Palace Resorts and cost associated with them

Canuck1234 · April 24, 2012

Hi everyone,

This is my first post on this excellent website even though I have read numerous threads!! I was curious if anyone could point me in the right direction.

-We are looking at having a destination wedding somewhere in the Mayan Riviera (preferably Playa del Carmen) in January of 2013.

-We are thinking we will have somewhere in the range of 50-70 ppl.

-We want it obviously to be a nicer resort but also be affordable for our guests.

-A lot of our guests have traveled to many AI resorts and enjoy the luxuries of some of the higher end resorts, but some of our guests haven't and don't have as much disposable income as the majority of the group.

-We ourselves have a decent budget for our wedding ($10,000-$15,000) but don't want to spend more than needed as we are looking at lots of expenses back home with starting our lives together (house, reception back home, etc).

-We would like to be near Playa del Carmen, because we would like our guests to be able to utilize the town for entertainment, shopping and golf.

-We have been looking at Playacar Palace and Gran Porto Real (both in Playa) and some of the other Palace resorts not in Playa (Beach and Moon), and the Barcelo complex.

-The quotes we received from the Palace resorts is more than we would like our guests to pay, however, the Palace resorts seem to have a lot of incentives for the wedding couple (free nights, resort credits, accommodations for large groups without to much extra $, etc)

So I guess my questions are:

--Are Palace resorts worth the money?

--Are their wedding packages going to save us money in comparison to other resorts?

--A lot of resorts only include 10-15 people in the packages and the Palaces include 30, what are the prices for additional guests over 30? (for ceremony?, for reception?, for cocktail hour?, for "meet and greet"?)

--Are we better off taking the complimentary wedding package and adding on the items that we want?

--Do we bring down our own decorations?

Anyhow, sorry for the long post but any guidance or suggestions will be greatly appreciated!!! Thank you in advance.