Moon Palace Cancun 3/23/10

[NJ Hunnie]

Great review, my wedding is about 2 weeks away.

[karmyj]

Quote:

Originally Posted by hsmith1228 Hi, ladies! I am new here...only discovered this site a few weeks before my wedding. Since I was able to get lots of good information, I thought I would return the favor and post my experiences. Hopefully it will help someone. This was our 2nd marriage, so we wanted very simple. We booked through Palace Premier (PP) membership, so no dealings with a travel agent or Miami coordinators. Our on-site coordinator was Lily Sanchez. She was very helpful both by email and once we were in Cancun. I left everything in her hands and was very pleased with the results. I will try to breakdown everything here, but feel free to ask me about anything else you want to know. This was my first time at Moon Palace and was quite nervous having the wedding there, knowing very little about it. There was absolutely nothing to be nervous about...at least not for us! Room--we stayed in the Sunrise section. Since it was booked through PP, we were guaranteed an oceanview. It was beautiful, but my one complaint was that it also overlooked the miniature golf course. No one paid any attention to us on the balcony, but it did get a little loud at times. We peeked into rooms at both Nizuc and the new Grand section. Nizuc rooms looked older and had a more colorful, tropical feel than our neutral room. If I had to do it over again, I would have stayed at Grand. It was gorgeous. The oceanview rooms are limited and it is a further distance from everything going on, but that can be a good thing. The pools are not as crowded (infinity pools!) and it was much quieter....totally different feel than the rest of the resort. Restaurants--the buffet food was what you would expect...definitely hit or miss. We ate there for breakfast and a few lunches but skipped them for dinner. In Nizuc, there are 4 a la carte restaurants...Arrecifies is a brazilian restaurant for meat lovers. The servers bring you one meat after another, on huge skewers. They keep coming until you flip a card over indicating you were full. They also have a large salad bar, but it was buffet food quality. The restaurant is fun but service takes a long time. My WC suggested this as an option for the wedding night dinner, but I am glad we passed on it. The outside terrace overlooks the pool and all of the tables along the windows have a full view of it. Not as private as I thought, based on what I had read on here. The second a la carte is Los Caporales. This was a fun Mexican place, but nothing spectacular when it came to the food. We were hoping for more authentic, but this was Americanized mexican. The last two restaurants are the Palapas, located poolside. One serves sushi and the other seafood/steak. They are both outside. There are 3 sit-downs at Sunrise. My absolute favorite was MO-MO-NO-HA-NA. I would've eaten there every night, if the rest of my party had been bigger sushi/japanese fans! Everything we had was great. I highly recommend this place. The other 2 are the Palapas, again pool side. They were both indoors though. One is a very limited menu with just 2 entrees...all seafood or surf & turf. The other palapa is mainly steak. It was a hit with the meat eaters, but my mom and I both ordered vegetable lasagna and were shocked...it was just vegetables with a layer of cheese on top. No pasta, sauce, etc. Thank goodness we didn't pay for it. Grand has 2 sit downs. One is a caribbean place. The menu looked good but we never made it back to that side to try it. We all liked Los Tacos. It is hard to find, but well worth it. I am not sure if they serve dinner, but we went there for lunch and sat poolside. (That is a very secluded pool with nice cabanas..good place to hide out!) The golf course also has 2 restaurants. We did not try Bambu (again, never made it back that way). La Trattoria is where we had our wedding dinner. It was much more upscale than any other restaurant. The clientele is also much different there..mainly older. Seemed to be the people who were staying at the golf villas. There was a long wait when we arrived (the only place we ever saw a wait). If you book your wedding dinner there, you have a reserved table so you obviously bypass everyone else. Spa--We had a spa package included in our stay. This is standard when booking though PP. It included a massage, manicure, and pedicure. I definitely recommend doing this at the end of the trip. It was so relaxing. The prices are crazy, if not included. On to the wedding... We had our ceremony at the Bugambilia gazebo. We originally wanted to have it on the beach, but it seemed to be too windy and I didn't want to worry about that. The gazebos all have gorgeous views so I am glad we went that route. Since we were going simple, we took the complimentary package. I chose hot pink roses and was absolutely stunned at how gorgeous they were. Lily (the WC) put a matching ribbon on the altar and on the chairs, even though we didn't pay for anything extra. When I arrived at the gazebo, everything was done and all I had to do was walk down the aisle. She had 3 other people helping her with various things...pretty good considering there were only 4 of us at the wedding! We went with the prepared ceremony, with the exception of writing our own vows. Honestly, I don't remember much of what the officiant said, but my parents said it was pretty After the ceremony, Lily and her staff brought us all champagne and the cake. (We elected to do the cake cutting right after since we didn't have a traditional reception, but wanted pictures of it.) The cake was the only disappointment of the entire experience. I asked for a square white cake with a hot pink ribbon, similar to what is in their package photo. The cake was leaning to one side and had horrible pink frosting flowers on top. I would have been really upset if I had a bigger wedding and/or paid for the cake. At least it tasted good!!! Photographer...this was my BIGGEST concern. I had read so many postings on this site about using resort photographers. I expressed my concern to my WC and told her how important it was that we get good pics. We didn't have the budget to hire someone outside, considering you have to pay for them to stay overnight at the resort. We decided to take our chances with the resort photographer. I really wanted a TTD session and negotiated to have that done right after the wedding, which saved us close to $300. Definitely go that route if you don't have to wear the dress the rest of the day. If not, they will do the TTD session the next day for an additional cost. Our photographer (I can't remember his name but will get it to add on here) was wonderful. He did everything we asked and was very creative. I was so pleased with the final result. The pictures look like they should be in a magazine! We ended up paying $505 for the session which included a nice leather book with 70 prints plus a CD with nearly 400 other pictures. I am too new to post them on here, but would be glad to share with anyone who is interested in seeing them. Again, if there are any MP brides out there with questions about the resort or a simple ceremony, let me know. I would be more than happy to help! Heather

