Grand Sunset Princess Resort

[MrsShoreytobe]

Thank you guys so much for the suggestions!

 

I had seen several brides doing the reception dance only in the lounge/in front of the lounge, but didn't know how much it cost.

 

So 2 hrs at front of chillout lounge will be set up with dancefloor (how much $$$ was this BTW?) and chairs for people who want to sit. $25 pp.

 

Great to know the audio equip rental is 560; we may opt for no DJ. For those of you who did do a DJ, what was cost?

 

So Ipod hook up is available. Hmm for 50 people I am not sure if ours would need more volume etc. (?)

 

QUESTION ABOUT HAVING BEACH-TYPE RECEPTION (i.e. in front of chill out lounge) - I saw a few pages back somewhere that the bugs were bad on the beach itself.

Should we worry about being eaten alive at night for the dance part?

 

 

So through all this babbling, here are my questions lol

 

1. Restaurant suggestions for around 50 people, and whether we can do speeches, etc there.

2. Cost of dancefloor

3. Cost of DJ

4. BUGS on beach an issue?

 

Thanks everyone!

[MrsShoreytobe]

Originally Posted by MrsShoreytobe 

 

Thank you guys so much for the suggestions!

 

I had seen several brides doing the reception dance only in the lounge/in front of the lounge, but didn't know how much it cost.

 

So 2 hrs at front of chillout lounge will be set up with dancefloor (how much $$$ was this BTW?) and chairs for people who want to sit. $25 pp.

 

Great to know the audio equip rental is 560; we may opt for no DJ. For those of you who did do a DJ, what was cost?

 

So Ipod hook up is available. Hmm for 50 people I am not sure if ours would need more volume etc. (?)

 

QUESTION ABOUT HAVING BEACH-TYPE RECEPTION (i.e. in front of chill out lounge) - I saw a few pages back somewhere that the bugs were bad on the beach itself.

Should we worry about being eaten alive at night for the dance part?

 

 

So through all this babbling, here are my questions lol

 

1. Restaurant suggestions for around 50 people, and whether we can do speeches, etc there.

2. Cost of dancefloor

3. Cost of DJ

4. BUGS on beach an issue?

 

Thanks everyone!

Just got email back from resort about my inquiry with restaurant options for 50 people, etc. (responses from them are in red)

 

  

1. For a dance reception location only (i.e. not having supper), what would we be looking at for cost? you can purchase a cocktail party on the beach  for 2 or 3 hours attached you will find the options for your review. 

 I.e. if we had the reception dinner in a restaurant and then wanted to have a dancefloor set up on the beach for example, how much would we be looking at a for several hours of music/alcohol service? acrylic dance floor of 5.00 mts x 5.00 mts, cost  $1,600.00 usd , a wooden dance floor cost you $1,150.0 usd approx. DJ cost you from $650.00 usd from 2 to 4 hours to more. 

 

- We would likely opt for renting the music equipment and would have 2-3 hours of dancing. 

 

2. If we did restaurant dinner, what restaurant would you suggest in your resort for up to 50 people? for more than 40 guest we can not accomodate in one of the restaurants a la carte, in this case I recomend you to purchase a private party with supper included the cost you will find it in the following attachement 

Or in the other hand dinning in one of our buffet restaurants in a semi-private area, with no charge. 

Would the restaurant be fairly private for our dinner, and would we be able to have speeches there?not Im sorry, at the restaurant a la carte we can not accomodate more than 40 guest, and is a shared area with other hotel guest, where you can not make any speeches, or first dance, or garter throwing or bouquet throwing.

 

 

So basically I am being told that we need to fork out 100 per person because we have over 40 people for dinner? I am thinking some bargaining is gonna have to happen here....

[nov2013maya]

That sucks. It looks like the cost of the dance floor has increased dramatically!! I read that somebody rented it for approx $600 earlier....

[Matt Adcock]

Thank you SO MUCH korenann for inviting us to be a part of your big day. It was an amazing event, you were simply gorgeous! I love love love the shot of you sitting on the gazebo laughing, such joy in your face!

 

Here are some shots of the day, just to give you planners some inspiration! See the whole set of KorenAnn's Grand Sunset Princess Wedding. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy planning everyone!

