El Dorado Royale (EDR) Brides - POST HERE!

[jnitschke]

I would say to plan on whatever is easiest.  As far as the sound system goes, we had a small group (13) and thought that having a DJ was a COMPLETE waste of money.  We even sent them home early and just opted to go to Guacamayas to dance with the band that was playing.  So I would say that having a sound system and a playlist would be better.  A suggestion though, instead of renting the system for the same amount you can get a bluetooth speaker.  We have the JAMBOX it costs about $200 but it is very loud, has great sound quality, has a battery that lasts about 8hrs, and is about the size of a brick of cheese.  I think that would be a better use of the money, since you'd get to keep the speaker. 

 

I had people dropping left and right too.  And it is very frustrating, and disappointing even when you understand the reasons for it.  When my group dropped by more than half, from 30 to 13, I resolved myself to just spend the money we'd save on meals for everyone to create some envious OOT bags We were unable to make the reserved number of rooms too.   Our travel agent was able to negotiate a reduced fee for us and an extension to our deadline.  For family debating on staying at another resort remind them of the guest fee they would need to pay in order to attend the wedding.  Not to mention the transportation costs between the resorts.  Then really sell how much better EDR is and how many more options they would have over the cheaper resort.   For everyone in my group that considered it the hasel was not worth saving a hundred or two hundred bucks.

[amanda50388]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JenniferM 
 

Thanks everyone for the great suggestions! I thought 2 hours sounded a bit long but that is what they suggested. I think I will plan for 1-1.5 hours and look into JoJos free is always better.

 

Does anyone know what type and quality of PA they have at the resort? My fiance wants to buy a system and bring it down rather than pay for the one time use there. I wouldn't mind so much except we will have so much baggage already and the cost...But his heart seems set.

 

On a side note of rants. I am feeling rather stressed. We went with the sweet package and now many of the family that was supposed to go to the wedding are dropping out so what if we don't get the minimum number of rooms? And my parents are complaining about the cost of the resort. I don't find this at all fair because they told me they wanted to stay someplace that had soft beds, great food (they are very very picky eaters), great reviews, fun events, great locations, etc, etc. So I really took this into account when picking the resort and now they're complaining and talking about staying at some resort that has 25% recommendation on TA!  AHhhh I don't know why I even bothered since my fiance and I are paying for everything. Sorry for the rant...it's been a stressful weekend.

 

We rented the system and had are music all set up on our Ipod it worked out wonderful, instead of having a DJ. The speaker we brought was not loud enough and we really like that we used there system instead of what we had. I would just say test out your speaker before deciding and if it's loud enough use that or look into some cheap options at stores. If our's was loud enough I would for sure have used it, but it was not and my husband wanted something with more sound.

[Maybeachbride]

We rented the IPOD set up the offered too.  It was GREAT!  I made a playlist and just had a friend anounce us and such.  I thought about buying one and bringing it down with us but in the end I just didnt want to add one more thing to carry down there!

[Oxana Sh]

Hi Ladies! I had my wedding at El Dorado Royale almost two months ago. And now, finally, I feel that I am ready to share some of my emotions:)

 

First of all, I would like to thank you all for your good advices and tons of useful information!!! THIS IS SUCH A GREAT THREAD!!!

I can't say that everything in El Dorado Royale worked out for me. I can't say that I had exactly "my dream wedding" there... I guess this was just the way it meant to be)))

The day of my wedding happened to be the one of the "tropical depression" days, and it was raining like a crazy. In my country people saying that rain on wedding day is for good luck, but on my wedding day it didn't make me feel any better))) It started raining the day before so I had enough time to freak out and calm down like 100 times)))

We had to move our ceremony to different location. The back up locations that they offered to us we didn't like at all, so we decided to move our ceremony and reception to one place - Tucanes bar.

Wedding coordinators in El Dorado - the sweetest people and they tried to help us as much as they could. They did really a great job.

At the end we had the funniest ceremony and really great reception. Wedding coordinators decorated everything beautifully and were at my wedding almost until the end of the reception. All my guests had a blast. We were dancing like a crazy))) By the end of reception, best man and father of the groom jumped into the pool ))

Right after the ceremony, the rain stopped, and we had beautiful weather until the end of our honeymoon there.

 

I am really blessed to have such a good friends and relatives that were able to have fun and enjoy 100% our celebration despite the weather condition. Some of them came just for 3 days and 2 of these days they had to stay in their rooms((

 

Besides the weather, the thing that made me really upset was our welcome dinner. Grrrrr... It was horrible. I don't know guys, maybe I expect too much, but I think that welcome dinner is one of the important parts of the wedding celebration. This suppose to be like " ice breaker". I think that the main idea is to introduce guests to each other and make them feel more comfortable...

Our welcome dinner was the day before wedding. This was when most of my guests arrived and, as I told you, it was pouring out. 

