Any Beach Palace 2014 brides??

[beccafries]

u want a wedding this year Aug 2014 and u have not booked yet...I hope they still have your date avail....hate for you to be heartbroken... 

[Naturalbeauti30]

I was surprised, but the date was pretty much completely open! I took it as a sign it was meant to be.

[beccafries]

oh wow..thats good.....maybe bec that time of the year....

[LauraM]

Hi Brides to be! My wedding is not booked for 2014 (May 1, 2015)... But I wanted to join the thread to share ideas! Marisol is my wedding coordinator and I'm already anxious/frustrated with the lack of communication with her. However, I have vacationed at Beach Palace and loved the resort! I'm eager to hear about everyone else's wedding experiences!

[beccafries]

Conrats Laura M

[kokobellaa]

 

Hello fellow brides! I am trying to decide between Azul Beach and Beach Palace. They are both smaller resorts, and in the same price range for guests. Looks like it might come down to how much the actual wedding will cost. Could anyone share their research they have done for Beach Palace? Their weddings seem VERY generous, with lots of perks if you reach the 75 booked nights. I am assuming I will hit the 75 room nights, and will have around 50 people at my wedding. I will probably be doing April 2015. 

 

I would go with the complimentary package which includes 30 people, so does anyone have a cost breakdown for additional people? I am on a pretty tight budget, so would love to hear from anyone who is willing to share. 

 

 

Also - does it cost extra for the sky terrace for either the cocktail reception or dinner?

 

Thanks in advance!! 

 

Hi @Mention:

 

My wedding date is 8/31/2014 at Beach Palace, we did our site visit and were very happy. We are expecting about 70-80 people. If you hit the 75 nights for rooms you should be fine since they offer perks. If you have more than 30 guests then the cost is $8/additional person. I would call the wedding department and ask all your questions that you may have.

 

Good luck:)

Renal

[TammyWright]

Hi Everyone, Just a quick reminder that the wedding webinar for Beach Palace is Saturday, April 12, 2014 @ 9:00 am PST

[esahunnie]

We just got back from our wedding on July 18th, 2014.  We stayed at the resort July 14th - July 22nd.  After much research we decided to book our wedding at the Beach Palace Cancun, Mexico.  Trip Advisor was the biggest reason we booked with them.  We had about 25 rooms we book through Wendy Hicks at Vacation Express.  We had about 51 guests with us for our wedding and all stayed at the Beach Palace. I will break my review down by pros and cons.  We booked the Sky Deck at 6:00 P.M. ceremony and cocktail hour and reception immediately afterwards at 6:30 - 11:30 P.M.  I have lots of pictures and other suggestions if anyone wants to see or hear more

Pros:  
1.  Maria Rebeca is an AMAZING wedding coordinator and I highly recommend requesting her for your wedding.  She worked above and beyond to resolve issues that the management caused.

2.  Waiters, Waitresses and Bartenders:  let me list all the ones we loved:   Kids pool usually had the amazing Yanet, pool bar had Yadira, Esteban, Jorge, Luis, Miguel.  Our honeymoon dinner on 07.20.14 had Miguel as our waiter and romantic dinner on the beach on 07.21.14 had Nestor, Jorge and one other gentleman who made the experience beyond amazing (please ask Nestor for his name).  Our wedding on 07.18.14 on the sky deck and bar had the most amazing, Bernabe,  Nestor,  Geovanny,  Jorge,  Miguel ( bartender) Jorge (Banquet Capitan on charge).  They never let our drinks go empty and knew the drinks our guests loved.  Front desk - Diane and Isis were always beyond helpful and smiling.  

3.  Styling Trio!!!!!! Highly recommend for wedding hair.  They are expensive but a preferred vendor so no outside vendor fee.  Worth EVERY penny!  They come to your room and everything!  I did the $575 for the trail hair and make-up which was also worth it.

4.  Resort spa - hair Meriva (spelling)?  Did a great job on my rehearsal dinner hair and makeup.  

5.  Food and drinks were fabulous

6.  Tempo for Steel Drummers was perfect and worked with our specific song requests

7.  JSAV - Benjamin did a wonderful job at our wedding as our DJ.  More slow songs would have been nice, but I should have specifically requested that.

8.  Pure package was beautiful but not sure I would pay $300 per table again. Center pieces could have been a little better because they were basic.  Loved the table linens and chair linens. 

9.  Housekeeping for our room and room service was best I have ever seen!  They took care of every need without hesitation.  Only couldn't deliver the amazing cappuccinos they make downstairs.

10.  Pool and beach are good, but recommend finding a way to save your spot because if you don't get a spot by 9 AM you won't have a spot. 

