Dreams Cancun - Questions for those married here!

[Sasha030412]

I pmed it. let me know if it works now

[JenJen5]

Hey GabbyAbi44, looks like we're getting married on the same day! 

 

What time is your wedding?  My ceremony will be at 4pm, cocktail hour at 5pm, and reception at 6pm.  I was just about to ask Claudia if we could have the reception at Himitsu beach, but after seeing this I guess it's already taken!

[Sasha030412]

 

Review:

I want to start by mentioning that it was by far the best wedding I have ever been to and all my guests had an AMAZING time! Even though many things went wrong the wedding was still a success so the review is more of fine combing the details. Most of it went unnoticed by the guests. and i think if the bride, me, was more organized things would have gone much smoother. 

 

Hotel: phenomenal! i don't have enough adjectives to describe how amazing our stay was. The water at himitsu beach is amazing, you can walk to the raft and lay out there forever. This is where our friends congregated for at least an hour a day, it was so much fun!

 

Every day we got a little treat in our room which was always delicious. we also got champagne, flowers, etc everyday. Most things you can ask them to give you for free. For example we forgot tooth paste and they delivered toothpaste and tooth brushes to our room. They will give you spf if you need it, just ask for it to be delivered. 

 

Out of town bags: I bought beach bags at cheaptotes.com and handed them out to all the guests as they arrived. I wanted to do room delivery but it was $4/room and they only delivered it after 7pm which means I would have already seen most guests at the beach so I decided to just bring a few to the beach with me every day and hand them out there. It worked out fine and everyone thought they were really handy. Good trick to know, if you call the concierge you can get free spf 15 sent to the room! No point to buy it outside.

 

Spa: We got upgraded to the eternity package (i think everyone does though) so we had a free couples massage from that and a free swedish massage from the ultimate wedding package. Both were great! the spa facility is really nice. I suggest using it fully, the steam rooms are great and their outside space is really relaxing. 

 

Meeting with Claudia: I booked a meeting with Claudia a few days after we came. We were staying for 10 days before the wedding and 2 days after. During our meeting she went over a list she had with what decorations we wanted, cake, champagne toast, etc… basically everything in the contract. She took notes for everything. We had a few things that we wanted to decide on later which may have been why there was so much confusion with the final decorations. I highly recommend writing the final choices down and giving her a copy so that you know what you agreed to. In the end I came up and said that things were missing and she showed me the contract that my husband had signed (I was getting my hair and makeup done at the time of payment) so I couldn’t say anything since I didn’t have any documentation on my side to say she was wrong.  

 

Hair: my make up was being done by one of my guests that was a make up artist (big mistake, i looked like a doll for the first portion of the wedding until i took it off a bit) but my hair was done by the hotel. I really had to fight with her to have her stop making me look like a bride. After much screaming at each other, grabbing the curling iron from her hands and crying at the sight of the straightening iron, we came to an agreement and she stopped touching my hair. In the end after all the wind it put itself back to normal and looked more natural. I brought a picture with me and she tried her best to do it but kept trying to make it more bridal which is what we continuously fought about. 

 

Nails: I don't suggest doing your nails at the resort. I traded my makeup session for a manicure and the lady just globbed on nail polish which ended up getting all messed up while i ran through the hotel to make it in time for my make up session. 

 

Decorations:  The gazebo was decorated nicely but as mentioned in previous post and above, it was not what I had wanted. But the guests didn’t know the difference and said it was beautiful, which it was.

The ballroom was decorated as we had asked. Their ballroom is not very pretty so you need to pay to have it decorated properly. We had drapes from the ceilings and ordered a dance floor. It was worth the money but I wish we had more drapes to cover the ugly walls and ceiling.

 

Cocktail hour: It was insanely windy on the day of the wedding so we had to move cocktail hour inside, but Claudia didn’t tell anyone until like half an hour after the wedding so it was a bit disorganized. When the weather is nice the WC will direct everyone where they need to go while the bride, groom, family members, and bridal party go to take pictures. We saw it happen successfully at every wedding but on ours we had to go inside with the entire wedding and ended up taking pictures with everyone.

 

Food: The food in the resort is phenomenal! But the food at the wedding was so/so. We had scallop salad (I don’t know how it tasted b/c we were so nervous about the wedding that we didn’t really enjoy it), lobster bisque (same as what is served in the world café so it was delish), shrimp and steak (I didn’t like it but my guests did. I wanted to order the triple but my husband preferred the risotto over gratin so I let him have it), baked Alaska for dessert (I heard it was really good but we didn’t taste it).

 

Cake: Claudia had said that any of the cakes will be customized to match our colors. In the moment, I didn’t notice if there were flowers or any decorations around the cake but it didn’t really matter. The cake was really delicious.

 

DJ: Luis was GREAT. We are Russian so we made a CD of Russian music and some American music that is generally at our weddings and asked him to mix in current songs. He did an awesome job with it. He was a bit confused about the structure of the wedding though. From what I understood, they generally serve all the courses and then have dancing between dinner and dessert. In our culture we dance right after appetizers and only stop to sit down to take a few bites of our meal. He played our music up until after dinner and then he put on strobe lights, brought out balloons, and mixed our music in with his. No one stopped dancing after our first dance to open the floor. He also suggested really good songs for the events like walking in, cutting the cake, the garter toss, etc. We picked a Russian song for the bouquet toss.

