Barcelo Maya Palace Brides

[mrsnova]

Originally Posted by juliboley 

 

We're back, and it was perfect and amazing!!  I'll post a full review as soon as I have more pictures, but here is a preview:

gorgeous! congrats

[FireyNurse]

Congrats Juliboley, can't wait to hear and see more!

[MexicoHereICome]

Hi Ladies, 

 

We just got back a few weeks ago from our BEAUTIFUL wedding at the Barcelo Maya Palace. Everything was perfect! For all of you that are worried because you haven't heard anything from your WC or have trouble getting them to email you back....DON'T BE!!! I was a little worried but semi-reassured that everything would be okay after talking to some Brides and they were right! You will meet with your WC and every single detail will be covered. You can change almost every detail if you wanted to at that meeting! 

 

Upon checking-in we were up-graded to an Ocean view room and VIP status( my parents were too). Everything went smoothly and our views were GREAT from our room. My Parents room smelled of Mildew but mine was fine.

 

October 6 Wedding......53 Guests

 

Our Second day we met with our WC Xhail who almost immediately passed us onto another WC Jacqueline who was wonderful. She had all of our information including printed out pictures of what I had previously discussed with Xhail and made sure we were completely happy with all of our decsisons. We changed our menu while we met to different things and they accommodated all of our food allergies.  This is when I picked flowers, centerpieces, cake,Salon appointments and I even changed from the violin to the sax for our live ceremony music. In a nutshell we planned the whole wedding in our 1.5 hour meeting. We brought lots of little things for her to decorate and handout and she took great notes and made sure she knew exactly how I wanted everything to be.

 

Rehearsal: Jacqueline met us the evening before the wedding and gave us a quick rundown of how everything was going to go down. Immediately following we went to the Brazilian steakhouse for our rehearsal dinner where they put us all together in the same area and was quit wonderful.

 

WEDDING DAY!

 

We got married at 6 pm so we got to enjoy hanging out with our Friends and Family for the morning and good part of the afternoon.

 

SALON: Starting at 2 pm  My Girls and I (8 in total) all got our hair and make-up done at the salon. I loved all of our hair and there was 1 bad make-up job out of the bunch! All in all I would give them an A-. Take pictures though....They didn't speak much English ( I managed to explain what I wanted and she did a GREAT job but for a moment I was worried just because of our language barrier.) The Salon drove us all by golf cart back to our rooms so we didn't have to walk back to the palace. Where we all met back in my room to finish getting ready!

 

 

PHOTOGRAPHER: Ivan Luckie A++++++. Ivan came and met me at the Salon and was a dream to work with. He was pretty quite and you never really knew he was there. I cannot wait to see my pictures! He was great with communicating via email and even dealt well with some of my drunk girlfriends trying to tell him what to do. He was sweet, and very easy to work with. I am confident he got some great shots (all of his work is excellent on his website and comes highly recommended via this website) We got him a room at the resort for 2 days verse paying the outside vendor fee (which was cheaper) and gave him some extra time to scout some good places to shoot pictures! 

 

 

CEREMONY:  A++++   The WC came and picked us up at 5:50 and drove us to the Gazebo. Once we arrived everything started very quickly. I could hear the sax playing as everyone was waiting for me to walk down the aisle (Originally I picked the violin but the WC talked me out of it b/c the wind sometimes drowns out the sound of the violin. The Sax player was WONDERFUL.) The officiant made my Husband have his back to me till I got almost all the way down the aisle so there was an element of surprise for him.  He preformed a beautiful ceremony. (I guess while he was waiting for me to come down the aisle he asked my Husband a slew of questions and he put some great personal touches on the ceremony) Our ceremony lasted about 20 minutes and was just perfect! After the ceremony we all had a toast right inside the gazebo lobby area, It was perfect.

 

COCKTAIL HOUR: B+.    We had this on a rooftop balcony of the Palace. I didn't get to go to this but everyone told me how wonderful it was. We purchased the Mariachi band. (People are still talking about how much they loved them) We made a make shift photo booth and had people take photo booth style pictures with props. Everyone LOVED it! I made a sign that read "Destination style photo booth.....grab a friend, take a prop, snap a pic or 2 and we will send them to you"  The reason why I rate this part of the experience a B+ is because of the food. LOTS of people told me that the food was horrible here  (We chose the Mexican package) My Mother actually said she was terrified our dinner was gonna be bad too (it wasn't) All, in all I'm glad we spent the money on it to have everyone together (not everyone was staying at the Palace and I wanted everyone to be able to drink)  but I'm disappointed that the food was so bad. I think it must of been pretty bad since people actually told me it was. Most people wouldn't say anything but from what my Mother says it was boarder line embarssing how bad it was.

