ana, but when I arrived at the resort I found out she was on vacation, and so Pilar met with us and did all the coordinating. I only saw Ana once the whole week, when Pilar brought her to our room the morning of the wedding to introduce her.) Pilar was fabulous, she really did everything to make us feel comfortable about things, helped us make decisions, and she really took good care of us. When you see how must time they dedicate to weddings, it makes sense that they are slow replying to emails!

Sunday night we had our Welcome Drinks in the lobby bar. It was a good location because there are huge sections where large groups can gather without being too close to everyone else. The bar was surprisingly busy though, so some well placed tips went a long way towards getting our drinks.

Monday we had a rehearsal. It was scheduled for noon, but Pilar was an hour late showing up, and we had a hard time keeping people waiting that long on a day of vacation. The Rehearsal was only about 10 minutes, telling everyone where to stand and when to enter. It was really good to have though. The wedding party was instructed to meet in the lobby 15 minutes before the ceremony; I was instructed to wait in the Preferred Lounge until Pilar came to get me. We didn’t end up doing our ‘rehearsal lunch’ because everyone wanted to get back to the beach.

Tuesday morning: hair and makeup at the salon for myself, three bridesmaids and the two mothers. They gave us champagne when we arrived, and we had a great time. Angel did my hair and makeup and it really was fabulous. We got matching hairstyles for the 3 bridesmaids and they did a great job of making them all look the same. They were fast too, we were done 30 minutes earlier than we planned. The hair and makeup did a great job of lasting through the day. They do go heavy on the makeup though, if you want natural, make sure you are VERY clear about that. We said natural and got lots of dark black eyeliner. It ended up looking great, but wasn’t what I was originally picturing.

One unfortunate thing, they wouldn’t let us order food to the spa, so we ended up not really having enough time to eat much before the ceremony. We ordered room service to be delivered right after our appointments, but we only had an hour to get dressed and we were rushed already. I would recommend at least 90 minutes for getting dressed and ready. The time goes surprisingly fast when there are 6 girls that need to change, plus the photographer and videographer wanting shots of everything

Pilar brought my flowers to the spa to show me, they were white calla lilies. I had provided a photo of a bouquet they had done before and it was not quite the same but still very nice. She delivered the flowers to the room while we were getting dressed. The groom’s boutonnière and the corsages for the mothers were also very nice. The boutonniere was delivered to the groom and the corsages came to our room.

We used the included centerpiece during the ceremony and then at the reception – and then we saw it s décor in Cin Cin later in the week!

Ceremony location: on the grass near the fountain, overlooking the ocean. We originally had it booked on the beach, but after standing there and listening to the waves and the wind we decided it was too loud for our liking and changed it the day before. The grass was nice and quiet, with not a lot of places for onlookers to stand, and it looks amazing in the photos of the ceremony I’ve seen, the color is beautiful. It also allowed for a very grand entrance down the stairs from the lobby and a long walk up the aisle, which I kind of enjoyed =)

Cocktail hour @ the orange bar. We wanted to use the Mix but there was a ceremony at the pergola in the middle of our cocktail hour time and they are right next to each other, so we opted to move locations. They blocked it off with private signs, and apparently the food was good – the only thing I ate was quiche, and I was soooo hungry by then. It was really good though! We found that a lot of people went off on their own during this time, so the cocktail hour was pretty quiet. We had our music on an iPod that Pilar arranged to have played through the sound system. We also had a slideshow playing on a small laptop that we just set up on a table at cocktail hour.

Reception dinner on the Festival Terrace. We didn’t do a dance so it was just dinner. They did nice job of setting it up, we didn’t bring much décor but it still looked very nice. The DJ did a great job of playing good music throughout dinner, we didn’t provide any play lists or anything.He didn’t have the song we wanted to make our entrance to, so he downloaded it right then. The terrace was windy, and we had a few name cards an menu cards go flying.

After dinner we just wend town to the Mix to hang out. Pilar let us hook up our iPod there so they played our music, which was really nice. It wasn’t a private event, but most people cleared out when we arrived with our big group. We found this a really nice location since most of our group is not big into dancing, so our parents were able to stay and chat and be comfortable rather than packing in early, which is what they would have done if we had moved to the disco.

Food. The food was good, overall. The resort seems to have trouble getting the food hot, we found this at every restaurant and the same for the reception.

We had:

Fresh combination of asparagus, chives and watercress served with a papaya vinaigrette (very good!)

Ricotta cheese raviolis with spinach, served with basil cream (tasty but cold)

For entrees our guests had a choice of Salmon supreme with a ratatouille and shrimp in a pinot grigio sauce or Pork tournedo medallion with smoked prosciutto sweet potatoes and honey puré with a mushroom sauce (I had the pork and it was very tasty).

The dessert we had was actually quite bad, I would not recommend it. It was the nougat mousse with caramelized nuts and almond cracker.

Cake. The cake was a let down in terms of looks, not at all what I had asked for, and the icing was messy. It tasted amazing though! We chose lemon cake with raspberry filling, and it was soooo good. We had it delivered to our room the next day to enjoy some more of it.

Video: Not sure who he was, never really got an introduction; he just showed up at the spa and started filming. It was the video included with the wedding package plus we paid for an extra hour. He said it would be 6 weeks until we get the video so I will post when it comes. I think our photographers were a bit frustrated working alongside him but they eventually figured out how to co-exist in peace. He did the getting ready stuff plus the ceremony and a bit of time after that with us on the beach.

Other restaurants:

We ate at Mercure, Spice, CinCin and Capers during the week. I think most people agreed that Spice was their favourite. The service isn’t really great anywhere, although I was particularly pleased with Capers. I found Cin Cin (the “modern cuisine” a bit weird, the décor was a bit funny and the food was all over the place, everything there was fine but nothing was really amazing. At Mercure, the French onion soup was really good.

One thing we did notice is that the portions are quite small almost everywhere, so don’t be afraid to order a second appetizer or dessert. And sometimes we went to one place for dinner at 6 and then around 9:30 or 10 went somewhere else for ‘round 2’.

We also had lunch at Castaways a few times. The food is pretty good; I think this is where most of the room service food comes from. The guys all really enjoyed the Buffalo wings.

Room service: the food was decent, but late at night it took a long time to get there – often close to 1.5 hours for the food to arrive. During the day it was usually 20-30 minutes. The preferred side has different room service options than the other side.

We had people both with and without kids in our group, so we floated between the two pools (they really do mean the adults-only pool is adults only, we had some people get kicked out of the preferred pool). The preferred pool is quieter for sure, the music is more mellow and quieter. The day beds were always saved by 7am but we never had problems getting chairs, even for a big group of us. This pool is open to all adults, not just those on the preferred side (some of our guests didn’t know they were allowed to join us there).

At the other pool, the music is low-key until 11am and then become louder more mainstream music for the party-goers. They do yoga classes, water aerobics, Spanish lessons, and other activities at this pool. Again, it was quite busy but we didn’t usually have problems getting chairs here. We mostly sat at the kid’s pool though.

Biggest complaint about the resort: housekeeping

The service was inconsistent at best; some days they didn’t clean until close to 5pm (on your wedding day, make sure you request an early housekeeping service for the room where you want to get ready!).Sometimes they took dirty towels but didn’t leave clean ones. A few days we didn’t get a bathmat. They didn’t replenish the soap very often. The preferred lounge was great at getting us things when housekeeping forgot them.