Courtney's Dreams Cancun Review

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I’m such a slacker (wedding date was 11/16/09) but I wanted to post this since I loved reading other reviews, I hope you enjoy! I put so many pics in here I have to break it up since the max is 10 per post, so bear with me…

 

During the planning process we had some push back from family members on the location but we stood our ground and I’m glad we did. We gave them enough notice to save and we helped out in areas that we could. In the end everyone had a fabulous time and I’m trying to talk someone into having a destination wedding just so I can go as a guest!

 

Travel Agent – We used Jill from BDW and she was great to work with, thanks Jill! Not everyone went through her but those that did had a great experience.

 

Tote bags – I loved shopping for everything but it became an obsession… You ladies have such great ideas and craft skills! I went with a natural/black tote bag with an embroidered green starfish with the couple’s last initial in the center. I got the bags from a seller on Etsy, that site is addicting. They didn’t turn out exactly how I envisioned but they’re cute. Here’s what we put in them:

- Deck of cards with our initial K, found green and pink ones online that were pretty cheap.

- Pink Pashmina with a ribbon wrapped around them and a starfish in the center. The girls LOVED these since it got chilly at night

- Starfish wine stopper – from Amazon

- Pink and Green koozies – Barry Promos, would recommend only if you order well in advance. I ordered fuchsia but they were actually purple so he sent me pink ones that were basically hot pink. Oh well, everyone used them and loved them.

- Hand sanitizer, Chap Stick, Shout Wipe, mints, Crystal Light, Tums, Advil, Tylenol – all in a plastic green bag from the party store with an added ribbon

 

 

Here are the bridesmaid gifts; a personalized toiletry bag with some body butter, shower gel, body puff, and a sleep mask (can’t live without my sleep masks!!):

 

 

I also got some fun ones for my flower girls and a drawstring bag for my nephew (supposed to be the ring bearer but didn’t make it down the aisle), all personalized. I filled them with PJs and swim suits.

 

Here are the pillow and flower girl baskets my sister made:

 

Dress – It’s a Casablanca dress, I got it on my first and only shopping trip which I wish I didn’t. My family lives in FL so when my mom and sisters came into Memphis I felt pressed to get the dress while they were here. Looking back on it I wish I went by myself first just to see what type of dress I liked and then explored more in that style. Oh well I’m sure if I prolonged it I never would’ve made a decision. Here are a couple pics from the dress shop:

 

 

Shoes – I couldn’t find any fuchsia shoes that I liked, at least that weren’t super high heels. I ordered some dyeables online and had them dyed at a local dress shop. I also ordered fuchsia flip flops and matching headbands for my flower girls, from Etsy.

 

 

Bridesmaid dresses – My BM’s are very different in size so I just picked the color and had them pick the style in the same fabric, they’re from the Dessy group. The green looked brighter on the swatch but I liked how they looked in the pics. Again these were picked on a quick weekend trip I made to FL since that’s where they live. The flower girl dresses were white with Fuchsia trim since I was going with green and fuchsia as my colors. Note – If you’re getting married at Dreams Cancun I highly recommend floor length dresses because my guests with short dresses had a heck of a time keeping them down with the crazy wind!

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RESORT – The resort is the perfect size for a DW and you can’t beat the location. While it’s not as new and fancy as some others it worked well for us. Here we are fresh off the plane and ready for a cocktail upon our arrival at Dreams:

 

 

Rooms – We stayed in the Jr. Suite in the tower which was worth the extra cost for our stay. I LOVED our balcony and kept the doors open most of the time to hear the waves and the breeze. The view from there is gorgeous and it was nice to have the extra space in the room. FYI - they don’t have a fan in the bathroom so showering with the door open is a must. Oh and the closet is pretty small since they stick a safe in the way of the clothes bar. The safe is one of those you set your own code to and I’m sure there’s another way in there but we felt secure leaving our valuables in there when we weren’t in our room.

