My husband and I got married at Secrets Silversands on January 5, 2013. We had a total of 41 friends and family come to the resort for four nights. Overall, our guests and we had an amazing experience! Our wedding coordinator was Lizette and Alejandra and we can't rave about them enough! We began working with Lizette summer of 2012 and she never went more than a few days without responding. There was a small language barrier but any discrepancies were always resolved by an email. The rooms exceeded our expectations and were a little discourage by the location of the wedding gazebo, but were amazed how everything came together and worked out. The beach itself was pretty and nice. However, similar to other reviews you could not adventure into the water without water shoes. The scattered coral made it hard to walk, but if you were willing to sail or kayak out 10-20 yards, you could see the beautiful Caribbean waters. I few things we would like to rate:

Food: B overall, However the night of our wedding it was an A. We did a food tasting the day we arrived and we highly recommend any couple doing a wedding to do the same. The food of the resort for dinners outside of our events was good. Service in the restaurants was very good we only had one night that we struggled with service but food was still good.

Spa: C-, I did a trial run with my hair and makeup ($100) and left in tears. I liked my hair, however my make-up was awful. She overdid my eyes and looked a geisha. For the wedding day I had her try something different with my makeup and she over did it again. I ended up having to fix it myself, which is really disappointing on your wedding day. My bridesmaids overall liked their hair and only one did make up. She liked her makeup, so it was very dependent on the person you get. It was very hard for them to understand English and was frustrated when you asked them to change something, so hard to get what you want. If hair and make-up is important to you, I would recommend booking outside of secrets. All other aspects of the spa (massage, pool area, waiting rooms, etc...) were on par with the rest of the resort. One more negative was beforehand I was told that the girls could use vouchers that we were given for their hair and makeup. However, they were not accepted by the spa and therefore we had to pay.

Rooms: A+, for the price we paid and the different rooms our guests had we were blown away by the layout and modern romantic feel all of the rooms had. On the night of our wedding, the decorated our room with rose pedals and a full Jacuzzi tub. And if your room didn't have an ocean view then it had a beautiful pool view.

Pools and Atmosphere: A+, the all-inclusive, means all inclusive everything from Johnny Walker Black and 1800 flowing like water to swimming in the pool and having a chef come out on a kayak with snacks and deserts. There was never more than an hour or two without an option to engage in fun of the resort. On the flip side, it was so easy to find a chair or area under covering to relax and nap. We were very impressed and were so happy to share this with our friends in family. We spent the majority of our free time in and around the pools and bars.

Beach: B-, the beach itself had pretty sands with little seaweed and debris. The beach was quiet and even on windy days was not hammered with waves. The downfall to the beach is the inability to swim very far into the water. It looks like the resort is continuing to improve and dredge the shallows, but it is not recommended to go very deep without water shoes or in a boat of some kind.

Wedding Experience: Overall A-, we had our rehearsal dinner in "El Patio" which overall turned out to be fantastic. Our only issue was the inability to lock down the restaurant until the day before we left. Then, they still wound up changing the restaurant last minute, so we had to communicate to all of our guests by Word of mouth. The setup was unique, and we struggled with moving things around with the staff, but we made it work and it turned out very well. The wedding was held in the gazebo. When we first saw the gazebo it is in the middle of the resort and surprisingly close to a walk way. We were slightly nervous about the noise of the pools and other guests in the resort walking through and throwing off the wedding. However, we were shocked once all the decorations up and how well the wedding coordinator directed traffic and the entire resort was respectful. In addition, it was very fun to have all the guests know you were the newlywed couple. The reception was held on Oceanside, which was tight for a total of 43 guests, but worked out perfectly. We used the bottom portion with the wooden deck as our dance floor which worked out perfectly. Food perfect, ambiance perfect, DJ couldn't understand English, but did a marvelous job and even let us download a song last minute to play for the mother son dance song. We only had the dancing until 9pm, which allowed some guests to break off and all others met up at various bars to continue the party. Then when we got back to the room we were blown away by the setup and the start of our honeymoon.

Staff: A, there were a few experiences where we struggled to have them work with moving tables or holding them to previous statements. However, overall, nice warm and willing to do as much as possible to keep a smile on your face.

We ended up hiring an external photographer, Claudia Rodriguez. We had to pay an external vendor fee but it was worth every penny. Claudia was amazing. She was quick to respond to any questions we had and on our wedding day she made us feel comfortable. We just got our photos back and they are everything we could have ever dreamed of. Photographery was extremely important to us since the pictures are the way we are going to remember our day. I would recommend her to anyone that is getting married in Mexico.

Secrets was an amazing resort! Please feel free to message me if you have any questions and we can connect over email. I was freaking out because I had not seen any recent reviews and I had a lot of questions. Feel free to reach out! Best wishes on your perfect day!