January 2016 Mexico Bride - Planning And Budget

[calgarybride2015]

Everything looks fantastic.

 

I love the look of heavy amount of petals on the isle (haha I had no idea how to say that).... mine was just more of a sprinkle LOL!!!

 

 

Ohhhh and love the photo bomb!   dresses are pretty  you have elegant ideas!

[vancouverpetunia]

@@TaraMarie33 Love your inspiration photos/ideas. Just stunning. You might want to check with your resort about the petals for the aisle. I assume you mean fake petals? A lot of resorts don't allow this (litter/pollution issues). 

Edited August 29, 2015 by vancouverpetunia

[TaraMarie33]

Hi guys! Its been a while - but I promise, I have been getting so much on my list done! 

October 15th was the date for final deposits and we have 53 guests booked and confirmed! Wahhooo. We might even get a few last minute stragglers. 

 

@@vancouverpetunia - the resort did tell me that I am not allowed to use rose petals that are fake for the aisle .. SO, I am going with just a white runner. I did buy 5000 rose petals though, eeeek. BUT thankfully I am able to use them in the reception, so I can add them to my centerpiece idea. 

 

 

RECEPTION DECOR: 

Reception decor has been a struggle. I've also been trying to make tables for everyone to see how many I need. I settled on 5 tables, and one head table with all of our bridal party. One long head table. What are you guys doing for your head tables? Just sweetheart table? ... Hmm. 

 

HEAD TABLE - head table will be including all of my bridal party (5 bridesmaids + me + kenny + 5 groomsmen)

EXAMPLE TABLE: 

( bridesmaids — bride — groom — groomsmen) 

—centerpiece —— centerpiece  — centerpiece 

 

Head table will have 3 centerpieces. 

 

HEAD TABLE DECOR DETAILS: I would like the head table centerpieces to look similar to these photos below. Lining the outer edge of the head table. Roses- ivory, white, blush, with hints of dark red roses. SO, one centerpiece in front the bridesmaids, one in front of the bride and groom, one in front of the groomsmen placed on the table. 

Candles scattered throughout - maybe 20/25 candles total on the head table (varied sizes of candles) + scattered rose petals. 

 

HEAD TABLE PICTURES: ** These are all inspiration photos for HEAD TABLE. Not exact - but combination of everything in these pictures of the candles and flowers and rose petals. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GUEST TABLE DECOR DETAILS: Candles and mirrors that I am bringing, with rose petals and bridesmaid bouquets. I will also be using my bridesmaid bouquets (that I will be bringing with me) as the flowers for each guest table. *** One bridesmaid bouquet on each table. Approx 10 candles on each table. 

 

GUEST TABLE PICTURES: These are inspiration pictures for the guest tables - candles like this placed all over, but with the bridesmaid bouquet placed in-between on each table. 

 

 

 

 

 

^^ imagine this bouquet is the bridesmaid bouquet, on the guest table. Surround by candles like in the photos above ^^. 

 

I sent those details above to my wedding coordinator and am hoping that she understands a bit of what I want. Lots and lots of candles! Lots and lots of roses! Ha! I am bringing 86 candles with me, so that is cheap and already paid for! 

 

GIFTS: My giftlist is shrinking! I am so happy to be almost finished. Here is my gift updates: 

 

Gifts for the hubby: 

- Raunchy pictures (still have to do, and get book made) ($200)

- Watchbox - purchased but have to get it engraved ($50) 

- ** TRIP? .. I MAY surprise him with a weekend getaway for right when we get back. Maybe a quick trip to cuba, or something cheap. Going to look into that much closer to the date. ($1000?) - will see how the budget is. 

 

Mom: 

- Necklace - purchased, being shipped. I bought her a necklace on etsy that says "Love you Forever, like you for always, as long as you're living, your baby I'll be". Robert Munch, cant go wrong! She will cry. ($40)

 

Stepfather: 

- Keychain - purchased from etsy. It is engraved "Marriage made you family, love made you a father" . (About $40)

 

Brother: 

- cufflinks - purchased from etsy again! ($40) Engraved "I Love you Brother" and one cufflink has a photo of us on it! He will love them! 

 

Mother and Father in law: 

- Picture frame with poem - Purchased and assembled. I wrote (with some pinterest help) a poem for them about marrying their son, and raising the man of my dreams, etc. I had it printed at Staples (98cents) and framed it for them. ($20 Total)

 

Father: 

Still havent bought anything.. ANY IDEAS? Father of the bride ideas .. ?? 

 

Bridesmaids: 

- Robes - purchased, not engraved. Just cozy silk robes for the day. 

- Gift Boxes ($5 for all 5 - dollar store, rectangle wood boxes.) -- I put rose petals in the bottom, and bought them all their favourite little bottle of booze for inside (tiny bottle of grey goose for one girl, tiny bottle of jameson for my girlfriend that likes whiskey, etc.) I also have little personalized cards for each other them, with pictures of us in the boxes. I will send you guys all pictures.

