Hello everyone!  Just wanted to post a review since this site was so helpful to me while I was planning! 

The most important thing I can tell all of you is that your wedding coordinator has everything under control!  It may not seem like it, but everything will be just as you wanted it and more.  I know in the beginning, I was very stressed, because I felt like I didn't know where to begin, and I wanted to start planning!!  I was very frustrated because my coordinator wasn't emailing me back promptly, and I was worried that things weren't getting done!...but believe me, they are!!  After a couple of months of worrying, I decided to just let things go...I got on this site and read a lot of great reviews, and great ideas.  I started putting together gift bags for my guests, working on invitations etc.  I left the big details up to the coordinator, and let me tell you, my wedding was everything and more than I could have ever imagined.  :)

I sent out a very long email to everyone about 2 weeks before the wedding.  I spent a lot of time on it, and it has a lot of good information in it about hotel, travel, wedding, etc.  This was very helpful for all my guests, especially people who don't travel much.  Let me know if you want me to email it to you.  I will put my email at the end of this review.

Wedding coordinator:  We had Victoria as our planner.  Like I said before, they take awhile to get back to you, especially early on in the planning process.  Any small questions, or detail questions, you will get a better response asking girls on this site.  We had the meeting with her a few days before our wedding, she had everything very organized, she was on top of it!  I was impressed.  We brought with us a couple of boxes of tea lights, the name cards, the table numbers with the holders, guest book, a framed sign for the guest book table, menus, sand ceremony vases, fans for the chairs at ceremony.  You can change anything you want pretty much during that meeting.  She will go over everything with you, and confirm it all.

Welcome Dinner: We decided to have a dinner the night before our wedding since we weren't having a rehearsal or anything.  We had about 45  guests so they would not book us in one of the a la carte restaurants.  They had us in the Hacienda Buffet which was perfect.  They had us in a sectioned area so that we were somewhat secluded.  We decided to give out the gift bags during this time, just because bringing them to each room would have been such a pain (plus it was $5 per bag to deliver with the bellboy)  It was great though, they brought over an extra table, and we had the bags all displayed there, and I made an announcement for everyone to make sure that they took their bag before they left.  

Gift Bags: I really wanted to do nice gift bags for everyone just because I felt like people spent a lot of money and traveled a long way to come to our wedding.  I fount a lot of great threads on this site with tons of good ideas!  Here is a list:

-postcard with a personal letter from bride and groom - vistaprint

-beach bags- Target- I saw people using these all of the time!

-cellophane bags filled with travel size Advil, tums, alkaseltzer, sunscreen, aloe lotion, chap stick, propel packets - all of this mostly from Sam's club where I could buy in bulk

-starfish frame-http://www.newfavors.com/index.php?l=product_detail&p=349  These were really cute for the price.  These we were going to give out at the wedding as favors, but didn't want people to have to carry them around for the rest of the night, so we put them in the gift bags.

-snacks- gardettos, cheese nips, oreos - all from Sam's club.  these came in handy :)

-customized koozie- from totallykoozies.com

Our Wedding Ceremony:  I don't even know where to begin!  Our wedding was amazing!  We were supposed to have our ceremony at the Coral Beach, but unfortunately in rained ALL DAY LONG on our wedding day!  At first I was bummed, but they back up plan was absolutely beautiful.  It was inside, but still open aired.  There was a huge arch that opened up to the gazebo, and looked over the water.  So don't be to worried about rain, because it was still perfect!  It was at 5:30, so the time of day plus the overcast weather made for a very intimate ceremony.  It was very breezy too which was wonderful.  We had the saxophone.  At first we choose the violin, but changed it during our meeting.  He was great from what I was told, I barely remember :)  He played while people were sitting down and waiting.  He played Canon in D while my Dad and I walked down the aisle.  For the bridesmaids and groomsmen, they walked to somewhere over the rainbow (the beach version) which I had on my ipod for them to play. My Husbands brother officiated since we didn't have a legal marriage (we got married legally in the US when we returned).  That was very special to us, we will never forget that experience!  We also did the sand ceremony, which was nice as well.  We also wrote our own vows, which was so neat.  It made it so sentimental for us as well as our guests :)

After the ceremony, they had champagne for all the guests.  We stood around and talked for a little while then did some pictures with our wedding party and family members.  We choose not to have a cocktail hour, instead we just sent everyone to the Carey Lounge in the Palace Lobby.  It was perfectly fine.