Congrats on your wedding! I would love to see some of your pictures. I am using the resort photographer as well and I would like to put my mind to ease a little. I will send you a message with my email address.

[tiffani1980]

Congrads!! I got married on 3/19/10 on the beach, and it was really windy!!!

[SouthernSweetie]

Congrats, I'm so happy that things turned out well for you! I too am looking forward to seeing your pics. (I will PM that request to you.) I'm in the process of shopping for a photographer right now; I was planning to get him/her a room, but if I can save money here it sure would be nice! I really appreciate your being so prompt on posting your review. Thank you!!!

[hsmith1228]

Ok...I am new to this but hopefully it will work. Here is the link to the photos I have uploaded so far. (I did notice that they loaded up backwards and I am too lazy to fix that right now!)

 

Wedding pictures by hsmith1228 - Photobucket

 

I have definitely seen some fantastic pictures on this site and mine don't compare to lots of them, but again, I didn't have the budget to spend thousands of dollars. For the price we paid, I truly think he did a remarkable job.

 

I do want to mention one downside to not using an off-site photographer for the TTD session...you are limited to what Moon Palace has to offer. There are many places to get get pictures there, but the water shots are not as clear as you might find at other beaches. Plus..the seaweed. It didn't bother me at all, but may be a "yuck" factor for some.

 

Enjoy!

Heather

[hsmith1228]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Janelley100 Wow, thank you so much for taking the time to post your review. I too was assigned Lily and she has been absolutely incredible. They really seem to go out of there way to make you feel special. Just a question....did you ever see the rooftop terrace bar? We are planning on doing a welcome cocktail there the night before the wedding. Just curious if you happened to see it. I would love to see your photos....it sounds like they turned out wonderful! Price sounded good too. This will be our third marriage....each of us! Some say Third Times The Charm! So I understand the small wedding concept. Basically we have about 15 people coming...all of which are my family. I never had a REAL wedding for my previous marriages...so my Dad is saying "It's about time I get to walk you down an aisle!" LOL Well, Congratulations!!!! I'm so happy you had a wonderful experience full of wonderful memories! Take care.

Are you talking about the bar at Grand? That is the only one I saw and it is beautiful. I would have definitely had something there had we gone bigger!

[hsmith1228]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Woodsylou Thanks so much for your review Heather, that's great to hear, sounsd like you had a lovely day and many congratulations! so did you eat at the golf club restaurant in the evening? was the food good? i think we're going to the brazilian place with the meat on skewers, out on the private terrace. It sounds like service is slow and it's not totally private, but i dont really mind. i have 35 people and i think it's the closest we'll get to a private event without paying the money!! glad you had good things to say about the photographer, i'd love to see your pics! I'm going that route too! congrats again! x

We did eat at La Trattoria, the golf course restaurant. The food was good..but not as good as I would have expected considering how popular the place was.

I agree that the brazilian place is the most private you will get. At every other restaurant, you will be right in the middle of everyone else. You may not get complete privacy on the terrace, but it is still nice. And FREE!

[hsmith1228]

Photographer's name is Eliseo Barrera. I did initially try to get David Pena (the one most people recommend on this site), but he wasn't available on our day. I saw samples of his work and thought that Eliseo was every bit as good. And, Eliseo was SOO very easy to work with. He smiled the entire time and seemed really excited to be working with us.

[Janelley100]

Your pictures are fantastic! LOVE THE DRESS....LOVE THE PINK FLOWERS.....LOVE....WELL, just about EVERYTHING! You looked fantastic and as if you had a wonderful time. Congratulations!

 

Thank you for sharing!!!

[karmyj]

Your pictures were beautiful!!