So many of my guests were not in a good mood cause they felt bad for me and for themselves as well. We really hoped that welcome dinner would help people to relax and mucho tequila would help them to relax..

 

We had our welcome dinner at El Cocotal. We had group of 16.

I will try to draw you the whole picture. It is 9pm, getting dark, pouring outside. The place is 3/4th empty... and really quite. The music there is so quite that you can hear the sound of the forks hitting plates..

Maybe if we would have great day under the sun before that, we would really enjoy this atmosphere. But in our circumstances, the atmosphere of this restaurant was like we should lay down on the floor and die)))) It was just 16 of us, and waiters prepared 3 separate tables. Because it was hard for us to separate people, we asked waiters and moved all tables together making one big table. We tried to joke and cheer each other up, and everybody was doing their best to improve the mood of this evening.

I remember that some of the girls here complained that waiters there forgot to prepare personalized menus for the dinner... We had  the menus, but it didn't really help us...

Waiters brought drinks to half of my guests and disappeared... Actually they were running around, but they stopped bringing drinks to us. Nobody could drink, cause one half of the table waited for the other half.  After 15 minutes of waiting we asked waiters if they can bring shot glasses, so we can share the drinks that half of the table had. We really wanted to start drinking!)) Waiters said that they don't have shots at that restaurant and they sent somebody somewhere to bring it.. Guys, besides us, there were 4 more tables with couples and 3 waiters running around. However, the number of drinks on our table didn't change.

We kept waiting...I can't explain to you how terribly I felt. I invited people for my wedding to one of the best resorts. Here they are: cold, tired, shocked(they spent the whole day at the luxury resort but were able to see only lobby and their rooms) and not able even to drink..!

To make long story short, we were able to get good service only when all other tables left..it was really long time waiting..like 40 minutes ( or even more?) without drinks and food..As waiters were explaining to me, this delay was cause we moved our tables together....Come on! even if they would give us just one waiter who would keep taking care of us, we wouldn't complain. Before they brought the other half of drinks, I had to go to hostess and complain few times. Couple of my guests asked for juice, but after they realized that additional orders confuse waiters, they gave up.

Is it the way the dinner that I planed a head of time suppose to be like?It was the worst dining experience in my life... !

 

Thanks God other dinners in El Dorado Royale were really good and my guests were very happy!

I know that many other brides loved El Cocotal. Maybe I just got bad luck with this restaurant)

 

 

General advise for the all future El Dorado Royale brides:

If you are planing to go for dinner as a group, be ready to wait a long time for your get your order. Don't make groups of more then 6 people. Waiters cannot serve large groups (large: 7people and up). They get really confused and can mess up your order.

When we went for dinners as a couple, the service was EXCELLENT!!!!!!!.

As a group we had to wait pretty long time for food, because waiters were trying to bringing food for the whole group, and it took awhile to cook. However, they kept our drinks coming))) so here is also risk to get drunk before you start your appetizer)

 

 

 

[Oxana Sh]

Also, it is just came into my mind, I have to mention that we hired Romantic Yucatecan trio and DJ from resort. We loved both! Sound system wouldn't make this effect. DJ had a bubble machine and used it few times helping our photographer to take amazing pictures! I wanted to have harpist for the ceremony, and now I regret that I cancelled it trying to save money...

Everybody who participate in wedding there are professionals. I loved everything what they did.

[Tiff1037]

Hello ladies! I've been stalking this website for a while, but this is my first post. We're super close to booking El Dorado Royale, but I just want to be sure we're making the right decision. We actually got to visit El Dorado back in September and stayed at Moon Palace, and we completely fell in love with this place. Our only issues right now is the cost because we have about 65 guests coming, and the fees are adding up pretty quickly. If we had it our way, we would book the Fuentes Gazebo for the ceremony and Tucanes Bar for dinner and reception. I just have a couple questions for the brides that have already went through this process: Did you guys pay a fee to book the Tucanes Bar? If so, how much? Were you able to use your private events (3 course meal or cocktail hours) towards your wedding day? If not, when you purchased one of the wedding packages, were at least 40 guests covered by the package for dinner even though you didn't have it in the restaurant? What do you think was the best food option from the menus? Obviously, the buffets sound amazing, but I just want to make sure they're worth the money. Also, has anyone tried the set menus? How does that work? Do the guests pick the day of, or do they have to pick ahead of time? Sorry if any of these were asked in earlier posts, but I tried to look as much as possible before posting. Thanks so much for your help!

[nbateman]

Hey Everyone! So just made it back from the beautiful EDR for our wedding 10/4/2013, last Friday.  It was amazing and perfect! I wouldn't change a thing!

 

Our guests and us booked everything through DestinationWeddings.com and had excellent service for everything and would definitely recommend them!