 

Service – Service at Dreams is excellent, the employees at the spots we frequented remembered our names and were really friendly. The resort grounds are very well cared for; you can tell they really care about keeping it nice. And of course whenever you thank them for something they say ‘It’s my pleasure.’ Rob said I could really make a good wife by using that in the future, typical…

 

Food – Everyone thought the food was great, of course there were some things we tried that were not so great but overall it was yummy. The position of World Café is perfect since you face the main walkway. Every morning we ate breakfast there and waved to our guests that walked by to come join us. I loved the Mexican options for breakfast, definitely not your low fat or light variety but I was there to enjoy it all!! I really loved Himitsu mostly for their wings and spring rolls…the sushi was pretty tasty too! Room service was pretty good, limited options but we only ordered it a couple times late at night so we weren’t picky.

 

Cecilia (WC) – She’s really sweet and calm so you feel at ease about everything. We met with her on Saturday and made our selections, it all went pretty smoothly.

 

 

Activities

We didn’t plan any excursions which I originally thought about doing. People were arriving on different dates and I just didn’t want to add any pressure or stress to my experience by taking that on….and I’m just lazy. 

 

Clubs – We went out one night to a club named Bulldog…it was awesome! Bernardo and Mini-Me (that’s what he goes by) were our go to guys at Dreams to tell us where to go. They also went with us so we felt safe and taken care of. Here’s a pic of Bernardo:

 

 

At first Bulldog was empty (people in Cancun start late) but they promised us it would be a blast. They hooked the guys up with tables next to the dance floor and kept the bottles flowing to keep them happy.

 

 

I think it was $45 to get in (I got in for free) but well worth it since all drinks are included. The music was great and the girls never left the dance floor….just stay away from the guy with the camera that tries to coax you in the hot tub. Not sure if he’s usually there but I thought he was trying to get us on a Girls Gone Wild tape…lol.

 

 

We also went to Coco Bongo and Mini-Me hooked us up with a table there. It was OK but I’d much rather go out and dance than sit and watch a show, plus it was really crowded.

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Pictures – I elected to not use Juan Navarro for our wedding but instead for a photo session the day before the wedding. We asked everyone to wear white and we wore pink, well Rob’s shirt was so pale you can’t really tell it was pink. He sent one of his assistants, Alex Melendez and the pictures turned out OK. Afterwards we split off for dinner and Rob and I ate with our families. Alex met us a couple days later to give us the printed pictures and hit us up for $$ to get the other pics he didn’t print. There weren’t that many pictures so I think it was around $130, we paid it so we could email them all to our guests since he took pics of each couple. The prints are in a leather album with the plastic sleeves, nothing fancy but a nice to have. Here are some from that session:

 

At least 4 of our guests are missing from this one since they showed up late, should’ve kept the group shot for the end but I wasn’t thinking:

 

He did ones with just family and this is one with just friends:

 

Our flower girls:

 

 

Rob and I:

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Wedding

The night before I couldn’t sleep, I woke up nauseous…couldn’t figure out if it was nerves or all the yummy food I’d been eating after months of eating light. The wedding was scheduled to start at 4pm and hair/makeup started at 12pm. Rob and I ate breakfast and then met up with our friends at the pool. Fortunately 2 of them are pharmacists so they hooked me up with some good meds to settle my stomach. I was starting to feel a little better by the time I headed over to the salon.

 

Hair/Makeup – The ladies in the salon are so nice, I think only one spoke English but she listened to what we wanted and told the others what to do. I had a picture of what I wanted and it turned out great.

 

I liked all the BMs hair for the most part, I didn’t really have a preference, so I just told them to do it however they wanted. Since I wasn’t feeling good I was pretty laid back about everything. I wish I would’ve done my own makeup though, she did a good job I just think she went for a softer look that didn’t really show up in pics. Looked great in person, just needed to be heavier on the eyes. Here are some pics Sascha took in our room:

 

 

 

 

Photographer – Ladies I don’t envy you if you’re looking for a photographer….it was honestly the most stressful part of the whole wedding planning experience. I didn’t realize they were so expensive and that they would be booked so early on. My wedding was on a Monday so I thought for sure everyone would be available, so not the case…. I was very excited to discover Sascha after reading a couple threads about him. I contacted him and he was available on my date and was very reasonably priced. I booked him from 2:30 to 7:30, in hindsight I wish I would’ve pulled that time up and did more pictures with Rob before the ceremony and shaved off time on the back end. But we got some great pictures and Sascha and his assistant (oops forgot his name!) were great to work with.