[Steitzer23]

There are alternatives to the $100 per person dinner at the Chill Out Lounge and the $85 per person dinner on the beach if you have more than 40 people. They have banquet rooms where the buffets, depending on which one you pick, can run from $55 and up. I don't have my documents in front of me right now but I would be glad to share them. I wish this resort would enter the Internet age and just post this crap on a website. They end up burying themselves in emails because the information, photos and prices aren't readily available.
 

[Steitzer23]

 

Here are the alternatives, which they call "galas." I was wrong, they actually go even lower than $50 a person.

For 4 hours, minimum 30 adults, you can get beer, wine and soft drinks with the "bacalar" menu for $44 per person.

Now, I have not reached this point in my planning, still getting a head count. I am nervous after reading your post and I don't understand why they wouldn't have told you about these. I assumed these would be private receptions where we could play music on an iPod, dance, give speeches, etc. Now I worry that we won't get a private setting for these "galas." Although, the other part of me thinks they hesitated to tell you because they are obviously trying to steer everyone to the expensive options.

GALA MENUS.pdf

[MrsShoreytobe]

Originally Posted by Steitzer23 

 

There are alternatives to the $100 per person dinner at the Chill Out Lounge and the $85 per person dinner on the beach if you have more than 40 people. They have banquet rooms where the buffets, depending on which one you pick, can run from $55 and up. I don't have my documents in front of me right now but I would be glad to share them. I wish this resort would enter the Internet age and just post this crap on a website. They end up burying themselves in emails because the information, photos and prices aren't readily available.

 

 

Originally Posted by Steitzer23 

 

 

Here are the alternatives, which they call "galas." I was wrong, they actually go even lower than $50 a person.

For 4 hours, minimum 30 adults, you can get beer, wine and soft drinks with the "bacalar" menu for $44 per person.

Now, I have not reached this point in my planning, still getting a head count. I am nervous after reading your post and I don't understand why they wouldn't have told you about these. I assumed these would be private receptions where we could play music on an iPod, dance, give speeches, etc. Now I worry that we won't get a private setting for these "galas." Although, the other part of me thinks they hesitated to tell you because they are obviously trying to steer everyone to the expensive options.

Hey girl! Thanks so much for your answers. And try not to fret too much, I know this whole process is full of "OMG" moments and this is likely one of them. 

 

Here's my thing:

 

- We would like a semi private type dinner, and if we can't have speeches there, then we'd need to somehow have a set up post-dinner to do them. If we pay for only 2 hrs of service for a "beach party" then this leaves little time for SPEECHES and DANCING. My fiance and I spoke about being flexible in how we do things last night, but I am not sure how we can organize this if we need speeches to be done later in the evening. 

 

- With the banquet halls, are they remotely outside? I would have loved to have an outside dance set up etc, but maybe it's better to try and do a banquet hall where we are settled in ONE PLACE, for the whole night. 

 

SO it's a balancing act it seems. We anticipate over 40 for sure to come, so this may mean we have to do a banquet *guessing indoors??* reception and dinner, dance, etc. 

 

Steitzer23, I can almost guarantee that is what they are doing - they aren't telling us the whole pic because they want us to go with more expensive option. 

 

This is where my wonderful TA's ideas and suggestions come in. You bargain for things. You look around at other resorts and bring back other deals that you get from other resorts and tell YOUR RESORT that you want them to match the price (lol). I have found things from Baha Principe with a poolside reception (post-dinner) for 3 hrs at a much better price. I plan on bringing this forward to the resort if we still have them in a top 5 for our potential resorts. 

GALA MENUS.pdf

[sunbride2be]

Hi Everyone, has anyone had Chely as their WC? I've been dealing with Pilar who has been great, really fast at answering questions and as soon as I booked my wedding date, I was transferred to Chely who has yet to respond to any on my questions.... Worried she will not be as attentive and on the ball as Pilar

[stbKeras]

Hi Ladies!

 

My husband and I got married at the Grand Sunset Princess on May 4th. I have to say that there is not one thing I would change about the day! It went so perfectly! We got legally married in Canada before our departure and went with the Symbolic Package. We had a group of 50 people. 