11.  The upgrade Presidential Suite that they gave us was BREATH TAKING!  I loved having that suite that day of my wedding because the gals got to spend the day with me in my room and then after the ceremony before the reception the bridal party had a moment to get ourselves together before the introductions.  LOVED IT!

12.  Dreamart Videographer (Dana would know which name) had great ideas and thought outside of the box to get the video.  I have not seen it yet, but he thought to interview some of our guests which was a GREAT idea.  They also worked with us on our time which was great.  

 

13.  I didn’t want to pay $3.50 per welcome bag to be delivered so at the welcome cocktails Maria set out all the bags and we could hand it out to our guests.  She did a nice display for it too

 

14.  Sky deck is beautiful, but very very hot even at 6:00 P.M. so plan a short ceremony.  We did our group picture up there too.  Sky Terrace for cocktail hour and reception was fabulous, but know the pool is very very tempting to your guests.  I told mine to wait until after all formal pictures were completed before they even thought to jump into the pool.  By 9:30 we had a couple guests jump in and at 11:45 P.M. the groom and I jumped in too.  It actually cleaned my dress a lot!  

Cons:

1. We booked at the Beach Palace Resort in Cancun, Mexico.  Since we booked through a travel agency our group was all paid in full months in advance soooo our guests should never ever be told the hotel is overbooked.  One of our guests came to check in and unfortunately met, Carlos, at the front desk at the Beach Palace.  He TOLD our guests they were booked and they HAD to go to another resort.  I'm glad Le Blanc is the best and we should be happy they were sent to such a nice hotel, but they paid to be with us or our wedding not spend the night at another hotel.  The other zinger was that the hotel was not booked that night, it was booked the following night.  Carlos LIED to them and then when confronted by us and management he LIED again.  After much questioned and a big scene the truth comes out that the hotel was not booked that night and even if it had been overbooked our group NEVER should have been bumped.  The lies continued the next day when the president of the travel agency got involved and called the hotel, the Beach Palace LIED to them.  The hotel told the travel agency that our guests saw the room and didn't like it and asked to be moved to another resort.  Let's see...does that sound like something a groomsmen and his wife would say?!?  No, because our guests NEVER said that.   However, Wendy was able to e-mail us back even though it was towards the end of her business hours.  Unfortunately, the tour operator was already closed and not able to get our guests back to our hotel that night.  Unfortunately, our guests had already been moved so they missed our Welcome Cocktails and our Bachelor and Bachelorette Party for the evening.  Our guests were moved back to Palace Resorts the next day, but the experience with Carlos at the front desk and Patrick from Public Relations was AWFUL and caused us to really really not enjoy our evening.  Carlos even had the nerve to salute my fiancé as he was walking back into the hotel.  When someone is upset a good customer service representative would not do things to provoke the groom.  A groom who has many many guests and spent a lot of money on a wedding at their hotel.    The next morning Norma found me and took time to speak with me and brought the general manager over, Luis, and requested that my fiancé and I meet with them so they could make things right.  I got my fiancé and we met in Luis’ office.  They apologized profusely for the actions of Carlos and Patrick.  We appreciated the apology from Norma and Luis, but never received an apology from Patrick or Carlos.  They upgraded our friends and took care of them for the rest of their stay which is all we wanted.  We wanted them to make it right with our guests.   WHEN BOOKING YOUR WEDDING GROUP PUT IN THE WEDDING CONTRACT THAT THEY CANNOT SEND ANY OF YOUR GUESTS TO ANOTHER HOTEL!!!

 

2.  Resort credits are kind of a gimmick.  We had $1500 in resort credits, but could only use $300 at the spa and when we asked to use DreamArt Photography $250 credit towards our videography we were told we could not. Even though the resort credit information did not state that weddings were a restriction.  Gift shop you can only use on tequila, cigars, some towards silver and on the designer sunglasses what were marked up $75-$100 so it wasn’t worth getting it with them.  We ended up getting tequila and cigars to give as gifts, but know you must pay a 16% service charge on anything you use the resort credit on so we ended up spending about $200 in services charges to use our resort credit.  Cons:  mind you, these are big enough that we will probably never stay at a Palace Resort again:

 

3.  My sister was double charged our spa resort credit which made her exceed her credit and she had to go through hoops to get it removed from her account.  I booked my mom’s hair appointment and they charged it to my room even though I told them it was for her so I had to go through hoops to get it off my account.  

 

4.  Pedicures don’t really last while you are at the beach or pool so I wouldn’t recommend getting it unless you need it for the wedding. That is normal though.  