 

Video – We got this with the package and I’m SO happy I didn’t trade it for something else, I LOVE it!! He used our songs from the ceremony and threw in a couple others but it’s so pretty. It was kind of annoying during the day having him tell us to hold a stare or a pose but it ended up looking great in the video. I honestly forgot about him so when he showed up I was thrown off and felt bad that I didn’t tell Sascha he’d be there. They both worked really well together so that was great. Of course once his time was up he offered to stay longer for $$ but we declined. I was ready to enjoy the reception and be off the video camera…

 

Here are a few tips for you to prepare for your photo/video session based on my experience:

- Have some poses in mind that you want, maybe write them down and give them to the photographer or someone in your party to remind you.

- Practice staring at each other for a solid couple of minutes. Rob had a harder time at this then I did, he was becoming a little impatient.

- Have a lipstick handy in your bathroom or some other cosmetic because your photographer will ask you to pretend you’re applying and take a shot

- Know what details you’d like the photographer to take a pic of

- Try your best not to squint or blink in the sun. Rob is a bad blinker in pictures normally but it was a challenge for both of us that day.

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Ceremony – When they were setting up for our ceremony they got the sashes wrong twice. My mother in law asked, are you having blue sashes on your chairs? She ran down and told them they were supposed to be fuchsia but Cecilia was already on it. The funny thing is they went to a sheer fuchsia and then to the solid one that I asked for, so they got it right on the 3rd attempt. But no worries, they have them all there so it wasn’t like they had to go far to get them.

 

The ceremony was great, a pretty basic wedding. There were a few onlookers at the tower pool but turns out they were with a Philly radio station that was at Dreams that week. We ran into them the next day by the pool and they interviewed us on the radio, pretty cool! The speakers are perfect and I’d recommend you get them for the ceremony. Otherwise nobody would hear and I’m sure you wouldn’t hear your music very well over the wind and the waves. As for the music I just gave Cecilia a list of the songs I wanted and they arranged downloading them.

 

 

 

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Cocktail Hour – Pretty much during the cocktail hour we took pictures but we caught the tail end of it. Everyone thought the food was great, I don’t remember everything we had but there were about 6 different items. We went with the Mexican Trio over the Caribbean, no reason other than we say a wedding going on with the Mexican Trio playing and I liked them. The cocktail hour is in the garden which is off to the side of the terrace. Here are some pics from our photo session:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[*Linds*]

you were such a beautiful bride! Congrats!

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Reception – We had our reception on the terrace setup with round tables and the dance floor off to the side. Here’s our centerpiece, just something colorful, Cecilia filled the vases with rocks to keep them from being blown over:

 

 

We had 3 round tables with Rob and me sitting by ourselves at a table in the middle:

 

 

 

We put tagged starfish and maracas on the tables:

 

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I’d recommend having the DJ, the lighting was fun and I didn’t have to worry about setting anything up myself. However put together a playlist, I had to keep requesting songs, he wasn’t catching on to the style of music to just pick them himself. I don’t remember his name (with DJ Mannia) but he didn’t say anything other than when he introduced us and announced the cake cutting. Few pics from the reception:

 

 

 

Food – The food was really good, I don’t remember our exact picks but it was one of the best meals we had during our stay there. It was some kind of Seafood trio, I think shrimp, fish, and steak. Then for dessert we had the baked Alaska which was as hard as a rock but I was told delicious once people hacked into it. Our cake was vanilla, didn’t look like what I picked out in the picture but still nice. It’s funny because I do NOT like the Tres Leche cake but the vanilla still had that really moist almost wet taste….I called it Dos Leche… It was pretty tasty but I didn’t ask to take any back to the room with us.

 

That was it for our big day! All in all it was a fabulous experience to have our family and friends in Mexico celebrating our big day and having some fun in the sun. I hope this review is helpful to those of you still planning your weddings. Good luck and let me know if you have any questions!

[JT3]

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SHARING.... The review is great.. I love your colors...