 

WC: We had Emma and she was absolutely amazing! There was a bit of a language barrier during the planning stages but nothing we didn't figure out in the end. She sticks around for the majority of the wedding day to make sure everything is going smoothly. A week or so before your arrival she will email you with an appointment to meet her before the wedding day. At the appt she goes over all the small details. We went over the vows - we wanted short and sweet and no religious points. You also bring any decorations that you would like to have incorporated. I brought cake topper, ribbon and fake flowers to decorate the cake and it turned out better than I could have imagined. The other decorations I brought turned out great too! For music at the ceremony all you need to bring is an iPod and Emma writes down the songs in order you would like to have them played. 

 

Photographer: We chose to hire an outside photographer, Dean Sanderson, who was great! I haven't seen any pictures yet, but I will post some once I get them. It was a $200 fee to bring him on the resort for the day. He was super helpful and some of the pictures he showed me during the day looked amazing!  

 

Ceremony:  2pm - We chose the Riviera Gazebo. The location is not private, but during the ceremony you don't notice it. You get so wrapped up in the moment that everything outside of the gazebo doesn't matter. Also I looked at the other gazebo and I wasn't a fan. It is only semi private located in the Chill Out area of the beach.  The music at the ceremony was right on point, the only issue we had was that our iPhone over heated and they had to wait for it to cool down. The minister was absolutely fantastic and had many beautiful things to say about the union of marriage. And our vows were very beautiful as well.  We chose not to do a champagne toast after the ceremony, it seemed crazy to spend $400 on alcohol at an all inclusive resort. So the whole group took a stroll down the beach and grabbed drinks at the bar and tacos from the beach grill. After that the wedding party took off to take photos on the beach. 

 

Dinner: 6pm -  Because the size of our group the only restaurant we could fit into was La Fondue. We also looked into the Chill Out but it was $100 per person and we did not want to spend that kind of money. It was not a private dinner, but we were tucked into a wing of the restaurant that our whole group fit into. The servers were great and were very involved with our guests. The food was OK - but I found all the food at the resort just OK. Most of guests said they enjoyed it though. They have options for vegetarians and other special requests. 

 

Beach Reception: 8pm-11pm - We chose to do this because we still wanted to have the traditional first dances, speeches. As some of you have noticed it is extremely hard to find detailed information about the beach receptions. It was located in the main entrance of the beach where the beach bar is located. We paid to have the Domestic Bar Service but once our guests were tiping a little extra they started bringing out the good liquor.  So it was definitely a shot in the dark when we booked it, but I have to say this was the best choice for our group! We booked the DJ who was great, he played current music and when our guests requested older music he played that as well. We also rented the dance floor which I am really glad we did. They bury it in the sand so that it is flush to sand around it. They set up bar tables around the dance floors. I also requested two large tables with chairs and they fulfilled that at no extra charge.  We were able to fit in all the speeches, first dances, cake cutting and garter/bouquet toss. After the reception was done we decided to make our way to the Disco on the resort. 

 

All in all the day went perfect and as smoothly as it could have. Of course there was minor hiccups but nothing that even slightly bothered us or anyone else. Most of our guests said that it was one of the best weddings they have been to and that it was nothing what they were expecting. The one thing I would say is not to stress too much during the planning stages! As long as you have the major pieces decided the rest can all be figured out when you get there. The resort does an absolute amazing job on their weddings and I have nothing but good things to say about them. 

 

I'm sure I forgot to mention other details, so let me know if I can be any help for the brides to be

 

Robynn

[MrsShoreytobe]

Robynnnnn!!!!!

 

How lovely to hear all about your big day, it makes me cry lol! So happy for you, and thanks for the awesome details you included in your post.

 

It was a relief to hear from someone who has had a recent wedding at GP and had around 50 people (this is similar to our expected size). I have been concerned about the cost of the chill out lounge, because as you mentioned 100 bucks per person (i.e. $5000 for 50 PEOPLE!!) is not within our realm of possibility.

 

I was wondering if you could offer your answers/thoughts on the following:

 

1. How much did you pay for the dancefloor? I was quoted a very high price, and some other ladies here mentioned that this price seemed much higher than a few months ago even.

 

2. How much was the 3 hr reception? I've seen some women quote 2 hrs for 25 bucks per person, but in order to fit in speeches and dancing I would hope for 3 hrs, like you did.

 

3. What was cost of DJ - this was the resort DDJ you picked?

- DId he take care of setting up speeches etc? How did you organize the dance party so you could have speeches?

 

4. what did you think of the resort as a place to party after the reception?

 

Your feedback would be invaluable Robynn, thanks in advance if you have time!!

 

Katie