Riu Palace Cabo June Bride :)

[abeals11388]

Hello all!

 

I am a getting married at the Riu Palace in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico in June! On June 27th to be exact

 

I have been in contact with our wedding coordinator for a little over a month now, but I'm not very happy. Our wedding coordinator is Guadalupe "Lupita." She hasn't been great and I'm not impressed. We've had a lot of problems, but what can I do?

 

My fiancé and I have 25 guests so we picked the Royal package as the Caprice package had a lot of stuff we didn't want or need.

I am not utilizing the salon for my hair or make-up, one of my bridesmaids is doing my hair for me and I will have my nails done before I go.

We are not worried about the strawberries and Champaign in the room or breakfast in bed or any of that stuff, we are pretty simple.

 

We have 5 children going to Mexico with us, one being our own son, so we expect this trip to be very family oriented as they always are! I am super excited. Do you know if we pay the $28 extra for each child since this is for the Champaign toast and seat? The children won't be in seats, they are all apart of the wedding. IF anything they will be sitting on grandparents/parents laps. I'm just wondering if we have to pay the money for them?

 

From what I've read previously we can bring cake decorations and give them to the wedding coordinator and the bakery will put the decorations on the cake for us? I'm really hoping that's true. The wedding coordinator has said bring them and they will see what they can do.

 

All of our friends have had destination weddings ranging from Las Vegas to Mexico to Belize and we wanted to make sure our guests really enjoyed themselves so we decided to do an offsite dinner cruise for our reception through the Cabo Mar. Since our wedding package includes a rehearsal dinner and a reception dinner we asked Lupita if we could utilize the reception dinner as our rehearsal dinner to include all our guests, but we didn't want to chose our guests meals. After all we are staying at an all inclusive resort so it's silly for us to pick their meals. The resort has agreed to let us utilize our reception dinner as our rehearsal dinner and is allowing our guests to pick their meals straight from the menu! (THANK GOODNESS!) My fiancé was not liking the idea of us picking everyone's food!!

 

Also, I wanted to give brides a heads up when it comes to the ARCH for the beach ceremony (which is what we signed up for since we are traveling to Mexico for our wedding, we had to have the beach!). I've seen a picture of the arch the resort provides on this BDW website and I was not impressed. It was a wooden arch that was all white, looked super old. I would pay the extra $350 for a huppah and with the Royal package Alina (the flower lady) told me we get 2 medium size flower arrangements FREE! The flowers are definitely over priced so I have made my bridesmaids bouquets and the groomsmen boutonnieres for a fraction of the cost! I also was not a fan of paying all this money for real flowers just for them to die and be thrown away before we fly back to America. My bridesmaids will be able to keep their bouquets!! I can post pictures if anyone is interested. Oh, almost forgot, I did buy 2 boutonnieres and 2 wrist corsages for my mom, dad, step-mom and step-dad. BUT I believe it will be worth it.   

 

We are not using one of their photographers because my Uncle does photography and so we are just paying his way to the wedding! Pictures are the most important thing to us because we want to have these memories forever! Not only is my Uncle photographing the wedding, but he's also doing the videography as well! We paid a little more than $2000 to get him there (he's coming from Hawaii), but we were quoted $1900 for 4 hours of photography. We also have my Uncle for 4 days which means poolside pictures, hanging out pictures, etc.

 

We are also bringing our own minister!! It just so happens that another one of my Uncles is an ordain minister and is willing to do our ceremony! We are going to be legally married before we go to Mexico so it will just be a symbolic wedding! Conducting a wedding just so happens to be one of those things on my Uncle's bucket list that's pretty high up there so I am so excited as is he!!

 

We've also decided to bring our own music for the wedding ceremony and then for the Cabo Mar reception they suggested we bring our own music, which we don't mind doing!

 

This post is pretty long!! I apologize, but feel free to leave questions and/or comments! Would love to see pictures of other Riu Palace weddings!

 

 

- Amanda

 

[hyoungquist]

How exciting!!! I will actually be in Cabo for that week so I may "peek" on your wedding. We are planning to get married in Cabo next summer and the Riu Palace is one resort we are planning to visit. Can't wait to hear about all of the details after the wedding

[Lynsey92714]

I am also getting married at the Riu in September. What did you decide to do for your reception? Your lucky you have a Uncle that is a photographer. I was planning on getting my makeup done at the spa on location but I had read bad reviews on it so far...any tips you can share?

 

 

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[abeals11388]

Sorry ladies I'm just now getting back to you!!

 

I forgot to mention our reception. We are not utilizing our reception through the resort because we are having our reception on the Cabo Mar cruise!! It's a 2 hour dinner cruise that we paid for separately which is also all inclusive!! We paid $3000 to have the whole boat to ourselves with our guests (it holds 50 people)!!

 

I actually read some reviews about the salon and they weren't good and it was not recommended. I would try to find someone do your hair for you that's coming with you to the wedding!!

 

Feel free to watch our wedding!! Let us know what you think!! ????????

[JanelleMcLeod]

Can't wait to hear how it went, we get married at Riu Palace in 5 weeks!

[Lynsey92714]

Can you update us how your wedding was?? I bet the boat cruise was beautiful

[abeals11388]

Sure! We are honeymooning right now so it's going to be short and sweet! The wedding itself was PERFECT!! The small details leading up to the wedding were what got me frustrated. The wedding coordinator wanted to meet with us at noon on The Wednesday before the wedding (which was on Friday). No big deal. Well at 10 am on Wednesday she changed the time to 4 pm which was horrible. All our guests were coming in and we had to step away from them to take care of business. Not exactly what we wanted. There was nothing rehearsal about the rehearsal dinner either. Luckily my husband and I had our wedding party go to the beach and discuss the "plan" after our dinner. It was literally just a dinner. The steakhouse was the bomb!! So good.

 

Our reception was definitely worth the money!! Our guests LOVED it. The cruise took us to lovers beach, the famous arch, etc. Probably the best thing about the wedding!

 

Because we had an off site reception they put together a "farewell" dinner for our group which was at the San Jose restaurant. The food was okay. Not great. Again just a dinner that was put together for us. Other guests were in the restaurant. No big deal.

 

I'll go into more detail once we get home and settled. I will also share pictures!

 

 

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