They were very cheap to make ($15 for the booze, $1 for the box, $1 for the rose petals, $1 for picture printing, $5 for the card = $23 for the boxes each!)

- Shoes - I bought the girls shoes for them. I found a STEAL, $12 USD for these gold sandals online at payless.com 

http://www.payless.com/womens-starlet-embellished-sling/146342100.html -- check them out if your girls need shoes! 

- Necklaces - I found the perfect matching necklaces at SPRING. Blush, gold and silver. I posted them in the last post. $15 each. 

- Little toiletries bags: - $5 each from Forever 21. With mini sunscreen, hair ties, lip gloss, and antibacterial gel. TOTAL: $12

 

TOTAL PER BRIDESMAID: $90 x 5 Maids = $450 Total for Bridesmaids

 

I dont think there are any other people I need to get gifts for? Right? That has everyone pretty covered. I got my maid of honour a little anchor necklace - because she is literally my anchor through all this wedding planning. This planning is like a full time job! 

 

My last update .. an exciting one! ... VIDEOGRAPHER!: 

I had sent out emails to about 10 videographers in mexico. We weren't going to pay for this originally, but we decided we should reach out. I was able to talk a few companies down to an CRAZY cheap price! About half as much as they were asking .. because the US dollar is such a killer, they were really reasonable to lower their prices. 

So, we have narrowed it down to 2 companies. Gallardo films, and MyLoveFilms. Do any of you have or know anyone who has had experiences with them? They are both great - win win really. I just want to pick one company. 

We get them for 6 hours, 2 videographers. We decided, you know what? Lets cut costs elsewhere .. and invest in this memory. Any advice on videographers would be really appreciative!!! 

 

Photographer update: 

We were going to fly our photographer with us, but he has to check with his other job if he can get the time off now. SOO .. My uncle may be taking our photos (he is a guest, and has done many weddings in the past). That would be great, and much cheaper than flying an extra person, but if we flew a photographer we could have a million different shoots, and pictures, and no pressure. I feel bad asking family. What do you guys think? Its only about $1000 CAD to fly our photographer out for 4 days. 

 

MUSIC; 

We are hiring a DJ, the resort DJ. But we are still struggling to pick our first dance songs, family songs, and recession songs. Its truly A LOT of work .. AAHHH. And prelude, prelude, bridal party entrance, bouquet toss. There is literally so much planning to do. HELP! 

 

Also .. ENTRANCE SONG! AHHH. Another one I need to figure out. My bachelorette party is November 27th weekend, maybe my girls can help me with the music. 

 

DRESS UPDATE: 

I still need to go for my last fitting. My dress is in Michigan, I am in Toronto - so the 4 hours timeline + 2 days to alter is a nightmare these days. Anyway, I will figure that out in the next few weeks. 

 

That is all I have for now. I am still looking for shoes for me, jewelry, and a veil. I want a cathedral veil. .. any advice on veil or jewelry would be really appreciated too! I want something very gypsy like .. sandals. but with bottoms, because the sand will be HOT .. and I dont want slivers on the Palapa. 

 

Hope you are all well, and have done all the planning! Its a fulltime job. @@calgarybride2015 I dont know how you did it all! 

[vancouverpetunia]

Wow you have made a ton of progress. Good work! The table settings look beautiful. I"m sure your WC will do a good job of interpreting - it seems most of them do. Sorry, can't help with the videographers. I would suggest having a professional photographer though. I'm sure your uncle takes nice shots, but if he's not professional, I'm not sure he will have the experience to capture those unexpected moments (rather than just lining up the obligatory shots of the wedding party, etc.). At least that's what I think 

[acw271011]

Wow! Everything looks gorgeous, and you've really accomplished a lot!! Not too long to go!

 

We just got back from Mexico on Sunday and used Mike Cantarell Video. He was great and super easy to work with. I found his pricing pretty reasonable. I had contacted Gallardo but found them higher than what I wanted. We were only 4 so didn't need someone for that length of time. Mike has posted a few videos here - you could search and I'm sure samples would come up.

[TaraMarie33]

My Grand Sirenis Trip Advisor review:

 

I brought 53 guests to the grand sirenis for my wedding and things were a disaster from start to finish.

You would think with a group of 53 people spending thousands and thousands of dollars on a wedding - we would have an above average experience, maybe even average. My whole group's experience and ours (my now husband and I) was waaaaayy below average. Our departure transfer were wrong, many people were charged twice at checkout for things, food was terrible, we were stalked to go to time share meetings, drinks were watered down, shuttles took 35 minutes when they said "5 more minutes", etc etc etc.

One of the biggest upsets was my rehearsal dinner. I had made a reservation with concerning (which took me almost 2 hours - organizing everyone's rooms, because they couldn't this an one a la cart) - and after confirming the reservation. I wrote it down and went to visit the Brazilian restaurant to speak to the head waiter. I confirmed my reservation with him (Edgar), even talked about where we would set up the table. On the day of the rehearsal dinner, I called concierge (pressed "0") and asked to be transferred to the restaurant for my reservation to confirm once again. The man on the phone said we would have two long tables - confirmed 9pm.

