Playa Fiesta Weddings

[jdrewett]

Congrats everyone! Can't wait to see photos! Christa, welcome to the forum!

 

We are putting down our deposit and signing the contract this week!! : ) I plan on doing lots of DIYs and thought about no dance floor too.

 

We decided to do the partial takeover with D&E#1. I wanted to do the full, but my FI and dad didn't feel comfortable taking the risk...oh well. Maybe it will save some stress in the end.

 

Next step...dress shopping!

[kate.com]

Welcome Christa! I agree wit Mel's answers to your questions. I know the dancefloor seems pricey... but wait til you see the construction of it. Do you remember that past brides? Bill and I talk about how we wish we had a videocamera in place to tape everyone running around the 24 hours before the wedding and play it on fastforward... like they do before the superbowl or a big event setup sometimes. Isnt that a funny visual Mel?

 

I wore wedge heels bc I'd kill myself in reg heels. I did wear them all night and they were comfy:) Mels shoes were AWESOME though.

 

And past brides... can't wait to see your reviews!!! Even if they are short they are helpful. I put mine on Trip Advisor as well.

 

Cheers!

[wieseelliott]

thanks ladies for all the replies so far. we signed our contract & booked end of august beginning of september. we have about 50-60 people coming. we did the partial 20 room take-over. How challenging was it to bring down your own linens for the tables?

[DB2B]

Sneak peek of our pictures are up! I will definitely try to post a review once we get the pictures back... the wedding porn is 99.9% of the fun, right?! But for now, you can see a few pictures at our amazing photographer's website :

 

Sam & Ian's Beautiful Puerto Vallarta Wedding

 

And in the pictures you can see my answer to one of the questions - I wore low wedge heels. I am about an inch taller than my hubby already, and although my every day attire is 3-4" heels (he doesn't care!), I didn't want the kiss to be awkward as I towered over him. Plus, you spend the entire night on the concrete, and my big concern was comfort - no corsets, no sore feet!

 

We didn't use a videographer. I kind of wish one of our friends had a video camera, because after reading Kate's review, I tried really hard to listen to the mariachi music as I was walking down the aisle, but it was all so fast, I don't remember! But we set a budget for our wedding, figured out three areas we wanted to splurge, and since the still photography was one, we skipped the video.

 

I woudl highly recommend the dance floor though! I know it seems expensive, but it is soooo worth it! It connects the bar area to the dining area, so for us it really maintained a good flow throughout the party, plus people were amazed by a bridge over the pool! We used it the night before the wedding as well, when we did salsa dancing. Plus, it's nice to have a designated dance floor. Just my opinion!

 

On the rooms, we ended up with 17 rooms. All of them were GORGEOUS and amazing. In a partial takeover I kept wondering which rooms we would be assigned because they are not all equal, but Adam and Blaire were terrific and gave us ALL The oceanview rooms. they even locked off bedrooms in the 3-room suites, so we had 2 2-room suites. We had one couple in a standard (no sitting area) ocean view room, but that was their choice becuase they wanted a balcony and ocean view but were originally on the 1st floor. All the rooms are great, but I can see how it might be more difficult if you do a full takeover and some guests have huge ocean view rooms and others have standards (I think in most of the standard rooms, the window faces the hall - no ocean view).

 

Lastly, we took a TON of stuff down! I made everything - menus, guestbook, napkin rings, table letters and place cards, ribbon runners for the dinner tables and cake table, silk tablecloths for the extra tables, etc. Plus we took fans for hte ceremony and coolers & koozies for the welcome bags...and I had my best man take a MASSIVE cupcake stand (which I left for Lindsay and any future brides if you use minicakes or cupcakes!). If you're going to take tablecloths and other linens I highly recommend thinking hard about the weight of the fabric. silk dupioni is great because it is so light it doesn't take much space, plus you can iron it. That's also why I made ribbon runners - I'm thinking of marketing them to destination brides, they were so easy to carry! And if your question is about customs, we didn't have a problem. The maximum you can take in for gifts is $300 a person, so I made sure to distribute that; they stopped us at customs entering Mexico after our bags went through the x-ray and searched them, but they saw the tags saying "Welcome to the wedding celebration," I was carrying a huuge dress bag, and we told them we were getting married, and they waved us through. They must have initially thought we were importing coolers to sell on the beach!

