I had the best time ever at Now Jade and we stayed for 10 nights. I want to make this as thorough as possible so I apologize now if it's a bit lengthy.

Check in:
As soon as you arrive, the bell boys will grab your luggage and give you a ticket with the numbers for your luggage. They also grabbed our wedding day attire to get it prepared (they didn't return it until the wedding day but don’t worry they take good care of it). We booked the ocean front room and got a complimentary upgrade to an ocean view room in the preferred suites. Although the room wasn't ready until 3pm and we had arrived at the resort by noon which wasn't a big deal since they took our bags anyway. We just went to the buffet with our group for lunch. Our guests were all in separate buildings but it was easy to find your way around.

For those wondering about welcome bags, I handed them out at the airport to save me some room in my luggage. It worked out since I had some cookies in there that the guests ate during the plane ride.

Restaurants:

We had a chance to try every restaurant out except for Cin-Cin. I don’t want to focus too much on the food because it was all good. Some of the guests complained about the buffet but that’s what a buffet is like, you eat the stuff that you like. Just a tip, try to have an early dinner 5-7pm because the restaurants are fairly busy between 7-9pm and you might have a hard time finding a table, especially if you have a large group. Room service as well can take up to an hour to be delivered. My favorite place was probably the Coco café. Their caramel cappuccinos and frozen baileys were delicious! I’m coffee person so this place was heaven.

Wedding Meeting:

Our wedding coordinator was Ariadna and she is amazing!! She was quick to respond to emails throughout my whole planning and very pleasant. She definitely knows how to plan a wedding! We met with her the morning after we arrived. We brought our luggage of decorations and she took care of everything.  I brought chair bows, bubbles for the ceremony, rose petals for the aisle, programs, seating chart, guestbook, cake topper, message in a bottle giveaways, toss bouquet, burlap table runners, tea light candles, Centerpieces: wood bases, mason jars, synthetic flowers, star fish, and sea shells. I had set up everything at home and took a picture of it so she could have a copy of how I wanted everything.

I had emailed her prior to have a cake testing ready for me and it really helped. I chose the bella matrimoniale classic and it was pretty good. In the meeting, you also discuss your menu choices for your romantic dinner and the date for your couple’s massage. Our guests stayed for 7 nights and we stayed for 10 nights so we scheduled the romantic dinner and massage for the night all our guests had left.

The photographers’ desk is right outside the wedding planning office and we decided to use the resort photographer for a TTD since we hired Dean Sanderson for the wedding day. We didn’t receive a credit for the resort videographer and we couldn’t think of any other day to use him so we had asked him to come between 8-11pm to get video footage of the guests and reception part since we had only hired Carlos Gallardo between 3-8pm for the wedding day. It’s best to confirm all these details all on the same day so you don’t have to worry about it until the wedding day.

Wedding Day

Spa: My appointment was for 11am with 3 of my bridesmaids. I had Angela and she did my hair perfectly. I also had clip in extensions in my hair and she handled it carefully. I had fresh orchids in my hair which I had requested for during my meeting with Ariadna. Bring pictures! The girl who had their makeup done, including myself, weren’t entirely happy. If you use high end makeup, the stuff they have doesn’t compare. We made sure to bring our own HD foundation but the eye makeup they did was a bit strong, not enough blending. We ended up going back to my room and fixing it up a bit. The bridesmaids that had both hair and makeup done ended up paying around $130 USD after taxes. Overall, they said they wished they did their makeup themselves and had only gotten their hair done at the spa.

We got back to my room at around 1:00. I ordered some room service for lunch which arrived by 2pm.  The photographer, Dean started at the boys room at 2:30.  He arrived at my room at 3 to get some getting ready photos.  My videographer, Carlos Gallardo & his assistant also arrived at the same time.

Flowers: I had brought pictures of the flowers I wanted for my bouquets and I even paid an extra $120 for mine which were supposed to have peonies. I asked for light pink/peach and white flowers. My bouquet had orange colored flowers and no peonies.  Ariadna said they had to use a different flower since peonies weren’t in season and I still had to pay the $120 for these other type of exotic flowers. I didn’t argue because though the flowers weren’t the color I wanted, they were still beautiful and I didn’t want to have a problem of not having my flowers on time if they sent it back to the florist to change. The flowers on the pergola arch were nice and they matched my bouquet.

Ceremony-Pergola at 3:30pm

Ariadna called my room to let me know when the guests had been seated and when my husband was at the front of the pergola.  She made sure to have the wedding party line up in a specific spot so that nobody could see me as I made my way to the location.

I gave Ariadna my ipod in the morning and they played the songs perfectly. All the decorations were set up perfectly. It was a little windy that day so Ariadna even walked down the aisle right before I did to lay out more rose petals since some had already blown away after the processional. It was such a beautiful ceremony. My only complaint is the microphone would cut in and out so some of the guests in the back could not hear as well.

