Hi Everyone,

First off, I want to say DON'T STRESS! It will be fabulous!

The day after we arrived, my now hubby and I met with Ariadna to go over the wedding details. I showed up with my wedding gown, his suit, and all the decorations/wedding favors/etc. Ariadna was very organized. She printed out all the emails I wrote to her, highlighted everything and noted the things I wanted. We went over every aspect of the wedding. We had the Divine Package. I'm pretty organized myself. I had a folder of all my vendors, pictures, itineraries, music.... I had pictures of how I wanted the tables to look, the rose petals down the aisle, I bagged everything up in ziplock bags and labeled where I wanted each item. The meeting was about an hour long. We also had cake tasting at this time.

The day of the wedding:

I ordered room service and it took about an hour to get to the room. I had Hair and Make up at 11am with my 2 bridesmaids. I had pictures of how I wanted hair and make up to look. I did not get a trial. Everyone's hair turned out amazing. Makeup was not so good. They did our makeup in a fairly dark room. My sister's makeup wasn't even the right foundation color. My best friends eyebrows were soooo black.I even brought my own MAC makeup. They put bronzer and highlighter all over my face, didn't blend  foundation down my neck and didn't cover up under eye circles. I ended up taking it all off and doing it over when I got back to the room. I'm pretty picky with my makeup and I feel like it's a bit harder to do Asian eyes....but my mother in law and sister in law had good makeup (both Caucasian).

2pm the photographer and videographer came into the room. We ate quickly while they set up. Jaime Gonzalez was our photographer and we used the resort videographer. We took lots of getting ready photos and first look photos. Jaime was wonderful and made you feel so beautiful. He was very attentive and took pictures of everything we wanted. It was a chaotic day and I don't think we got enough formal pictures with our bridal party...but we def had tons of pics of me and my guy.

5pm was the ceremony. It was hot and sweaty!! Everything was set up perfectly. Ariadna had told us she broke one of our candles while moving the table...she was sooo upset and felt terrible. She replaced them with even better candles! If you're thinking about lighting candles...it was difficult. They kept blowing out so we faked it. We had our friend officiate the wedding. There was a technician to man the music and sound system. We used the wedding DJ app and downloaded all the music before hand. We had a microphone and everyone heard our vows perfectly. The silk rose petals I had were blown all over the place, but I didn't really care at that point. 

5:45 ish was the cocktail hour at the Mix Bar. Darius was our bartender and he was awesome! We went to the bar a couple days before the wedding to figure out a signature drink. I think he gave us 10 drinks in a matter of minutes based on our colors and what we liked. The wedding day, he had these rainbow shots that went around the bar. So cool! Our guests loved him. My husband and I went to take photos with guest and did our own photos on the beach. We had chicken and cheese turnovers, beef brioche, and spinch quiche. People loved the chicken and cheese turnovers and beef brioche....the spinach quiche was ok.

7pm was the reception in the bamboo room. By this point everyone was so eager to get to AC. It was a sweaty mess. We had a total of 50 guests in the room which I thought was perfect. Any more than that and it would get pretty crowded. Ariadna let us check out the room before everyone entered. It was perfect!! We had them make the dance floor a little bigger but other than that everything was fantastic. She set up the tables exactly how I wanted. I had gold sequin table runners, tea candles and flower centerpieces. There was another table for a card box, luggage tag place cards/wedding favors, and our guestbook.Our DJ Ricardo from Discomovil was excellent. We entered with cold fireworks, we had lighting around the room, and a projector set up for our slideshow. He followed the schedule I gave him and played every request the guests asked for. Our food was good but not great...which was surprising. The resort has really yummy food and the wedding food was ok. They didn't give us the right salad, the minestrone soup was bland, people enjoyed the steak and shrimp, and our fruit tart was good. We chose 2 flavors for the cake. The bella matrimonale and the marble cake. I believe the cake is covered in whipped cream. I thought it was delicious and light.

The wedding ended at 11pm. Everyone had such a great time and said so many wonderful things about the planning and setup. We even rallied and went to Playa Del Carmen to go clubbing until 4am.

TIPS:

1. if you plan on getting a group of 10+ people to be seated together for dinner at the restaurants (besides buffet) they will charge you $22usd per person. I tried to get away with doing my own dinner rehearsal and Ariadna warned me that they would automatically charge it to our room.

2.Make sure to do the couples massage and romantic dinner. The massage was wonderful and we had the romantic dinner under the pergola. I didn't want to get eaten alive by sand fleas on the beach.

3.Never eat outside for dinner during this time of year (July). We had our dinner rehearsal outside at Mercure. It was horrible once the sun went down. Everyone was dying from the mosquitoes and we had to shovel our dessert and run inside.

4.Check your resort photo package. I didn't realize we could only choose 24 photos and had to pay for the rest.

Overall, it was my perfect wedding. It was everything I ever imagined and more. If you have questions or you'd like photos, please PM me your email address.