Excellence Riviera Cancun Brides?

[ampanda52]

Gloria is fantastic!!  I would have my wedding there (ERC) solely because of her,  She was incredibly accomodating and as Cancun Trish said, EVERYONE that worked there acted as if they loved their jobs and wanted to make everything wonderful!  I had the most amazing time and wedding.  My guests, some of which are very critical and have stayed at impressive resorts all over the world, raved at the level of service and the resort in general. 

 

Mandy

[ampanda52]

Quote:

Originally Posted by CancunTrish 

Hi ERC brides! My fi and I are getting married at ERC on 10/4/14. We are expecting about 70 guests or so. I did a site inspection at ERC earlier this month with my MOH and fell in love with it! A couple of questions for all of you

1. what type of room did you and your fi/hubby stay in while you were there?

2. we were thinking about doing our reception at the Grill, did anyone have theirs there? Was it too hot or were you comfortable?

3. Food recommendations for hor d'ourves and dinner please!!! (for the cocktail hour and reception)

Thanks ladies!!!

My husband and I stayed in a normal room.  We unfortunately didn't get an upgrade because they were at near capacity.

 

My reception was at Barcelona but the Grill probably wouldn't be too hot.  It's near the water so it would most likely be breezy.  You may want to check because I'm not sure every place can hold a large number of people.

 

For our dinner we chose the filet and scallops from the Silver menu.  Gloria will let you mix and match items for the menus though.  All of the hor d-ourves were good that we chose, but I can't recall what we picked right now.  For our wedding cake, we chose Tres Leches and Strawberry.  The Tres Leches is AMAZING!

[MrsHK]

Hello Excellence Riviera Cancun brides! Congrats on your upcoming weddings! This post is for any brides interested in affordable decor for your big day.

 

I'm a newlywed from Vancouver, Canada that lives down here in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. I have quite a few decor items leftover from our wedding in May, mostly in a rustic vintage style. I've decided to rent things out to brides that don't want to lug things like vases & mason jars down here to Mexico, and have priced things quite fairly compared to the resorts' prices. 

 

I have a lots of different types of bottles, mason jars, vases and lanterns, as well as a variety of other items like wooden signs & frames, table runners, rustic birdcages, string lighting and even a portable sound system.

If you want a Style Me Pretty or Ruffled type of wedding in Mexico without a huge price tag, I'm your gal! So far no one has had to pay an outside vendor fee at all, as they tell their WC that they have brought the decor themselves. I'm also always interested in buying items that brides bring down and would like to sell after their weddings, please send me photos of anything you'd like to sell!

If you'd like to see some photos and a price list, please send me a PM with your email address and I'll send you all the info. Also if anyone has any questions about the area, ask away! I've lived in Playa Del Carmen for two years and know the whole coast quite well. Happy planning ladies!

 

Here's a couple of photos of some items we used in our wedding and that are for rent, but I have lots more:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Bethbazzel]

Hi ladies! I am so thankful to have found this thread!!! I have a couple questions and maybe you all can help! I have tentatively planned to have my wedding on June 19th at ERC- 5pm. I was curious did any of you use a travel agent to book your trip? 

 

Also- it's seems that most of you have opted to do the private cocktails/receptions. We are trying to keep cost down as much as possible ( we are paying for it all ourselves). The private stuff is so expensive- and it's already all inclusive?! Would it be weird not to do anything private afterwards? 

 

Thanks in advance for any help!

[JessT]

Hello!

 

I am also a soon-to-be bride at Excellence Riveria Cancun. I am still looking and trying to book my date for 2014.

 

Has anyone use the in-house photographers "Beach Wedding Studio" ? How was your experience and how did the pictures turn out ?

 

I would also like to do a wedding video, has anyone done this before in ERC ?

 

Any comments would be greatly helpful!

 

Thanks!

[IrishRose]

Hello!

 

I am also a soon-to-be bride at Excellence Riveria Cancun. I am still looking and trying to book my date for 2014.

 

Has anyone use the in-house photographers "Beach Wedding Studio" ? How was your experience and how did the pictures turn out ?

 

I would also like to do a wedding video, has anyone done this before in ERC ?

 

Any comments would be greatly helpful!

 

Thanks!

 

I'm interested to find out about this, too. I've heard that for the Excellence of Love package, they only take pictures for 15 min. during the ceremony. That doesn't sound like very much, but we can't afford to bring in an outside vendor.

[IrishRose]

I'm planning a December 2014 wedding and have a few questions.

 

If I have the ceremony at 4:00, will there be enough daylight left afterwards for pictures? Should I have it earlier?

 

What is the best place to hold the reception dinner if I'm only planning on 4-6 guests? Is it possible to do a beach or pier dinner for a group that size, or does it have to be in one of the restaurants?

 

Will there be Christmas decorations up around the resort?

 

Thanks for your help and happy new year!

[karijean]

Hello!

 

I am also a soon-to-be bride at Excellence Riveria Cancun. I am still looking and trying to book my date for 2014.

 

Has anyone use the in-house photographers "Beach Wedding Studio" ? How was your experience and how did the pictures turn out ?

 

I would also like to do a wedding video, has anyone done this before in ERC ?

 

Any comments would be greatly helpful!

 

Thanks!

 

Hi JessT! I am getting married at ERC June 12, 2014. I am going to use the in-house photographers, I've heard mixed reviews but don't want to pay all the extra money for it when it's included in the Gold Package. Wedding video is only the ceremony part. I've also heard mixed reviews on that as well. As far as I know they don't video the whole day and do a summarized wedding day video. I wish they did! You'll have to recruit someone to do that. Any date set yet? Hope that helps.