 

Party favors: We bought M&Ms with images of us and our dogs on them. Everyone loved them! Unfortunately Claudia wrapped them in a bag and put them to the side of the DJ booth and the cleaning team threw them out! I had like 10 extras that I wanted to keep. We also stopped by the fiesta plaza and bought 4 sombreros and about 20 maracas for the tables. Our guests took pictures with them all night and we wore them around the hotel afterwards.

 

Rehearsal dinner: It’s $15pp to arrange a rehearsal dinner. The whole time we had so many people we would just show up to each restaurant and ask to be seated together and most of the time we were seated either together or in two big tables. So I cancelled it and did the same thing the night before the wedding. The people at world café get really upset but if you tip the head waiter you won’t get dirty looks anymore. We tipped him about 100 pesos every night and left some one the table for the other waiters.

 

Itinerary: The night before the wedding I ran around everyone’s room (if you are the bride the concierge will give you a print out of all the rooms and everyone’s info) and put a piece of paper under their door with the itinerary for the wedding. – This also helped me avoid the $4/room fee ;-)

 

Place cards: we had 5 round tables of 7-10 people so I bought place cards at our local discount store and wrote them out the morning of the wedding

 

Photo: the photographers there are very good but they only give you an hour and a half… regardless of whether or not you are using them for the full hour and a half! So for us when we went into the room with our guests we were still on the clock with our photographer. We ended up with only 10 minutes of time to take pictures outside together L The pictures we did take were really good though. I wasn’t too daring b/c I didn’t want to ruin my dress and the weather was very nasty. Most of my great pictures are from my guests’ cameras

 

I will post more as if I think of anything else. 

[Sasha030412]

Our wedding was over at 9:30pm since that's how long we had the entire staff. Claudia said we could pay to keep them longer but Luis suggested we just announce that the party was moving to desires and everyone could get more comfortable and go dancing. We did that and everyone had a great time at desires until about 3am! 

 

We also did my bachlorette party in cancun. Most of the clubs you have to pay to get into. You can bargain it down to like 10 bucks entrance but you have to pay for your drinks. I didn't want to force anyone to pay if they didn't want to so we spent two nights going to congo bar and dancing there. It's free admission and really fun. I highly suggest it, even though all the other clubs are really loud as you walk by, i think they are all the same once you're in. 

[michellegirl]

Hi Sandy! Thanks so much for your response! Was Dreams willing to take on the responsibility of gluing down the runner? I mean, if I handed them a runner like this would they simply take it and secure it themselves? Also, would I need to provide some sort of glue or would they already have materials like that on-hand?

 

Also, any idea on the size of the runner?

 

Thanks so much!!!

-Michelle

 

Originally Posted by Sandy Planner 

Dear Michelle Girl , the personalized runner look so pretty I used one in Drams Cancun  last January , there is  a special glue  to paste it, because otherwise it would blow away !!!This runner was with a very light  fabric ....check picture below!

 

 

[GabbyAbi44]

Hi Jen,

 

My bride twin! Our reception will be at 4pm as well, but on the beach and the same times as you for the cocktail hour and reception. I had told Cecilia that the availability of Himitsu Beach for the reception was essential for us choosing Dreams. We haven't chosen the location for our cocktail hour. The most important things for me were the ceremony and reception being on a beach.

 

December 14th seems sooooo far away, doesn't it?

 

Abi

Originally Posted by JenJen5 

Hey GabbyAbi44, looks like we're getting married on the same day! 

 

What time is your wedding?  My ceremony will be at 4pm, cocktail hour at 5pm, and reception at 6pm.  I was just about to ask Claudia if we could have the reception at Himitsu beach, but after seeing this I guess it's already taken!

 

[JenJen5]

Yes, Dec 14th does seem so far away, but I'm excited!  Luckily most of my planning is out of the way so I can sit back and relax .....can't seem to decide where to have the reception though.  I really wanted to do it at World Cafe, but apparently you can't have a reception there on Fridays, so we'll see!  I'm kind of worried about the weather too, would hate it if it was rainy or windy....

[jana297]

Does anyone know how much it costs for my bridesmaids hair and makeup at the Dremas spa? I have emailed them a few times with no response.

[leigh2011]

I have written in my final budget that I spent $289 for hair and makeup for 3 women (MOH, MOB, MOG).  Note that you get a 15% discount on spa services with the wedding package, so I used that on all of the services.

 

Originally Posted by jana297 

Does anyone know how much it costs for my bridesmaids hair and makeup at the Dremas spa? I have emailed them a few times with no response.

 

[Channing]

We got back last week and I want to go back sooooooooooo bad!!! I'm so sad it's over My wedding was absolutely perfect and pretty much everything far exceeded my expectations. I will write a review soon when I get caught up with work and what not and I will make sure to help answer any questions Its such a beautiful resort ladies- I think we all picked the best spot in Cancun to get married! Besides the wedding, the resort and its staff is absolutely fantastic. I've never felt a need to go back to any resort but I really would love to go back to Dreams next year.