OFF-SITE PLANNING

I was engaged for over a year prior to the scheduled wedding day on Feb. 6 2016, so I had plenty of time to plan.  After reading reviews the one negative thing I had read consistently was that response times are slow leading up to the wedding (when corresponding with the off-site coordinator).  I however never had that experience - I always heard back in a timely manor and the initial planning experience was very painless!  My first off-site coordinator was Elizabeth Yanez Alvarez, and mid-way through the planning process I was switched to Yanet Zavala.  

 

Everything was very smooth until 2 weeks before the wedding.  I had confirmed my locations multiple times with both Elizabeth and Yanet- the Tucan beach for the ceremony, garden for the cocktail hour, and terrace for the reception.  I emailed Yanet to be sure these locations were secured, and she responded that my locations were confirmed.  She then sent over my purchase order.  

 

After careful examination, I noticed a different location was listed from what was agreed upon.  I assumed it was a typo as we had only just confirmed the request, so I emailed her.  When Yanet responded, she stated that “for internal reasons the Toucan areas are not available, that’s why you’re booked at Bugambilias”.  She had never told me about the change, didn’t offer any explanation as to why, and simply sent me the PO to sign!  Honestly I felt as if she was trying to trick me to sign a document with the wrong information.

 

I wanted to be married on the beach and she switched my ceremony to a gazebo and the terrace she wanted my reception to be at did not have a good view of the beach as my original location did.  At the end of her email informing me that I would not be getting my agreed upon locations, she stated that all decorations were extra and I would have to pay if I wanted them.  I was not interested in the decorations, but I couldn’t believe that she was offering no reasoning behind why they were not available and no compensation for the less desirable locations.  I had to get my travel agent involved, who went up the chain of command.  After that I immediately received an email that my original locations were available and i would be getting them as requested.  

 

 

CHECKING IN

We arrived to the resort on February 2, 2016.  I was very excited and was expecting to be placed in a group block (11 rooms total) in my requested section Sunrise.  I had requested this location because my fiancé and I have a 3 year old son who was excited to use the crocodile slide in the kids pool in Sunrise!  He couldn’t stop talking about it!  I was a bit taken aback when my shuttle dropped me off in the Nizuc section, but I figured there could have been an error.  Upon checking in, I learned that our room was in Nizuc.  I requested to be moved to the section I was originally supposed to be in, and the receptionist was not accomodating.  She told me there were no rooms in sunrise and I may have to stay in Nizuc until the following day, which was not ideal considering we had 6 bags of welcome items I had to assemble and other wedding supplies as well.  I would not be able to get everything set-up if I was in the wrong room, and my guests were arriving the following day.  As unhappy as I was about the situation, I agreed to stay in Nizuc for the night.  

 

An attendant walked me, my fiancé and my son to our room.  We walked a very long distance to our room - my son was very tired and kept throwing himself on the floor and crying.  After the long trek, I noticed that the only other guests that had arrived for our wedding were taken to there room in a golf cart and they had no children.  Why wouldn’t the bride, groom, and a small child get that service?  We went up 3 flights of stairs only to find that our room had ONE bed.  I had requested 2 beds as my fiancé and I obviously preferred not to sleep with our 3 year old leading up to our wedding.  The attendant offered to bring a crib for our son, but he does not sleep in a crib.  He is much too old, very active, and would be able to climb out!  I requested that he take us back to the lobby as our room was not only in the wrong section but  we had the wrong number of beds.  Upon calling the lobby, we were told that a sunrise room was available.  We were so relieved!  Our room was lacking the Chi products that were promised to us (which was important to me considering I was relying on them for manageable hair for my wedding!) and we did not get the upgrade we qualified for, but I tried to let this go as I was just happy to be in Sunrise.

 

The unfortunate thing that we were never informed of was that our entire group block was already scheduled to be in Nizuc.  When we inquired about where our guests would be placed (before we were moved to Sunrise), reception told us that they would not be assigned a room until they arrived- so we figured that they would be moved to sunrise as well and everything would be just fine.  Unfortunately, this was incorrect.  Every guest that arrived was placed in Nizuc which is a very long walk to our room.  The bridal party, the mother of the bride and the mother of the groom amongst others!  Due to the distance between sections they might as well have been in  a different resort.  