 

I'm planning a December 2014 wedding and have a few questions.

 

If I have the ceremony at 4:00, will there be enough daylight left afterwards for pictures? Should I have it earlier?

 

What is the best place to hold the reception dinner if I'm only planning on 4-6 guests? Is it possible to do a beach or pier dinner for a group that size, or does it have to be in one of the restaurants?

 

Will there be Christmas decorations up around the resort?

 

Thanks for your help and happy new year!

 

Hi IrishRose. I would assume Christmas decorations will be up all of December! If your wedding is at 4:00 there should be some time left for pictures but the sun does set there earlier in the winter. That ultimately would be a question for Gloria, also the question about the beach/pier reception dinner would probably need to be checked by her as well. Are you in contacts with her yet? Any date set?

Hi ladies! I am so thankful to have found this thread!!! I have a couple questions and maybe you all can help! I have tentatively planned to have my wedding on June 19th at ERC- 5pm. I was curious did any of you use a travel agent to book your trip? I have been working with Beach Bum Vacations but they are preferred partners with Karisma resorts, so she doesn't seem to keen on me wanting Excellence. Just curious about how you all found the best deal for yourselves and your guests.

 

Also- it's seems that most of you have opted to do the private cocktails/receptions. We are trying to keep cost down as much as possible ( we are paying for it all ourselves). The private stuff is so expensive- and it's already all inclusive?! Would it be weird not to do anything private afterwards? 

 

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

Hi Beth! My fiance and I are getting married June 12th! Have you for sure set the date yet? We did use a travel agent but only for the 2 of us. We are staying in the two-story rooftop terrace the whole time and our travel agent gave us a price that was $1,000-1500 more expensive than we were finding online (cheapcaribbean and travelocity) They price matched but it cost $100 to do so. My Fi and I decided that we would help everyone book their own trip. So far it's been going fine. I would say to go with a travel agent for your trip at least just in case anyting goes wrong it will go back to them.

 

How many people do you think will come to your wedding? The Gold package is what we went with and it covers up to 20 people for a private reception. You will have to pay around $20 per person if it is over 20 though. You always have the option of doing "semi-private" and it is not a set menu and you don't have to pay extra. We are doing that for a "Meet and Greet" for all of our guests the day they get to the resort.

[cdespres]

Hello! I am getting married at the ERC in November 2014! Just curious to see what everyone's plans were for the wedding. What are the locations you are picking for your ceremony and recption? Also did anyone get married here in November? It is a good time of year?

[TealMarie]

Hi ladies, we got married at ERC in November and had an amazing time. I will post my review (which is insanely long) after this. Everyone uses these forums for help but once people are married, not many people hang around afterwards (which makes sense, I don't plan to either), so it can be hard if you're asking for advice from past brides when it's only people planning their weddings who are reading. I would recommend for you guys to go through this entire thread. I know it sounds crazy, but I did it and had a pen and paper to jot down notes, tips, etc and by the end of it, I had almost every question I'd wondered about (and some I'd never thought of) answered for me. I thought I'd answer some of the recent questions you had, if I'm able to.

 

Bethbazzel - We went through a travel agent, who wasn't that great in the end but I still would recommend for people to go through one. They can answer all of those nitpicky questions your guests have about the resort, the flights, what to bring, etc. Most travel agents will be able to get you some sort of deal, like if you book 20 guests, you get one trip free, or something like that.

If you don't do a private dinner for your reception, it wouldn't be weird but I'm not sure how easy it would be to go to one of the restaurants. We noticed that if we had a table of more than 6 people for the restaurants, it caused a bit of a problem and we usually had to wait a long time for our table. You'd have to ask Gloria if they can reserve tables at one of the restaurants for you for a certain time.

 

JessT - Ampanda used the in-house photographers and she loved them. Look back several pages in this thread, as she posted some photos from her July wedding. We won a mini photo shoot with them during our honeymoon, so we had a half hour photo shoot. He was excellent to work with and the photos turned out amazing. 

We used the Gold wedding package so a wedding video of the ceremony was included. They film the entire ceremony and cut it down to around 20 minutes, but it included every part of the ceremony. It wasn't the best quality (or the worst), but you can hear everything we're saying and it's great to relive it. We've shown it to people probably half a dozen times (on their request, as they missed the wedding) and everyone loves being able to see the ceremony.

 

IrishRose - We were going to have our ceremony at 4pm, but our photographers begged us to move it earlier because of the time of the sunset. The only way it would have worked for photos is if you do photos before the ceremony (first look, etc) and then just do half an hour of photos afterwards. The sun starts setting around 4:30pm and it's dark by 5pm, if I remember correctly. We had our ceremony at 2pm, which lasted until 2:30pm, then everyone is congratulating you afterwards, so we didn't start photos until 3pm. After the family photos it felt like we had little time left for photos of us and the wedding party. Sounds crazy but the time goes by so quickly. If you're not too concerned about getting a lot of photos, I wouldn't worry about it, but if you are, consider moving your ceremony time.

 

I'm not sure if the other packages charge different prices, but each extra guest (above the 20 guest limit) is $45/pp.

 

cdespres - I got married in November and it was a fantastic time of year! The weather was beautiful, sunny and warm but not too warm (around 30C), it wasn't as busy and it wasn't too hot for the wedding day.