Fiesta Americana Cabo Wedding & Vendors Review

liljuicy · June 8, 2010

Hi All! We had our wedding at the end of May in Cabo at the Fiesta Americana and had an amazing time. Wanted to put in a quick review of our venues and vendors to try to help out some other brides on the site! So here it goes. (Just to give some context, we had a very large Cabo wedding, about 145 people came, so we had a lot of planning to do!)

Wedding Planner: Sarai Flores and Signature Weddings

Sarai was an amazing help during the entire process. We actually started out working with a different wedding planner and changed about 1 month into it after having met Sarai and are so happy with our choice. She was very responsive to all our emails and arranged for great visits with vendors and venues when we were able to do a site visit. She was also so wonderful in getting us set up with all the vendors that we wanted to match both our price range and style. She has amazing taste and really made our wedding beautiful and exactly what we wanted. Sarai also helped us plan our other events including the rehearsal dinner. Sarai literally did one million things for us, from organizing the various rentals, to buying things for our ceremony, to helping with all of our various events, so I cannot list everything here. But needless to say, she was amazing and I would recommend her over all others!

Hotel: Fiesta Americana (Priscyla was our events coordinator)

The FA was exactly what we wanted and were so excited to find it! Although their prices for food and drinks are a bit higher than some of the other hotels (and obviously a lot more than all inclusives), we were able to make it work. In addition to the wedding, we also held a welcome fiesta and a brunch at the hotel and Priscyla made sure everything was set up just as we wanted and went off perfectly. Priscyla was my main contact and was amazing--she also quickly responded to all my emails and requests and did her best to try to accommodate everything we asked for. If you are wondering about costs for food and beverage, please email and I can give you detailed thoughts on this. But in general, I think you should definitely do bars on consumption vs. open bar in Cabo, since it will save you a lot of money in the end! We were also able to get great discounted room rates for our guests and everyone was amazed and in love with the hotel once they got there. They are a great hotel and really made an amazing effort to make our wedding the best and I would absolutely recommend it for a wedding. (Keep in mind there are two main locations for receptions--we had ours on the whales terrace which was absolutely perfect for our group. Another option is the private villa/suite--this is a good option for smaller groups, but is a lot more expensive as well. Our wedding ceremony was held on the beach.)

DJ and Guitar Player: DJ Mijares

We absolutely LOVED DJ Mijares. We wanted to have a DJ that did not require a specific song list and would really read the crowd if people didn't like certain songs, etc. - we just wanted to tell our DJ the types of music we liked, and provide some likes and dislikes, and have him run with it! And DJ Mijares did it perfectly! Everyone had the best time and was dancing all night long! DJ Mijares also played spanish guitar during our ceremony. Again, he was amazing. We gave him our requested songs for each part of the ceremony and he did such a great job and really made the ceremony feel just the way we wanted. Finally, DJ Mijares's partner also helped us on one of the previous nights when we had a welcome fiesta on the beach . We thought they would just give us speakers and a microphone for our Ipod but he actually was a DJ for us that night and just used the music on the Ipods we gave him. He did an amazing job and everyone had the best time. Finally, DJ Mijares also provided us with lighting for our trees and dancefloor to make the area look amazing--i will try to attach some pictures. (there was an extra charge for these services obviously). I would absolutely recommend DJ Mijares for both guitar and DJing!

Flowers: Pina Hernandez

Pina was recommended to us by our wedding planner. We wanted some simple beautiful flowers with kind of a modern feel but did not want to break the bank. Pina was AMAZING! We met her in Cabo during one of our site visits and I just gave her some pictures of what I wanted and described the general tropical/romantic/modern feeling we wanted. And she got it 100% right. Everyone commented on how amazing the flowers looked and how great the entire setting was.

Rentals: Del Cabo and J& S

Del Cabo provided most of our rentals for us (chairs for ceremony, votive candles for tables and area, etc.) and J&S provided our dance floor. Although Sarai dealt with these vendors directly, they provided us very good prices and great service. Everything came exactly as it looked in the pictures and we were very happy.

Make Up: Suzanne Morel

We used Suzanne Morel for hair and makeup. Since I have really short hair, i just had my makeup done. I would definitly recommend doing a trial the week of your wedding to make sure you like what you are getting. During our trial, Charisma (who did my makeup) was very responsive to our comments and my makeup on the wedding day ending up looking really great. My sister had her hair and makeup done and they both looked amazing as well. My only comment would be that the ladies that did our hair and makeup did not really speak English - Paola who is Suzanne's assistant was there with us and she speaks perfect English and so she communicated everything for us, so in the end everything went very smoothly. Also, just so you are aware, Suzanne does not do the services herself, she has a team of people and you are assigned to a few depending on how many are in your group. They were very professional and did a good job and I would recommend them as well.

Cake: Fiesta Americana

We decided not to use any of the outside cake vendors and go with the Fiesta Americana cake instead since it was included in our wedding menu. The cake looked pretty good, it was just white with fresh flowers on it that were provided by our florist. It was a bit lopsided! but i don't know if that was because of the heat. I am not a huge cake person and this was not the most important thing to me, so I am happy with what we got since it looked good in the pictures and it tasted great (we even had three different flavors at no extra cost!). I am very happy we did this rather than use one of the outside vendors since I did not taste or see a big different in their cakes as compared to the cakes prepared by the hotel.

Photo: Juan Carlos Tapia

We picked Juan Carlos after meeting with a lot of different photographers in person and looking at their photo books. His book and his photo quality was above and beyond what everyone else did in our opinion and that is why we chose him, although all the others we met were really easy to get along with and also had good pictures. He did tell us he takes a long time to get photos and books back up front since he is so busy at this time of year, so it will be a couple months before we see any of his pics! So, I will save my review for that time, but I am hoping that we will love the pictures!

Video: Leonardo Batis/Angel Zapien

We worked with Leonardo, Angel Zapien's partner, for our video. Again, he was easy to work with and very nice, and we liked the samples we saw of their work. But as with the photos, I am going to give the rest of my review once we get the video back in a few weeks, which I hope will be great!!

Table Stationary: Elabria Designs (Etsy)

I finally wanted to mention Angela at Elabria Designs that did my placecards, fan programs, etc. She was amazing to work with and made everything exactly the way we wanted! I found her on Etsy and send her some ideas of what i wanted. We had a lot of back and forth and she was so responsive to all of my comments and suggestions. Her pricing was also amazing and so reasonable compared to a lot of the other websites I looked at! I will try to find a pic of my placecards and program to put up as well.

Anyway, hope this review was helpful! I don't have too many pictures of my own, so just posting some I got from others for now! If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at [email protected], since I don't come on the site too much anymore!

Thanks!