Reception:  Originally we were supposed to have our reception at the Mariachi Grill, but the day of our meeting Victoria told me that the Palmaras Grill was open for the night, so we switched it.  Both places are almost exactly alike, but the Palmaras is closer to the Palace if people are walking to it. We also added an extra hour to the reception, which I am so glad we did, we needed it!  Since it was raining, Victoria had a shuttle come pick us up and bring us over there.  We had the place all to ourselves, it was very nice!  The decorations were beautiful, everything turned out great!  We did not get a DJ, and instead designated and paid one of my friends to be in charge of the music.  I told him months before, so he had play lists for dinner, and dancing.  They have all the equipment there for you to plug in whatever you need.  He actually brought his laptop.  We did first dances right away, then ate.  We started speeches during dessert.  After that, we cut the cake.  We had two tiers which was more than enough.  Coconut and Pineapple, both delicious.  We didn't bring a topper for the cake, just told them to put fresh flowers on it, it looked very  nice.  Like everyone has said, no one really pays attention to the cake anyways, people are ready to party at this point!  There was a table set up in the corner where the guest book was.  This is also where the name tags were set up for people to grab to find their table.  We put them in alphabetical order before hand for her to set up that way.  The food was some of the best we had the whole time! The shrimp cocktail comes in a big half pineapple!  Very cute, and delicious.   The waitstaff was great as well as the bartenders.  They were coming around all night with trays of different kinds of shots which was nice!  We had the Mariachi Band come which was fun.  I wasn't super impressed with them, but it was a nice change and it caught every ones attention.  At this point people wanted to dance to good music, the band was sort of slow, but still, it was a nice change.   After the reception was over, everyone went back to the Palace lobby bar, the Carey bar.  People partied for the rest of the night there.  That seemed to be the spot where we all hung out the most.  They have a great outdoor space with couches etc.

Photographer: We used Fine Art Studio.  They were amazing!!!!  Take a look at their work at fineartstudiomexico.com  At first we wanted Del Sol, but they were quite a bit out of our budget.  I looked and looked for some comparable work, since photos are so important to me, and their work looked just as beautiful!  It is photojournalist style, which I love.  They seemed to be capturing all the perfect moments!  Everyone at the wedding commented on how great they were, they were everywhere getting some really neat a unique shots!  We wont get our pics back for a few more weeks, but have seen a few and they were amazing!  We also did a TTD session with them two days later.  We did underwater photos as well.  Take a look at this video for an idea of what you will do if you want to do underwater.  It was amazing what they can do: http://vimeo.com/45230851

We decided against getting a videographer, just because it was so expensive, plus the outside vendor fee.  So we just paid one of our friends to video.  She brought a tripod as well.  This way, we at least have something on video to watch if we ever want to.

I created a shutterfly account for everyone as well which has been great!  Once you create an account, you can make a share account with a password.  I sent out an email to all of our guests with the information to log onto it.  This way, people can share and print photos.  I will also be putting my professional pics on this website for all the guest to view.  This has been really fun for everyone!  Its nice to have every ones pics on an Internet site besides facebook that you can always keep. 

Spa: The spa is really my only complaint about the whole trip.  We booked appts months in advance with our wedding coordinator.  My husband and I showed up for our couples massage which came with our package, and they had no idea who we were and didn't have any reservations down for us.  They finally figured it out.  While we were there, I decided to confirm the appointments I had for the next day for mani/pedi with my MOH and mom.  Again, a big mess, they only had my appointment.  They got everything straightened up, but when we arrived the next day, our appointments were not on the schedule!!  It was a nightmare!!!!  They told us we would have to come back, which we couldn't do...etc. etc.  We complained, saying it was my wedding day and we needed these appts, and they finally figured something out.  Bottom line...Be prepared for things to be all messed up!  Good news is that the services were great!!!  The massage was one of the best I have ever had, and the mani pedi as well.  The computer system they have is super old school, tons of loose papers and stuff.  Same goes for the front desk of the Palace as well.  They were very slow, and even lost some of my guests reservations!  Luckily I had told everyone in my email to print off their reservation confirmation and payment.   I was very surprised by this considering what a nice hotel it is!!!  But seriously, this is the only bad thing that happened :)

Catamaran: We decided to do a catamaran tour the next day after our wedding.  We went with FatCat Catamaran.  It was a lot of fun.  We had about 35 people on the catamaran, and any more than that, it would have been too small.  There is another one called the Catamaya, which is much larger.  This was something fun for everyone to do together.  Since the hotel is so big, it was hard to get everyone together, so this was fun for our group.  

We had the best week of our lives, and our wedding day was so magical!!!  The best thing you can do is just go with the flow, and stop stressing!!!  Everything will be so wonderful I promise!!!

If you have any other questions, feel free to email me at [email protected]

I will try and put some pictures up on my profile, but not sure how that works, so if you cant find any pics and want to see some, email me and I can even give you the site to our wedding shutterfly account with tons of pics on it!  Happy Planning!