 

5.  A lot of management cannot help you with issues.  You have to wait for the exact person who booked an appointment or whatever to be able to correct any errors.  It would be nice to have a manager on duty who could correct issues on the spot.

 

6.  Upon arrival we have to look over our wedding options and contracts.  We did not know we needed to bring our credit cards again. They already had copies of the credit cards and licenses and they wanted to copy them again.  I do not feel comfortable giving my credit card over and over again.  Also, we had already paid in full for everything prior to arriving.  A friend wanted to add their hair to our Styling Trio contract.  We said that was fine, but the hotel gave us a new contract for Styling Trio and wanted us to sign a new one for $800 something.  We stated, they needed to show the credit paid already which was about $600 something and only show what was actually due which was $160.  They could not do this so I refused to sign the new contract.  When departing today, I was able to signs new contract for $160 and they were paid by the guest who used their services.  

 

7.  We had a contract with Ocean Photo for our videography services and the month of our wedding stating they were not considered an inside vendor anymore and we would have to switch to Dream Art Photo or pay the $700 outside vendor fee.  We had already signed a contract and established a relationship with them so we were nervous to switch.  Dana was helpful with sending us sample videos so we would comfortable with them.  We will keep you posted as to how the video turns out.  

 

8.  We paid a lot towards additional lighting on the sky bar - the dance floor was not flush against the pool so one of our guests hit his foot on the corner of the dance floor and sliced his foot open.  It took about 30 minutes to get his foot to stop bleeding and bandaged up.  The dance floor was not wet when our guests got injured, but if you think your guests will end up in the pool, don't pay for a dance floor because the dance floor got very very slippery.  

 

9.  Transportation wanted to pick up some of my guests 4 hours before their flight and they never showed up for my groom and I.  They called a new van to pick us up and they said we were on the list, but no driver was ever assigned.  We did make it to the airport on time.

 

I hope this review helped any guest or wedding guests for the future.  My best piece of advice for anyone is to make sure EVERYTHING is in writing. I had a notebook with every e-mail correspondence between myself and the hotel and that helped greatly when reservations for appointments had been lost.  Such as our romantic dinner and my mom’s appointment.  They were able to fix and get those appointments and times honored.  

Edited July 26, 2014 by esahunnie

[fayelaisha]

Congratulations!!!! You left as my group and I arrived for our wedding!!! We got married 7/25!! I'm going to be writing similar review to yours!!

[fayelaisha]

Hello Ladies,

 

Our wedding took place on 07/25/2014! The ceremony was at the Sky Deck and our cocktail/reception hour was at the Sky Terrace!

 

I began my initial planning stages with Ana Levya through the wedding departments and she was really good! We did book a site inspection and met with all of our vendors and did our engagement photos in February! I cannot say how helpful the site inspection was for us because it didn't take a lot of time out of our wedding week in July! It also made us comfortable with the whole process since it's not like a regular wedding where you are involved in everything.  We also met our wedding coordinator who would be working our wedding in July and it was Mario Yam, he was awesome!

 

Our second stage wedding planner was Abril Munoz and she was awesome!

 

Here is what we picked for our wedding originally:

 

Beach Ceremony - after site inspection I saw how not private the location was so Mario changed it to the Sky Deck thank god!

 

Ocean Studio photography did an amazing job with our engagement pictures.  I had an awesome deal of $2595.00 for the ultimate package and 5 hours of videography plus a trash the dress session.  I haggled the price a little and they had a promotion.

 

Tempo - We requested two belly dancers for a Mediterranean like show which cost us 500 for 30 minutes.

 

JSAV- DJ services plus DJ and a dance floor which cost us 2295.

 

Promedsa - for fireworks and I dealt with Eduardo Guzman - this cost 851 for a 45 second show.

 

I needed someone for hair and didn't learn about Styling Trio until it was too late, I found them on instagram!

 

Flowers were really expensive when it came to my bridesmaids bouquets!

 

My group met our requirements of the 75 nights to receive unlimited functions for 2 hours each.  We did have to pay 60$ a table per hour for each table in order to continue the reception until midnight.

 

A month before flying to Cancun, I received an email from Ocean Studio telling me they are no longer a vendor for Palace Resorts and now it is Dream Arts photography.  I needed an extra hour of videography and photography and they wanted me to pay $1000 when it would be $410 Ocean price.  I got the wedding department supervisors involved and they fixed this issue.  I was really nervous because I didn't see the work of the photographer like I had with Ocean since they did our engagement photos!

 

Here is how it went in regards to our wedding:

 

Mario was awesome he followed up with all of our vendors.  We had purchased the exotic peacock package!  We also used 1500 of our resort credit to pay for half of this package which was originally $3000.