 

We arrived on Wednesday and all of our guests arrived Thursday.  Everyone arrived at the same time to the resort so it was a little chaotic! My sister, the MOH heard that our parents got upgraded for free so on a whim she decided to ask for an upgrade and BOOM they upgraded EVERYONE! Yes, everyone got a casita! That was awesome! Even with the casitas your still far enough away from each other that you may or may not see your guests walking around.  You don't have to see them if you still want privacy because the resort is that big! We were blown away by the service at the resort, everyone was super attentive and happy to be there! Even the shuttle drivers were joking around the whole time and super funny! My new husband (AHHH!) even picked up some Spanish there!

 

Definitely book the casita, they are so so so worth it! We got the swim up on the bottom floor and had our own private pool which connected to the lazy river leading to our own casita pool bar! super awesome! We were in the last block of rooms all the way to the right (32) but it would only take 15 min or so to walk to the other side of the resort if we wanted to.

 

Did the trial hair and makeup day before the wedding and they are all awesome! Highly recommended! Then headed to the Health Bar for our Mexican wedding cocktail (donkey included) to celebrate everyone's arrival in Mexico.  It was perfect! Passed appetizers and bar right there! We brought our own ipod dock instead of renting theirs (we're going to return it since we're done with it) and made our own playlist, sound was awesome! Plugged it in right at the bar! I would totally recommend this instead of your Cocotal group dinner when everyone first arrives, this was way less formal!!

 

Purchased two suitcases from Goodwill filled with the OOT bag items, was not questioned at the airport even though I had roughly $400 worth of stuff in them.  Had my receipts ready and I was so nervous, but it was just fine! PFEW!  Made up the bags after we arrived and then left the suitcases at the resort once I was done with them! Plus it saved us $50 of luggage fees on the way back! Everyone especially loved the sunglasses, lanyard/key card holders, aloe, the canvas bags themselves, chapstick, pepto, and advil! If anyone wants to know where I got anything, let me know! We handed these out at the cocktail party since we couldn't put them in the rooms before the guests arrived.

 

Wedding was Friday evening 6pm, went off without a hitch! Wedding coordinators were always checking in throughout the day to make sure I didn't need anything! Fortunately I was able to borrow a garment bag from a girl who got married in Puerto Rico that I work with (Wally Bag) and my dress didn't wrinkle at all! No steaming necessary! Plus it was discrete at the airport and easy to carry! Did pictures before the ceremony with our wedding party and close family then headed over to Cocotal for our reception style dinner at 6:30pm.  Perfect! Formal enough for a wedding, but relaxed enough where we could sit in groups, chat amongst ourselves, everyone could see each other (4 tables of 8), I wouldn't do it any other way! Service there was impeccable! It was about 3 hours, but didn't even seem that long! Everyone went back to their rooms to change into something more comfortable and we headed over to watch the fireshow and to Guacamayas for some drinks.

 

Overall, I didn't even miss the formal reception, the dinner at Cocotal was formal enough for a wedding dinner because you selected your menu already, and everyone had a blast at the donkey cocktail party.  I can't believe everyone was upgraded to Casitas! Can't hurt to ask! We used Cancun wedding video for our videography and Magic Vision for our photos.  We received the video before we left and its awesome! Love it! So glad we did it! Haven't received any of the photos but there was footage on the video of us taking photos and I'm sure they'll be great!

 

I couldn't have pulled off a smooth wedding without everyone's help on this site! Thank you so much everyone!

[AllieH]

Oxana - I'm so sorry to hear that your wedding was soggy!! Ugh, too bad we can't control the weather too. It sounds like you guys made the best of a challenging weather event. Great idea to have everything at Tucanes - can't wait to see the photos!

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oxana Sh 
 

Hi Ladies! I had my wedding at El Dorado Royale almost two months ago. And now, finally, I feel that I am ready to share some of my emotions:)

 

I'm so glad your wedding was amazing, and soooo glad you got the upgrade into the casitas. I can't wait to see your photos!

Quote:

Originally Posted by nbateman 
 

Hey Everyone! So just made it back from the beautiful EDR for our wedding 10/4/2013, last Friday.  It was amazing and perfect! I wouldn't change a thing!

 

[jnitschke]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nbateman 
 

Hey Everyone! So just made it back from the beautiful EDR for our wedding 10/4/2013, last Friday.  It was amazing and perfect! I wouldn't change a thing!

So glad to hear everything went well!!! CONGRATULATIONS!!!!

[Tiff1037]

Hello ladies! I've been watching the website for a while, and we're just about to book with El Dorado, but I have a couple of questions for the experts. Does anyone know if there's a fee to have the reception at the Tucanes Bar? We're eligible for the private events. Are we allowed to use them on our wedding day? We have about 65 guests. If we can't use the private events on our wedding day, and we still want to have the reception at Tucanes instead of the Cocotal, are at least 40 people covered for dinner by the wedding package? We're just getting a little worried about the cost for so many people. Any help is appreciated!