First off congratulations on your engagements!

Why did I choose the Majestic Colonial?

First you need to decide on your budget and what you feel is reasonable for your guests to pay. I searched different countries and resorts Cuba didn't offer the type of quality I was looking for, Mexico scared my family they thought they would be kidnapped and mugged and Jamaica was way to expensive so DR it was. I seeked advice from a travel agent early on in the planning was she told me she has booked many brides to the Majestic Colonial and Elegance (They have 3-4 weddings a day so they should know what they are doing!) Now choosing between the Elegance and Colonial was really about price at the time. However after staying at the Colonial and going over to the Elegance side a few times (the resort do not care) The elegance has a more relax in bed by 9pm feel while the Colonial is family and party oriented. The beach and food are the same and the grounds are almost identical.

Colonial club 18+ vs Regular rooms?

UPGRADE UPGRADE UPGRADE! If you have no kids and can spare a couple hundred dollars more book in the colonial club! The rooms are nicer, you have booze in your room, there is your own section on the beach and private lounge with free wifi and food and drinks. Also you are assigned a butler for your stay this is really hit and miss our butler Juan Reyes was really on top of things got us whatever we wanted and booked reservations for us while other of our guests had butlers that never came to see them. Upgrade for the bride and groom this is upon room availability. I met other brides on our trip that did not get upgraded rooms we were changed from a swim up room to a ocean front room (3149) I believe and it was awesome I had the perfect view of the beach wedding gazebo and a tub on the porch. It was quiet and relaxing vs the swim up rooms are party central my bridesmaid all had swim ups and we hung out there in the afternoon.

The resort is gorgeous the ocean is blue and sandy with practically no seaweeds or coral. There are tons of chairs on the beach and lots of waiters getting you drinks (bring mugs or make personalised mugs for your guests drinking out of tiny plastic cups suck!)
Restaurents: Do to our very busy schedule I only ate at the steak restaurent and the big buffet and beach buffet and room service. My guests told me the Japanese and French restaurent were amazing. My husband and I took Dukoral to prevent travelers dhiarhia and I still got sick half was through the trip and so did a few of our guests while others were perfectly fine! Could also be caused by drinking too many coconut based drinks! The food wasn't amazing but it wasn't disgusting either!

Wedding we were 43 people! We arrived on Novemeber 30th and our wedding day was December 4th at 3pm (the resort gave this to me and did not have any alternate dates or times offered) The communication between by wedding Cordinator Maria Alajandra throughout the year of planning was great and she answered promptly and had tons of information packages and pictures of flowers, cakes, venues etc to choose from. In retrospect the 100s of emails were kind of pointless over small things because when you get there you go over everything and can change your mind on table linens and chairs etc. We had reserved the beach gazebo and the wet bar for our reception. The morning of the wedding was raining and stopped right in time for our beach ceremony and it was beautiful! However for the reception it was announcing for rain so I had to make a decision to keep it at the wet bar or change it into a ballroom. (Note I choose to have a private dinner an reception for 70$ per person plus additional alcohol fees and a DJ and MC etc) you can also have a semi private dinner in a restaurent with or without a reception after. Semi private dinne r are free! If you have a large enough group to throw a party I say go private the buffet dinner that is included was a hit and my guests devoured the lobster and wedding cake which was 3 big layers all different flavors and was delicious!! The ballroom was amazing and felt like I was at a fancy wedding back home it was more private than having it outdoors (drunk people tend to crash the weddings I saw throughout the week) and you don't have to worry about the weather! The party ends at 11pm which was too short in my opinion but the party animals moved on to the disco afterwards. ( I had a short wedding dress for the reception and disco, some brides wore their long dresses there and they were all dirty and disgusting after )

The DJ and MC (chicken legs) was awesome and got the party going and announced all the traditional things such as wedding party entrance, first dance, bouquet toss, cake cutting etc)

I got my hair and some of my bridesmaid got their hair done at the spa and it turned out awesome! I also had a French manicure, pedi done and massages and was all fantastic.

Tropical Photo studio are Amazing!! We left with all our photos edited, over 400 prints , 2 awesome photo books and our wedding/ reception DVD all of this done the 2 days after wedding. The have packages for each budget but I would say get the most expensive one you can afford don't cheapen out on photos!

If you book more than 15rooms you qualify for a free wedding package which comes with alot of cool things but there is alot of upgraded and extras you can potentially end up paying (depending on your budget and taste) example 3 different types of chairs u can choose from!

There were some issues with our WC confirming reservations and once there no reservations were made...I could go on about this but the most important thing was that the mistakes made were fixed and that our wedding day turned out amazing!

Legal vs symbolic wedding: We had a legal wedding there which did cost some money getting your documents translated, we wrote our own vows to make the ceremony more personalised. Time to get wedding certificate back home (Canada for me is suppose to be aprox 2months... So you need patience)

Total cost of our wedding including photos and videos and everything was around 8000$ US but keep in mind we didn't go for any of the basics.
I have pictures and can answer questions to brides interested in this resort I for sure didn't cover everything in this review! Would I get married here again... YES! private message me if you have any questions :)