 

RECEPTION: A.    This was located by the Palace Pool. It looked beautiful when I arrived. I had the trees wrapped in lights and it was set up perfect. The D.J. had the party started before we arrived and everyone was enjoying themselves. During the Mother/Son dance it started to sprinkle........Everyone jumped into action. There was an activities hut (tiki hut) located directly next to the reception area. The waiters moved everything out in just a few minutes and moved us under. It really worked out perfect because everyone was closer and there was more light. It stopped raining quickly but better safe than sorry. We then danced right outside of the hut  after dinner and the rain stopped. It made it memorable and it's something we can look back at and giggle about! It was the best evening ever. I just wish we added the extra hour. It went all by too fast! All of the younger people went on to the Disco after so it wasn't a big deal!  Biggest complaint was the heat! It was HOT and HUMID....And I'm a Floridian I can usually deal with heat!

 

Dinner choices:

Thai Beef with cucumber salad. EXCELLENT

Onion Soup: EXCELLENT

Surf and Turf: GOOD 

Half Baked Chocolate cake: I didn't try but I heard it was EXCELLENT

Wedding Cake: Vanilla and Strawberry with whip cream frosting...In my opinion was the BEST part of the entire meal

 

D.J: A+ Discomovil. He played all the things we wanted and kept the crowd going.  He rented us a generator (which you couldn't hear instead of paying the electricity fee from the resort for not choosing their D.J) the cost of this was $200 extra and well worth it! They were great to communicate with. Always responded quickly to emails and spoke great English to do make announcements! We had a few special request songs and he found them all and played each one! Loved them!!

 

The most important thing of the whole trip was that we were surrounded by our loved ones. We made so many memories that will last a lifetime and have endless stories to tell. You spend a year planning this very special day and even just weeks after you forget about what may not of been perfect or what someone forgot to bring. Those things happened to me but all I really remember is all the great times we shared with our Friends and Family. I actually sat here and struggled to remember some of the details.  Sure I remember the rain, but I couldn't tell you what my flowers looked like!  Everyone told me they thought our wedding was great, the resort was beautiful and the staff was wonderful! I would recommend to anyone to get married here! We are all planning on a return trip together next year!

 

Happy Planning Everyone!

 

Here are a few pic's.  Professional ones to follow.....

feel free to contact me with any questions

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[chasingjaime]

Thank you for sharing your planning details! I'm right in the thick of the planning process right now with my WC Victoria - my date is set for April 20, 2013. Can you recall approximately how big the layers of your two-tier cake was, and how tall your cake topper was? One of the many decisions I'm working now on is what size of a topper to get, and I've ordered the same as you - round, two-tier.

 

Did you have any signature cocktails at your reception? Or were there any in particular at the resort that were really well done? I'd really like to offer some signature drinks, but I'm not sure what's popular or if the bartenders are good mixologists. 

[melcrna80]

Great review! I leave a week from today! I'm getting so excited!

[mrsnova]

Mexicohereicome. thank you so much for sharing! Sounds like your wedding was perfect and it definitely eases nerves to here over and over how great things turn out:). My WC is Jacqueline and so far she has been great, so good to hear that she is just as good in person!

 

Congrats on your new marriage<3

[FireyNurse]

Congrats MexicoHereICome your day sounds like it was wonderful! You definitely eased some of my nerves, and with our wedding in less than a month I need that! lol!

 

Just a question for you, can you recall what time it became dark around? Our reception starts at 5:30 and we were trying to figure out if it would be dark then or just dusky as the sun sets at approximately 5pm in late November.

 

Cheers!

Charity

[melcrna80]

Our WC told me the sunset starts at 5:40 and just after 6 it's completely dark....I'll be there next week and then I can let you know for sure!

[juliboley]

We got married on 10-20 and our wedding was at 4:30 with a cocktail hour from 5:30-6:30 and the reception starting at 6:30.  It was completely dark by the time cocktail hour was finished.  If you want to get any pictures after your ceremony in light, you'll probably want to move it up a bit.  I just copied these pix from some of my guests to give you an example of the light (Sorry the pix are huge):

4:30 pm

 

5:30ish

 

6:45 (we are sitting directly next to the window, so you can see how dark it is)

 

Since you still have a couple weeks it might get darker earlier still.  Ask your WC and look online to find average sundown.  Our ceremony was 12 minutes long and we had plenty of time for pictures before the reception, but always best to err on the side of caution.

[NIKKI2013]

MexicoHereICome:

 

Thank you so much for adding your review to the forum! Reading you reviews makes me even more excited about my wedding in March 2013. It sounds like you guys had an amazing time. I have been worried about the Spa with doing hair and make up just cause you never know if they are good or not and I haven't heard of anyone really using them or seen any pictures of their work. I am glad you that it all worked out and would love to see pictures. Thank you for sharing. Congratulations! I cant wait to see more pictures!