Hi ladies!

I wanted to give you a review of our wedding on May 7th at the NOW Jade.  Before I start, here's a link to our photos from Del Sol - love love love them.  http://delsolphotography.com/blog/content/galleries/?gal=722

I think to sum up our week, one friend told me, "you know I can never get married now, because it will be impossible for me to have a wedding anywhere near as fun as this week has been."

We had a great group of about 35 friends and my husband's twin boys that are 10.  We are mostly from LA and very fun loving, wild group.  Our people LOVED THE RESORT.  The all inclusive part was great for us, the the price for them was also in everyone's budget.  I seriously researched like every resort in the Playa Del Carmen area, and with Wendy Hick's help from Wright Travel, she guided me to this resort and it was an ideal fit.  The rooms were great, beach was excellent to swim in, pools were fun and they kept the drinks coming and the servers remembered what we were drinking.  I would say that the food in the main cafeteria/buffet area was not excellent, but the rest of the restaurants were really good and we even had gluten free and vegetarian friends who were happy with the food.

The location of the resort is great for big groups because the taxi's are expensive into town, so it keeps everyone at the resort and hanging out together.  As a group we only went into Playa Del Carmen once to go to Coco Bongo, and if you do that as a group have someone at the resort hook you up with the tickets so you get treated well when you get there.  Just ask someone at the resort when you get there to hook you up. The guys are usually at the pool advertising for it.

In terms of the wedding, I did most of the planning myself and by emailing Pilar a few times, but the poor girl has so many brides and they all ask her the same questions, so I just started reading the threads and looking at all the photos from past brides to get a sense of what to expect.  Basically, you bring her your bag of goodies and have one meeting before the wedding, and she plans everything that day.  She can plan your wedding literally in 10 minutes - it's amazing.  I suggest bringing photos of flowers and tablescapes so she can get a feel for what "look" you want, they are very good at copying it.  

For the flowers, I was EXTREMELY impressed with what they produced.  At first I sent her super fancy examples from style me pretty type websites and she came back with like $275 a table for the photos, which was of course ridiculous, so I told her to use the lower priced flowers and get the same look and they did great at that, and it saved me a TON.

The only thing that I would caution, is that if you have a specific timeline or way you want the ceremony to go, make sure you do the rehearsal.  I am really easygoing and chose not to do that so I didn't bother my guests (or myself, I wanted to optimize the pool time), and I sort of regret it because there were little hiccups here and there about where to stand, etc.  My mom had actually written a lovely script for the ceremony that the guy ended up not using, which in the beginning I felt bad about, but he was really awesome and had his own thing memorized and it came off very natural and ended up perfect.  She used the script for our US ceremony afterwards and it was even better that way.  Sometimes things happen for a reason.

Pilar sprained her ankle the day before our wedding so only her assistant was there, and she didn't really have the personality to take control of everything like Pilar does, so I think if Pilar was there things would have been smoother, but all in all it was lovely and for what we paid I am extremely thankful for everything.  Your guests never notice the little things that don't go as planned, so just go with the flow.

We got the Mexican Trio for the cocktail hour which I think was nice but I never saw them.  I got cigars from the hotel store for our guests which I'm sure was a rip off but I didn't have time to go into town.  We had DJ Doremixx who was great, they played all our favorite songs and exactly what was on the list I gave them.

I did welcome bags for our guests with items I brought from the 99 cents store (advil, hand sanitizer, mexican candy, etc) and stuff I got at Walmart in Cancun the night we came in, including full size bottles of Tequila for under $10 each.  We arranged them ourselves and kept them at the lobby to hand out as our guests were arriving in groups.

I got my hair and makeup done for the wedding in the salon.  They are sweet, bring your photos and they will copy it.  I do warn you that they used over one can of hairspray in my hair, so if you're going for the natural look like I was, forget it.  But I think it worked out because it was REALLY hot and the natural look would have gone flat by the ceremony.  Bring your own people or do it yourself if you're picky.  Same with the makeup.  They don't use trendy makeup brands so if you're picky don't even go there.  Most of my makeup melted by dinner anyways though, I just went with it.

If you're looking to do tours, you should absolutely call Barry from MayaCan Eco Tours.  He's such a cool guy and took us to Akumal and the cenotes and hooked up the guys with golf.  His email address is [email protected] and he also has a facebook.  He's from Canada and moved down to Playa and does tours and is extremely accomodating, great prices, and will give you more of a personal experience than any of the other tour companies.

Overall I highly recommend the NOW Jade, feel free to message me specific questions.  Good luck planning, don't stress yourself out too much and just enjoy everything!!!  They will take care of you, it's your job to just go and HAVE FUN!!!