Cocktail Hour-Mix Beach Bar 4:30-5:30pm

After the ceremony, we had our champagne toasts and then we took some pictures with our guests on the beach and then they headed to the mix beach bar directly beside the pergola. During this time, the wedding party took some pictures with us for about half an hour. Then we went off alone for another half an hour to take some more pictures. I didn’t try any of the hor de ouvres but I heard the sushi was really good. I was a bit disappointed that the bar tender didn’t announce that we had a signature drink. A lot of them only tried it near the end when I mentioned it and it was delicious! We had strawberry peach daiquiris which went with my coral theme.

There was a 30 minute gap between the cocktail hour and reception which gave the guests some time to freshen up. 

Reception-Bamboo Room 6-11pm

The guests were seated minutes before 6pm. I had a seating chart on a table directly beside the entrance and a guestbook for them to sign.

The centerpieces looked beautiful and Ariadne followed my picture exactly.

I hired an external DJ, Discomovil whom I had to pay an extra $350 for the vendor fee. I paid him $950 (negotiated price) which included up lighting, projector screen for our slide show, cold fireworks for my entrance and the microphone for the speeches.  It evens out because the resort DJ charges $850 I believe plus you have to pay extra for the projector screen, up lighting and microphone as well. He introduced the wedding party very well, his English was great. Our entrance was awesome with the fireworks!

The guitarist included in the divine package played during dinner. He played for about 30-45 minutes and was pretty decent.

Dinner:

We were supposed to have a signature drink during dinner as well but they never handed those out. I guess we were supposed to request for it but I assumed the waiters would just start handing them out since none of the guests had any idea we even had them.

Appetizer-smoked salmon layers with cream cheese, fine herbs and a tomato salad. This was delicious.

Soup-lobster bisque. Everyone enjoyed the soup because they don’t have any lobster in the restaurants so this was the closest thing they got to lobster. In my opinion, it was a little bit salty but everyone else loved it.

Main course-I had a choice of the beef fillet and salmon supreme. I loved my salmon and also tasted some of my husband’s beef and it wasn’t bad.

Dessert-chocolate soufflé with baileys sauce. I have a big sweet tooth and I wasn’t happy with this dessert.  It was comparable to the desserts they served in the buffet which I did not enjoy.

Cake-I did not upgrade my cake since we already had dessert. The cake looked nothing like the picture. The icing seemed simple and I had chosen the one which had ribbon around each layer which wasn’t on there.  The flowers matched my bouquet though and my cake topper made it look better. Anyway, it tasted good and that’s all that matters in the end.

The reception went well overall. The bamboo room was air conditioned but near the end I was feeling so hot (probably because I danced all night) that I had asked them to open the doors since there was a nice breeze from outside. I extended the reception for an extra 2 hours which was expensive but I did not want to head to the sports bar. I wanted it to be more personal and it was worth it to me.

Ariadna was there to the very end and she makes sure you get all your decorations returned the next day.  I tipped her and the waiters because the waiters did awesome as well, kept the drinks coming and even pulled out one of the bamboos for a limbo dance!

When we got back to our room it was beautifully decorated with rose petals, champagne, chocolate covered strawberries and a bubble bath in the balcony Jacuzzi.

When our guests left, we did our TTD with the resort photographer. I forgot his name but he really did a good job and we had so much fun. I don’t think they have much experience with TTD’s because he didn’t have too much direction with the poses. You are given 24 photos that you choose and they print them in an album which they will mail to you. They also give you the CD with the high resolution photos. Here is a link of the pictures I uploaded into a slide show: https://vimeo.com/86545697

I don’t have all my photos back yet but here are some that my photographer posted on his blog: http://deansandersonweddings.com/2014/02/marielle-ken-now-jade-cancun-wedding-photography/

I know some of you want to know the prices. We paid a total of about $5800 USD to NOW JADE which included set up fees for chair bows, upgraded bouquet, 4 bridesmaid bouquets, 4 extra boutonnieres, 10 extra champagne, 11 extra dinners (I had 35 guests in total including us plus my photographer requested for a dinner), extended reception time for 2 hours and the vendor fees for the DJ, photographer and 2 videographers.  I paid the photographer, Dean Sanderson and videographers, Carlos Gallardo a separate fee (definitely worth it because the quality of their work is amazing).

Feel free to message me if you have any questions. This review is getting long enough. Don’t worry about a thing, the coordinators are amazing at what they do. They work so hard to get everything perfect. In the end, the little flaws don’t even stick out. We had so much fun on our wedding day and I loved every minute of it! Good luck and hope this review helped in some way! :)

P.S. Bring some bug spray because we got a heck of a lot of mosquito bites in the evenings when we walked around the resort.