El Dorado Royale (EDR) Brides - POST HERE!

[bre]

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Originally Posted by pryzeless I am planning on around 45 people and we are having a welcome "free" dinner the night before. I was thinking about the BBQ because of all the choices but I like sitting down and being served. We just can't decide on the food options. My FI is a picky eater. Bre- Did you do a sit down? If so, what were your food choices.

We did the free dinner at Cocotal the night before and had a plated sit won dinner for the reception. THere were a ton of choices. They should be able to email you the whole list of food options- it's like 18 pages but includes everything you can imagine.

We chose to do the pork with achiote sauce and mashed sweet potatoes and the salmon with champagne sauce. First, course was the papaya salad then we had the ceviche. I loved the ceviche and wanted to steal it off peoples plates.

[pryzeless]

Bre- Thanks for the info. I want ceviche too!

[brigopens]

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Originally Posted by ctpetch I just requested the menu choices for Las Fuentes friday to see what are choices are. I have the menu for El Cocotal's its thursday there gourment night menu. Not sure if you are familiar with the choices & how the choices are. So it sounds like you would recommend Las Fuentes over El Cocotal's. Now did you do a private party? I hope it all works out the way planned for us so far. I'm trying to cut some cost. Also think with 16 ppl don't really need a private reception. If we had more I would consider it. Any recommendations? I was also considering going to martini bar in between ceremony & dinner while we do pictures. Where did you go after your dinner? Any suggestions?

If we had to do it over again, we'd pick Las Fuentes.

We had a cocktail reception followed by dessert buffet (total 4 hours) after the wedding ceremony. We did this at Las Tucanes...

I don't think that the number of people matters so much as if you want any truly "private" time... If you don't mind having a semi-private gathering with some other guests around you, then just pick whatever bar you want, and go for it.

We had our dinner the night before the wedding and then went to the Martini Bar, so we could watch the Eagles game. On the wedding day, we had the ceremony and abotu an hour later did our reception at Tucanes. In between that, we took some pictures and went to the martini bar with just our bridal party.

Most of our guests went back to their rooms or the beach bar for a drink before the reception started up!

[brigopens]

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Originally Posted by ctpetch Did you do your music for everything? From Ceremony through dinner? I have music for ceremony but didn't know if I needed it to follow. I did want music & don't know how to correlate it for our first dance & when to put that in since we are not doing a private reception? I'm in need of help with some things & not sure what choices to make so everything turns out beautiful as I dream of.

We took control of every aspect of our music from start to finish!!!

We did not have music for our dinner since we ate at El Cocotal and I can't imagine they would let you play music with other resort guests dining there...

We did all of our ceremony music on one playlist for the iPod.

We made another playlist for the reception and figured out the timing for our dances, toasts, rounds of tequilla, etc... Then, we let the music dictate when it was time to do things...

Hope that makes sense. For example, we knew that when "Pour Some Sugar on Me" came on, it was time to cut the cake and start desserts... We only needed someone to pause the iPod on occassions and our "DJ" friend was great and would talk a bit between songs or introduce people, etc... You could totally do without that but for us, it was like having a real DJ for free!!!

[brigopens]

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Originally Posted by ctpetch This probably answers one of my previous questions & quotes. Now you did the above for a private reception after your ceremony? Or was this done another night. Was this the mexican party or another private event? Sorry for all the questions, trying to make up my mind in the next couple wks so I can put all the plans together & finalize

This was how we did our private reception about an hour after the ceremony...

It was the "Mexican cocktail party" but we requested to just have white linens and then bought tables and chairs for the location as well...

If you check out our pictures, it might really help you to understand the set-up. PM me if you haven't seen them...

[brigopens]

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Originally Posted by ctpetch Where else did you use the hanging corsages? That's what we are going to go with. Maybe do the chair covers & add additional color scarfs. Not positive yet.

We had a hanging corsage on each of the 2 front gazebo posts. They then moved them to the reception site and had one on the dessert table and another where our guest book was located!!!

Then we put one in our room for the rest of the trip and gave one to my parents to brighten their room. They stayed in amazing shape the next 6 days or so and it was a shame to have to leave them when we left!!!

[brigopens]

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Originally Posted by ctpetch I hear the swing bar is a great time. What time does the band start playing?

Yes, we had fun there pretty much every night. Met lots of people from outside of our group as well!!!

I believe they start playing around 8, eventually stop for a show (different each night) around 10, and then start up again until maybe 12:30 or 1. After that they have a DJ until I guess 2 or 3

[brigopens]

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Originally Posted by nolaroy724 So annoyed. Monica said that we can only use a cd with their cd player for the ceremony. I thought we could use an ipod? I'm so worried about a burned CD not playing in the player, the timing, etc.

We 100% absolutely used our iPod for the ceremony. We had it at Gazebo 55 but the equipment was portable...

Unless somethign changed, you've been given incorrect information. Ask her to check again or check with Valeria...

[brigopens]

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Originally Posted by bre We burned cds and had no problem playing them for the ceremony. just be sure to bring a back up in case something doesn't work and have it on your iPod too. THankfully we didn't need to use either back up. Also, make a cover for the cd that includes the number of the song and when it should be played (ie- pre-ceremony music while guests are seated, bridesmaids, brides processionals, document signing music, recessional, etc.)

As Bre proved, that can definitely work.

I think it was probably a lot easier to just put it all in order, on a iPod though...

If you want to see our spreadsheet listing songs, timing, etc... just PM me and I can send it to you. Like I said, we put a ton of time into the music, but it was worth it...

We got to our reception by 6:30 and time really did fly! Before we knew it, we were taking the party to the swing bar at 10:15!!!

[pryzeless]

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Originally Posted by brigopens Just make sure to check on the rules and restrictions for bringing flowers down there. I knwo that our differenct bridesmaids had various experiences, at least with bringing them back to the US. One carried her boquet in plain view through customs with no problem. Another had it taken from her and was told it wasn't allowed. We took all of the petals off of the roses and brought those in our bags... Hopefully it's no problem for you guys to take them into Mexico, but just make sure!!!

I hope they don't have a problem with the fake flowers.