This is for the most part a wedding review, not a review of La Zebra as a hotel.

We had our wedding on July 27^th 2013. We signed our contract by the end of last January. Back then La Zebra’s wedding planner was Elisa Meani (who was really helpful through the whole process). As agreed, we booked all the rooms in order to have a private event.

If you’re looking for a “cabaña” type of thing, it’s a good choice. As many other options in Tulum, La Zebra doesn’t have air conditioned, so take that into account. All the cabañas are nice and very clean and each morning they bring you coffee right outside your cabaña.

First of all, I will start saying that a lot of people told us it was the best wedding they had ever been to.  Planning a destination wedding takes a LOT of your time. In the end everybody was more than happy, so the main goal was reached. But as the bride I can say the process could have been way less painful.

The good things

• The location. La Zebra is located in a beautiful beach. It’s not crowded at all. You don’t need a lot of decorations, since Lina’s (the restaurant/palapa where the reception was held) already has a lot of stuff in it. There’s a huge wooden circle by the beach that you’re able to use as a dance floor, and another little palapa for the musicians/DJ’s.

• The set up. Since La Zebra has a colorful setup, with an arrangement that really fits the place, everything you put in there as wedding decoration will work. You don’t have to spend a lot of money on flowers. There are a lot of cool places to take good wedding pictures.

• The food. It was good. But the truth is after asking several of the wedding guests, they didn’t get enough portions. I’ll explain later why.

The not so good things. As I said, the process was really stressful. I felt like I was the wedding planner.

• When we signed the contract we agreed on a lot of things. We would be able to bring our own vendors (tacos al pastor at midnight, an ice cream cart). We could use La Zebra’s decoration and linens.

• Two months later after signing the contract, and as I said, with a lot of previous agreements, Elisa informed us she no longer would work with La Zebra and we would have 2 new wedding planners: Angelina Cárdenas and Lina Avila (La Zebra’s chef). We had to start all over again. Sometimes I felt they didn’t read the e-mails I sent or it took them forever to answer. I know we were not the only wedding they were organizing, but sometimes it took them 2 weeks or more to answer a couple of questions.

• At some point La Zebra started changing the agreements we already had. We knew they were having some changes in their policies, so we had a serious talk with them. We sent the previous e-mail conversations we had so they would respect the agreements. Sometimes they changed the prices of the food and of the price of the permit to extend to wedding after 11 pm. We had to rent our own linens (what restaurant does not have linens?) 11 days before the wedding they informed us we needed a power plant so the band we booked could perform in the wedding, (we asked them to get in touch with the band 2 months before the wedding in May!)

• The portions of several of the tables at the wedding were not enough. Angelina  asked me the day before the wedding if instead of serving each person a plate they could serve in the middle of the table several plates of the menu we chose so everybody could taste everything. I agreed, but the day after the wedding, multiple guests told me the food was not enough.

In summary, La Zebra needs to work on their staff involving the weddings, especially since a destination wedding is so complicated to organize. A wedding is a once in a life time event, so they need to provide once in a lifetime service. Their staff needs to go further and commit to each event, being as helpful as they can.