Basics:

Travel Dates - 5/9/2011 - 5/16/2011

Group - 29 people (ages 2 - 68)

Section - Nizuc

Rehearsal Dinner - Arreficies (5/12)

Wedding Ceremony - Tucan Beach (5/13)

Cocktail Hour & Reception - Grand Terrace

Coordinator - Kalena

Florist - Maya Desino (Marvin)

Photographer - Octavio Montes

Planning - B

Planning was a little rough and stressful.  The Miami office generally does not respond and are hardly helpful when they do.  I am extremely happy that I booked through a travel agent and not have to make any travel plans directly through the resort.  Once I received my onsite coordinator's info it was mostly smooth sailing!

Arrival - A

We only waited about 5 mins before the shuttle left the airport and headed for the resort.  Upon arriving at the Nizuc lobby, we were greeted with a cool towel and a glass of champagne.  We arrived around 11am, so I expected our room would not be ready.  That was just fine with us.  We wondered around for all of two mins before finding a golf cart driver who generously offered to give us a tour around the place.  Perfect!  We hopped off at the Grand pool and got some drinks.  By the time we headed back our room was ready.

Rooms: A

Again, I have nothing but good things to say here.  We stayed in an ocean front room in Crocidillo.  There was a bottle of champagne waiting with a small honeymoon cake.  So cute!  My hubby loved the hot tub.  The only use I got out of it was bathing are 2 year old.  One of the biggest benefits to me throughout this trip was the room service.  I know that sounds ridiculous and lazy, but my daughter was sick for nearly the entire trip.  Don't panick...she apparently got sick at my brother's house before arriving in Mexico.  There were days when I couldn't take her down to a restaurant and having a fully stacked mini fridge of juice and 24hr room service was perfect.  I'm not the pickiest person in the world, but I think the food was good.

Resort : A+

MP is by far the most well kept resort I've ever stayed.  I'm by no means a globe trotter, but I have been to resorts in a handful of countries.  MP is seriosly paradise.  I was worried about this from reading other reviews.  I read such things as the pools are not heated, the beach is a mess, the food is awful, etc.  None of that was my experience.  I thought the pools were lovely.  I never waiting more than a minute or two for a drink and I didn't have a bad meal all week.  And most exceptional was the service. Everyone is so friendly and so eager to make your stay enjoyable.  I wish I could remember some of their names.  The truth is no one stood out to me b/c everyone there was so terrific to us!  Oh and for any of your guest that have worries about the safety, please tell them to relax.  I felt safer on this resort than I do in my own suburban home.  There were numerous times my husband or I left our wallets out and came back to find someone cleaning our room and not a thing was missing.  The only thing our safe was used for was as a toy for our daughter to play with.

Kalena - A++++++++++++

Within 5 mins of meeting Kalena, I was mortified for stalking and harassing her in the previous weeks.  She so clearly had everything under control.  This woman is amazing at what she does.  She is running around all the time and always on top of it.  Cut her some slack on answering emails.  I promise you everything will be taken care of exactly the way you want it.  She was a complete doll and I really can't say enough how wonderful she is and how effortlessly she pulled my dream wedding together.

Wedding Ceremony - A++++++++

We had the complimentary symbolic ceremony.  We purchased flowers from Maya Desino (hope I'm spelling that correctly) and added the horse and carriage.  I'm not usually one for big entrances or attention, but the horse and carriage did make it all so much more beautiful.  I definitely recommend it.  The ceremony was on the beach at 5pm.  It was a perfect time, not too hot, but still lots of light.  I was so worried about the wind, but it wasn't as bad as I had expected.  That being said, I had 4 bridesmaids and out of the 5 of us, only one was brave enough to wear her hair down.  Her hair def didn't hold up as well as the rest of us.  The minister was nice and the ceremony was beautiful.  I know I may be leaving things out.  Please feel free to ask questions.   Here are some ceremony pictures.

Cocktail Hour/Reception - A+++

I didn't get a chance to eat much, but from what I heard the food was excellent at both.  We had the international menu for the cocktail hour and the cajun menu for the reception.  I was scared the cajun menu would be too spicy for some people's taste, but it was actually very well received by everyone. We also paid for the Mariachi band.  They were fantastic.  My hubby especially loved them.  Unfortunately, I think my guest grew tired of them a bit early.  We had them play during dinner.  In hind sight, I would have had them play at the cocktail hour instead.  The one annoying thing at my reception was the Ipod Tech.  I spent so much time putting together my playlist for the cocktail hour and reception.  Once we finally got to the cocktail hour, I realized he wasn't playing my music. I asked him to put it on and explained the lists to him.  A bit later, I realized he switched back to his own music.  Okay, corrected him again.  This happened once again toward the end of the night.  By then, I gave up.  My advice here, if your not picky about music, rent the ipod set up and then let him use his own music.  If you are picky, give very clear instructions to WC before hand of when each list are to be played and ask that he not stray from your music at all.  Decorations were from Deco.  We got 4 strings of paper lanterns, center pieces, runners, a lounge setup and 20 floating candles for the pool.  We were very happy with all of this and wouldn't have changed anything.  I wish I could tell you my opinion on my cake, but I didn't have any. I'm still bummed about that.  My daughter wasn't feel well at the reception, so we took her home before it ended.  We cut our cake, but never though to eat it.  Here is another tip for you.  If  you bring cake boxes as we did for people to take cake back to the room with them, make sure you tell the servers to cut the cake and put it in the boxes.  I completely forgot about this.  I found out the next day that the cake was never cut and no one had any of it.  I upgraded the cake and had personalized cake boxes made for nothing.  I would do both again, but would make sure that ppl actually got to have some! Oh, another tip.  If you have certain items you want to save from your reception, be sure to clearly assign someone to get them for you whether it be a friend or your WC.  There was some confusion between my friends and Kalena with my champagne flutes.  Multiple ppl thought someone else had them.  I wound up with only one. All of the above are totally my fault for not being clear.  Just trying to give you a heads up to avoid some of these little things that didn't even cross my mind that day.  Okay, enough blabbing...here are some pictures of the reception.  Feel free to ask about anything I left out.

Photography - Octavio Montes

I can not say enough how wonderful Octavio was to work with.  He was so so nice to us and really captured our day and our relationship the way it truely is.  My hubby and I are not the gazing into each other's eyes type. hahha!! We constantly joke and laugh with each other.  I love that a good 90% of the pictures he took are of us that way.  He was probably my best value buy of the whole wedding process.  Below are some of my favorite shots he took.  PM if you would like to see more.  I will give you the link to our pictures on his website.

Okay, so hands down I loved the experience I had at MP. It really was my dream wedding.  Aside from the pointers above, the only other thing I wish I had known before hand was that the resort does have a babysitting service.  It's not actually part of the resort, but a service they use.  This has to be reserved at least 3 hrs in advance.  That surely would have helped us a bit.  Also, be sure to bring enough tip money.  I had to use an atm at the resort and the pesos totally confused me.  I know, not rocket science, but using $'s after a ton of drinks is just so much easier! 

I hope this helps and please feel free to ask any questions you may have.