 

Anyways, whew that's long! HOpe it helps you girls though! Any other questions, ask away! I promise, I'll try to be brief!

[DB2B]

wieselliot - p.s. congratulations on booking! You guys are going to have a great time! We are trying to convince our remaining un-married friends to get married at PF so we can go back as guests this time!

[Mel&B]

Sam, your pictures are so pretty! I'm so jealous of your sandy beach. I love how every wedding is similar but different because each couple injects their own personality into everything. Your mats turned out great and I love, love, love your cupcake stand and "cupcake" toppers.

 

Kate, I totally agree about watching the dance floor being put together. It's a really cool process, and our group really enjoyed watching it being put together piece by piece.

 

Weiseelliot, I brought table runners, but not full sets of linens. That would have been A LOT. The table runners were ironed at PF, and they turned out great. Like Sam, we brought a lot of stuff with us. It's really fun to see and use your personalized items throughout the week.

 

I agree with everything Sam said about the rooms.

 

Have a great weekend, everyone!

[kate.com]

OMG Sam I love your pictures! You look stunning!!!!

I love your fireworks pics:) So glad everything was perfect... congrats!

 

And I did bring my own linens. They are heavier than you think so what I did was roll them and put them in a carryon suitcase and my parents carried (or rolled) that. Worked out great!

[mlabbe]

I also had the same question about the dance floor - I think that this is the sort of decision that would be much easier to make doing a site visit! Would the area where you get married make for a good dance area, or is it too far from the bar & music? Otherwise is there enough dance room around the pool? It's odd but looking at photos of the dance floor is looks sort of small - how many people would you say could fit on it to dance?

 

Sam, i love your photos! Blaire sent them over to me two days ago so I guess that I got to see them early! It just looks perfect, and you two looked fantastic! I really like that Michelle included shots of the food, it gives me a good idea of what it looks like! Were those mini cheesecakes?

[Mel&B]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mlabbe I also had the same question about the dance floor - I think that this is the sort of decision that would be much easier to make doing a site visit! Would the area where you get married make for a good dance area, or is it too far from the bar & music? Otherwise is there enough dance room around the pool? It's odd but looking at photos of the dance floor is looks sort of small - how many people would you say could fit on it to dance?

Magalie,

I don't think you could dance in the ceremony area. It's pretty far from the DJ- up a set of stairs and above the dining and small pool area. More importantly, it's a little bit far from the bar. It could be wrong, but that's just my opinion. The dance floor feels much bigger than it looks. There were only about 46 people at my wedding, so there was never an issue with too many people on the floor. I really can't see that being a problem... The most we had out there was probably 15-20 at one time, but you can definitely fit more than that. I think Kate did the electric slide, or something like that, with all of her girlfriends. It doesn't feel cramped at all, and like someone else said, it connects the bar to the dining area, so it really makes things come together, and I think more guys hopped on because it was so close to the bar. I think my husband jumped on the dancefloor for about 15 seconds, but our photographer got so many pics of him dancing that it looks like he was out there all night! haha!

I'm sure there is plenty of room on the patio to dance if you don't want the dancefloor or else there wouldn't be that option for you. Lindsay has seen an done it all, but I'm honestly partial to the bridge dance floor.

[kate.com]

Magalie I'd say 30... We had 37 people at the wedding and we are all dorky and did the macarena (Hey! When in Mexico....) and almost everyone participated and a couple we dancing around the pool... so you can dance around the pool too. Bill thought the dancefloor wouldn't get used much but he was so wrong! But it was nice bc even if there were just a few it felt more comfortable to have a place to go.

TOTALLY understand budgets though.