 

Their request to move to Sunrise was NOT handled with a smile- the front desk acted as if this was a huge inconvenience and many of our guests wasted a day in a different section before they were able to be switched over.  Actually, many informed me that Nizuc said it was not possible to move and it wasn’t until they talked to Sunrise directly that their request was taken seriously.  Nizuc claimed Sunrise was full, but Sunrise said there were plenty of rooms.  Why couldn’t both lobby’s work together and give correct information?  Check-in was very stressful and our group felt as if the front desk did not care to make their stay at moon palace pleasant.  Finally when all of our guests were moved to Sunrise, we could relax and were hoping everything would start moving smoothly.

 

 

ON-SITE PLANNING: FIRST MEETING 

A few days before my trip to Cancun, I was assigned to on-site coordinator Melissa Zamora Baron.  I did not receive anything from her until the night I arrived, when she emailed me that a meeting would be scheduled the next morning at 10:00am.  I had read lots of reviews from past brides and knew that I should bring a suitcase with decorations to our meeting.  From what I had read, wedding coordinators typically offer to to set-up and take-down decorations and I had brought $150 to tip her once the wedding was over.  Our first meeting went fine- she asked me a series of questions and I told her about my vision and left the suitcase with her.  She stated that I would need to clean up all of my decorations after the wedding- something that I had never read about brides having to do but I understood and agreed to this.  

 

 

WEDDING WELCOME DINNER

Later that night, I remembered that our off-site coordinator Yanet had stated that since we were paying for our own private reception, that we would be able to use the included wedding restaurant dinner as a welcome dinner the day before the wedding.  She told us that we could not make the dinner reservation ahead of time, but we could once we arrived at the resort.  After asking the vacation planners about this however, we were told it is not possible and we needed to ask our wedding coordinator.  

 

After approaching Melissa, she told us that we could not make the reservation and acted suspicious when I told her that our off-site coordinator told us differently.  She gave us an attitude and sad “AT THIS TIME you cannot make a reservation at any restaurant for your welcome dinner”.  She demanded proof that this was promised to me.  This was the first moment when I felt that she was working against me - why could she not contact Yanet and ask her if she had promised this to me?  I felt defeated because I had already told all of our guests that on Friday evening we would all have have a welcome dinner together - they were expecting it and excited.  I did not want to have to tell them that I was not being allowed to schedule this event.  

 

I went back to my room and spent 3 hours looking through past emails to try to find proof that this was promised to me.  I finally did, and forwarded it to Melissa.  At this point, she scheduled the dinner for us.  Still, I had waisted an entire afternoon on this issue.  

 

 

WEDDING COORDINATOR REQUEST

During the wedding welcome dinner, my finance’s dad told us that he had ridden the shuttle between resort sections when he had ran into a guest at another wedding.  He was told that they had arranged a bus for all of the wedding guests to be shuttled to the wedding location together, and was asking us if we might be able to arrange the same thing.  

Because my fiancé had been texting Melissa all day with quick responses, he decided to ask her if that was possible to arrange.  It was only after this question that she completely stopped responding.  She never arranged the bus or got back to us that it was or wasn’t possible, essentially ignoring our question.

 

 

WEDDING DAY: PREP

I spent the morning of the wedding at the golf course spa for a massage, and the Nizuc spa for my hair.  I have to say that I was nervous about using my report credits for my wedding day hair as I did not know who I would be assigned to but I ended up being VERY pleased.  I had a trial a few days before and the wedding hair was very beautiful and stayed put all night!  I had a braided up-do that I loved very much.  I did do my make-up myself as I am very picky in that regard and I was happy with my decision after seeing some of my guest’s make-up.  As for flowers, there was some prep involved as I used Floreria Riveria to purchase 100 wholesale roses.  They were beautiful and my grandma arranged them for me.

 

Another set-back we had was that my fiancé had developed a terrible heat rash just prior to the wedding.  He developed painful blisters and I advised him to call the on-site doctor.  The doctor came up to his room to look at it and told him that he would be calling down some prescriptions, and he would need to pick them up at the front desk.  My fiancé was told that after he got the prescriptions, he should call the doctor back up to his room and he would administer the medications.  After getting the medications, my fiancé was a little nervous as there was a huge syringe in there!  He called the doctor, and the doctor exclaimed that he never said he would come back to the room and that my fiancé would have to walk all the way back down to the lobby.  This was a 20 minute walk and the wedding was within the hour!  After walking all the way down, the doctor was gone on another call.  This delayed our wedding and was very inconvenient to say the least.

