Wedding: May 20th, 2013; Coordinator: Lorena

Ceremony (symbolic): Gazebo, 5:30pm

Reception: South Beach, 8:00pm

Ultimate Wedding Package

Guests: 30 adults, 8 kids

Price: Approx. $4000 USD for Wedding excl. photography.

Accommodation value: We paid approximately $1500 CAD per person (flight, hotel, all inclusive meal plan incl. taxes).  We got a group discount through Westjet Vacations.  I thought the resort was worth the price we paid.  We were automatically upgraded from the garden view room to the preferred club status with an ocean view room. The room was beautiful and had an amazing view.  The service at the resort was excellent.  Check-in process went well, no issues here.

The al a carte restaurants were decent.  Our favourite was the French restaurant "Bordeaux".  The food was delicious and the service was impeccable.  We were really surprised at how great of service we received both nights we ate there.  Highly recommend this restaurant. The Italian restaurant, and Oceana were good as well.  We didn't get a chance to try the Japanese and Mexican restaurant.  We heard they weren't that great anyway.  The buffet breakfast was ok.  The fruit station and fresh fruit juices were probably the best part of the buffet (huge selection).  The buffet breakfast was practically the same every day so it was easy to get sick of the food after a couple of days.  About 2/3 of our guests got sick after a few days.  Not sure if it was the raw food selections or dairy that did us in but we did get sick.  No food poisoning though.  I think the food just didn't agree with some of us.  Overall, for all inclusive, the food was average to good.

The nightly entertainment was ok.  Some shows were better than others.  The more enjoyable ones were the hip hop/break dancing performances and the fire and drum show.  

Wedding Value: My wedding coordinator was Lorena.  She was very nice and easy to work with and coordinated our wedding day perfectly.  We met her the night we arrived and went over all of the details and dropped off our decorations with her.  Communication prior to arriving at the resort with her was good at first but then became very slow to no responses the month prior to the wedding.  But once we arrived at the resort, everything went off without a hitch.  Although, we were told there was a charge for setting up the decorations (tying the chair bows, name cards and party favours) we brought from home, Lorena ended up waiving the fee for us (we didn't even ask for it to be waived, so it was really nice of her to do this).   We cashed in our cocktail hour and put it towards our dinner ($400 value).  Since we were having a late dinner at 8pm, the kids were going to eat at the buffet prior to our dinner so we opted to not order them food since it costed $30 per kid for a kids meal (chicken nuggets, macaroni, etc.), which we didn't think was worth the price either.  Lorena ended up feeding the kids for free! It was her gift to us.  

I forget what material my dress was made of but I guess it was hard to get the wrinkles out.  Unfortunately, the steaming offered at the resort was unable to get the wrinkles out. As I watched the lady steam my dress, it looked as if it was getting worse and my dress was just getting wetter.  The humidity there may have contributed to it as well.  Nonetheless, there wasn't anything that could be done and I wasn't overly upset about it and it was unnoticeable in photos anyway. I think if the material was satin or chiffon, there would have been no issues.    

I did my own hair and make-up so I don't have any reviews for the services offered at the resort.  You are allowed to transfer your hair and make-up services to someone else if you choose not to use it for yourself or you can use it for another day.  Otherwise, you will lose it.  It is not transferable money-wise.  The humidity at this location is extreme.  If your hair doesn't hold curls normally, it will definitely not hold here no matter what products you use.  My hair tends to hold curls relatively well.  I did my hair half way up with curls and the curls didn't last more than an hour.  It was extremely humid and fairly windy as we were close to the ocean.  With the combination of the wind and humidity, my hair went wavy/straight very quickly.  My make-up however, held up very well! I used a face primer underneath my make-up and eye shadow primer as well.  Finished off with a little powder and it lasted all night. It's so humid that it's hard to wear a lot of face make up anyway so be prepared to wear less and definitely wear fake eyelashes!!

I had my ceremony at the Gazebo. I still think this is the best location for a ceremony.  The photos in my opinion are much nicer at the gazebo. It has more of a wow factor. My ceremony was much later in the day so there wasn't much people lounging around watching my wedding.  Thankfully! It was relatively private.  The beach locations for ceremony were nestled between lounge chairs/straw umbrellas, which didn't seem as nice to me (looked kind of crowded/cramped too) and you have people in the lounge chairs watching your wedding and sitting quite close to your guests too.  That's what I saw for one of the weddings there.  For dinner, we had it on the beach.  I was so worried that it wasn't a good location because a couple of nights prior to the wedding, it was extremely windy that the sand was blowing into your face! I definitely didn't want to be eating sand for dinner. Luckily, on my wedding day...the wind was very calm:) If the weather cooperates, the beach is the best location for dinner in my opinion. The pool deck is also a great location as well but you need a minimum of 50 guests to have that location or if it's not taken on the day of your wedding, then you can have this location.  

My bouquet was beautiful! Lorena dropped it off in my room shortly before the ceremony started.  We brought our own music on a CD.  The entire ceremony, and dinner reception went flawlessly.  I used the mariachi band for the dinner instead.  They were fantastic! Everyone enjoyed the band.  I was worried that it might be too quiet after the band finished since they're there for only 45 min.  But, having no music afterwards was just fine.  We didn't have a dancing crowd so we opted out of having a DJ and dance floor.  The ocean noise was very calming and it worked out well for us.  We had a very simple wedding - just a dinner with family and close friends.  We had the tres leche cake.  By the time we finished dinner, most people were too full for cake.  Everyone still had a piece but there was half the cake left! Just a tip, if you have 30 people, you only need a cake for 15.  I think they assume everyone will have two very large slices.  The cake was delicious though.  I brought fake orchid flowers for the cake and it looked real once they were placed on the cake.  

We had menu #3 from the ultimate wedding package.  The dinner was good but a bit too rich for some of us.  Some of the dishes were very creamy/buttery. If you like rich food, you'll love the dinner.  Dinner service was excellent. 

Wedding photography: we used Juan Navarro.  He doesn't work for the resort but he's an approved vendor so we didn't have to pay any fees.  Apparently, this resort doesn't allow outside vendors but there seems to be a few outside vendors that they do allow but won't tell you this unless you ask.  I haven't received any photos yet so I don't have much comment on Juan but he was nice to work with.  My only regret is that I wish I had him take photos during the dinner because they just sat there while we ate.  I only paid for 5 hours service so basically lost an hour during dinner.  It would have been nice to get some group photos during dinner as the courses came out a bit slow.  We used our Adventures photography session (30 min.) on another day.  We took some casual photos around the resort.  I forget the name of the photographer we had but he wasn't that great.  I'm glad we used an outside photographer.  

Overall, we had a fantastic wedding experience at the Dreams Riviera Cancun and would recommend this resort to others who are planning to get married here.