I told all of my guests not to eat - because we were having a great big rehearsal dinner, and at 8:50 we headed over to the Brazilian restaurant. We waited in line like everyone else, and when it was time to sit down we were told there was no reservation.

This was impossible. With all the confirming I had done, it had to be a mistake. Time now is 9:10, trying to figure out what happened. Meanwhile the host and Edgar as speaking poorly about us in Spanish, even so far in the end to call me names in Spanish... I can understand Spanish almost fluently, this they obviously didn't know. They had me wait 40 minutes for a "manager", none ever came. Then they continued to tell us that all the restaurants were closing, so we could go to the buffet for my rehearsal dinner.

I was furious. In any other situation at any of resort, someone would at least apologize for the mistake and try their best to accommodate a wedding party. They said they had no staff to serve us this late, no more food left, everything in the book.

Needless to say, we ended up eating French fries, fruit and rice for my rehearsal dinner. Not once did anyone apologize or take responsibility - and I'm supposed to now go into my wedding day happy with this resort? How? It only gets worse from here .. The wedding morning, charging my mother and I both for hair and makeup twice per room (four total charges for just the two of us) - when I was under the assumption that we had paid for it the day before. They asked us the pay for the wedding 4 days in advance - before anything happens, then AFTER charge us for all the extras. Why not just have us pay for everything all at once? We had to take time out of our days 4 separate times to pay for wedding things, all before the big day.

Another disaster - our wedding group was told we were moved to two different flights home. Although not the wedding departments fault, the hotel rep. was the one who let us know about this, which ended up being wrong information. My now husband and I had to spend hours also dealing with this.

At one point one of our guests ordered room service at about 9:30pm - free room service ends at 11pm. The food took 2.5 hours (came around midnight). Upon checkout my guest was expected to pay for everything he ordered because it came after 11pm, when he had ordered at 9:30pm. He ordered 3 meals - that's a sizeable "extra" when room service is free and took 2.5 hours. Disgusting customer service.

My wedding day was beautiful, but no thanks to the coordinators - thanks to Mother Nature and the beautiful sunshine. I had brought in my suitcase (and paid extra for baggage) all the candles and decorations I wanted at the wedding. After the wedding they gave them back, 38 candles untouched - why would I bring them and pay for extra baggage if you weren't going to use them at my wedding?

Wedding decorations and picture frames were broken when returned to me. I paid lots of money for a DJ at the wedding - I gave him an entire playlist and he still played music that was not on it. He disappeared for several songs at a time, he turned off the music completely during speeches and then was gone to turn it back on. His "DJ" booth was just an old MacBook. Songs were skipping left and right - even our first dance (where my husband was singing along to me with a microphone), the music skips twice. What was I paying for? I could play music off of my Mac and it WOULDNT skip!

These are only a few things .. There were 800 other issues that were so disappointing. We had to pay about $8USD per chair at the wedding - and when we saw them the wedding day, they were chipped and tattered and the paint was discoloured differently on every chair. These were my beautiful "upgraded" chairs I was talked into. Not the free chairs, the expensive ones.

We were also talked into renting 2 vans, and 1 golf kart for the wedding. I waited over 35 minutes for the golf cart to get my hair and makeup done, and our kart on the way to the ceremony was a half hour late - making my bridesmaids and I a half hour late to my own wedding ceremony. Why did I pay for 3 "vehicles"? We didn't even end up taking the one I rented .. It never showed. We took the resort shuttle to my wedding.

The worst part of it all was that no one took responsibility for any of these issues. Not once was there one apology, not one supervisor or manager that ever spoke to us, (outside of the wedding office) and when they finally offered us something ... It was a chance to sit in the spa pools for free. What a joke. I just spent literally thousands and thousands of dollars (we didn't do the free wedding, we upgraded every single thing) - and brought 53 people here, and at one point they told us "you are only 53 people, if you didn't stay with us another 53 people would have booked, we are sold out".

Ridiculous. Unfortunately this is a resort who does not care about customer service, or you as an individual at all. Their vision is to fill every seat, and charge them as much as you can. They didn't even offer us free wifi, but asked us to use it to show picture examples for the wedding.

The whole week was horrifying. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone. If God forbid you do have any problems during your stay, they will laugh at you and talk about you in Spanish - then say there is nothing they can do. If there were a 0 stars option I would've given it that rating.

[deecol]

@@TaraMarie33 - Like @ I can't believe I haven't seen your thread until now.  First of all, a big congratulations on becoming a Mr & Mrs and you're beautiful wedding day!  I am so terribly sorry to hear about the rest of your week.  There is absolutely no excuse for all the mess-ups and I am so sorry this happened to you.

 

I hope in time you are able to remember more of the positive highlights of your week and especially your beautiful wedding day. Hope you share some pics!  Would love to see everything all together and your dress!  Love the choice on the cala lillies - great minds