 

 

WEDDING DAY: CEREMONY

I will forever have a tainted memory of my wedding day - my wedding coordinator Melissa ruined my night.  I had my ceremony at the Tucan Beach, and she forgot to gather the rings from my mother, put them in the box that I supplied, and have my son walk down the aisle with them.  My son who was the ring bearer never carried the rings!  He just walked down the aisle and took a seat.  When it came time to exchange the rings, they were no-where to be found until my mom realized that the rings were never collected from her!  They were both in their original boxes and had to be removed and brought up to us in front of all of our guests.  

 

WEDDING DAY: COCKTAIL/RECEPTION

Shortly after our ceremony it began to rain, and so our venue was moved from the garden/terrace to the gazebo.  All of our guests pitched in to move everything which was very kind of them.  PSAV was awesome throughout the whole thing.  We had purchased a 3 hour DJ package.  Our guests loved the music that he played and he was very accommodating!  I highly recommend PSAV.  All of the waitstaff was great as well, my only issue was with Melissa.  She seemed to have an attitude the entire night.  My husband’s parents are photographers and one of their friends took some pictures with what she considered “professional equipment” so she approached us to tell us that we would be charged an extra $400.  She specifically said $400 not $800, as we did not hire an outside vendor.  I was annoyed about this but glad that she told us.  Worse though, she would continuously approach me to “double check” that I would be cleaning up all of my decorations after this event.  She did this multiple times throughout the night, interrupting me and and my guests.  I had read that other coordinators offered to help with clean-up, but unfortunately I did not get that lucky.  Even so I had no issues with cleaning up, my mother-in-law had already offered to do this for me.  After her 3rd time approaching me on the matter, I finally told her to go away - my reception was only 3 hours and I wanted to enjoy it!

 

AFTER WEDDING

After the wedding, one of our guests was not feeling well.  He could barely walk and 2 of my guests were carrying him.  Our wedding was across the resort from where his room was, and 3 people were standing in Nizuc Lobby chatting with each other.  When we approached about getting a golf-cart back to his room since he couldn’t walk, we were denied and told to take the bus.  This was not the first time people were standing around refusing to help, but this time we really needed it!  We argued with them for quite some time before one of our guests offered to tip them $20 to take him to his room.  Really, it would have been impossible to carry him that far!  What a surprise - at that point they made themselves available.  

 

CHECK OUT

After the wedding, we had arranged to move to Sun Palace for our honeymoon (which was amazing as far as service and a world apart from Moon Palace).  We made our way down to check out, and even though Melissa had told us to expect a $400 not $800 fee it was indeed $800!  I refused to sign the document as the amount was unfounded, but when Melissa was called she lied and said that we should be charged $800 not $400!  Needless to say, they refused to remove the charge.  At one point I tried to write on the invoice the amount that it should have been, and it was refused.  We tried to leave the resort at that point (after paying the amount actually due without the extra $400 Melissa tacked on), and were told we were not allowed to leave.  We were literally being held hostage! When I called my bank about the matter, I was told that if I signed the document I could not dispute it and that they recommended I call the authorities.  As an American I am not familiar with Mexican police and this is certainly not something I wanted to deal with at the end of my wedding/beginning of my honeymoon!  I was in tears.  A man named Juan Carlos tried to seem nice while making me sign - he promised he would call us the next day after Melissa came in and they spoke to sort it out - but we never received any calls.  

 

We also had to go to the PR counter at Sunrise to speak with someone about a refund that was due - we had booked 11 rooms in the hotel and our contract stated that 1 room should be free.  The woman we spoke too - Danee - told us that Moon Palace does not do refunds initially.  We were at the counter for multiple hours until she finally admitted that she lied and they do give refunds if they are warranted (obviously).  She also promised that she would have Melissa call us the next day about the refund, but we never received a call.

 

Overall, I felt that my entire stay at Moon Palace was far more stressful then it needed to be.  I had been planning the vacation/wedding for over a year and both myself and all of my guests were vary disappointed at the poor service we received.  When I transferred to Sun Palace, my stay was immensely different.  I finally felt like the staff cared about me!  We were given thorough introductions regarding resort credits (this was skipped over at Moon), and the staff really tried to accommodate us.  The sad thing is that I would really love to return to Moon or Sun Palace ever 5 years to celebrate our anniversary, but unfortunately due to the way we were treated at Moon Palace I can’t justify giving any palace resort my business or my recommendation.