 

I chose boutonnieres for the groomsmen at $11 a piece while mine and my husbands flowers were included in our package.  I ended up opting to have just a single stemmed rose for my bridesmaids which worked out perfect! Flowers are so expensive in Mexico especially if they are imported!

 

We arrived on Tuesday 7/22. 

 

7/23 - We met with our vendors in Mario's office at 10:30.  Our first appointment with Dream Arts went well and they apologized again for the earlier problem in regards to pricing.  We also met with our DJ Benjamin who was really nice.  We met with our décor representative Zuniga and she was excellent!  Eduardo missed the appointment but ended up coming 2 hours later to discuss when we wanted the fireworks to go off.

 

7/24 - we had our rehearsal dinner at the Sky Deck at 7:30 which was perfect.  The sun had almost gone down and the breeze felt awesome.  Our staff led by "Jorge" were all excellent! Fernando was our bartender and Carlos was an awesome waiter.

 

07/25 - Our wedding Day! Thank god we had reserved the presidential suite for my husband and I! All the girls came and got ready at our room.  Our wedding coordinator sent up a tray filled with appetizers and mimosas without us asking to our room to have while we get ready.  I flew my makeup artist from San Francisco to do all of our make up airbrush and all.  We all used our resort credit at the spa to get our hair. 

 

Minerva did my hair and I loved it!!!!!!!!!!! Carmen did 3 of my bridesmaids hair and she was awesome.  I was nervous because I never saw their work and I had the styling trio on speed dial if I had an emergency but thank god it worked out perfect.  Minerva did awesome!!

 

The wedding was amazing, we had a private ceremony on the Sky Deck (6pm).  The sun was hot but thank god it was one of the less hotter days! We all took group pictures on the Sky Deck.  The guests then went down to the terrace for some cocktails while the bridal party went to the beach for some photos.

 

We came back around 7:30 p.m. to the Sky Terrace in time to watch the belly dancers and that was such an amazing show!

 

The reception began at 8 p.m.  The only glitch was our DJ didn't say the bridal parties' names in the order I gave him with the songs.  He also called my mom and step dad by my last name where I wrote their names which is different! At that point I stopped caring and just enjoyed the show.

 

Our first dance ended with the fireworks which was awesome! We ate, had cake, and took pictures with everyone.  The toasts were short and sweet!

 

The food was beyond delicious! We got the Italian menu and everyone loved the food! Our staff was awesome! Carlos, Miguel, Fernando, Jorge!! Thank you all so much!

 

I did get a dance floor and for any future bride it's a waste of money! The humidity made it wet therefore people were slipping or falling left and right!

 

Our night ended with everyone in the wedding jumping in the pool including our waiter Carlos because we made him =) ... I did not jump because I didn't know what I would do if I ruined my dress!

 

We left the Sky Terrace around 12:15!! By far it was the best experience of my life.  I can't say how awesome the service and the staff were!!

 

On 07/27 - we ended up meeting our photographer Ron who was awesome at 10 am for trash the dress pictures which turned out awesome!!

 

*************************************************

Cons of the Beach Palace:

 

My whole group booked through a travel agency back in Nov 2013. 

 

The front desk told my parents in law they did not have a room for them and they ended up finding a room for them on the first floor which you see just rocks! My husband and I brought his kids with us so we needed his parents to be near us to help us when we needed to take off for wedding business.

 

After the second day they moved them next to us thank god!!! It was interesting though because one of my bridesmaids had a resort view room and they offered her an upgrade to the presidential suite!

 

The resort credits are a joke! After taxes and surcharges I'm not sure if it was worth it.

 

For example, we got about 1100 resort credits just for going to see their membership presentation and we wanted to use it to swim with the dolphins.  Jenni helped us out but then had to send us to Luis at guest services.  My goodness he told us different and conflicting information and English and Spanish (I speak both).  I ended up becoming so frustrated with him that Jenni saw and got me to the supervisor who fixed the problem.  The dolphin experience was awesome but they only do a couple of interactions when you use your resort credit vs paying money! If you want a keepsake photo it's 120 pp couple! Haggle them! I got pictures for 11 people for 245.  While others got it for 80pp which is a rip off!!

 

SPA credits weren't taken out with some of the guests and they were charged and since I speak Spanish I had to take the reigns and fixing those issues for them with guest services. 

 

Guest services minus Jenni were horrible to me and my group! Mario had to help us fix some issues as well as the front desk people!

 

They really need to learn how to solve problems and customer service!!

 

Other than that everything was perfect other than guest services which is kind of ironic!

 

If anyone has questions please let me know and I will try to post pictures!!!