Secrets Akumal, Riviera Maya 1/15/16

[Hermdogg62]

Hello everyone,

 

This is my first time "blogging" so here goes nothing. The reasoning for me blogging is to see if I could get any inside tips of what questions I need to ask to make our destination wedding as pain free as possible once we get to the resort and the other is to share some good and bad experiences I've had so far.

 

I wanted to know if anyone has stayed, attended or planned/planning a wedding at the newly opened (Nov. 2015) Secrets Akumal in Riviera Maya and if so what can I expect from the resort itself, your experience's with the wedding coordinators, wedding food, DJ, how to tip the wedding staff, etc... Any honest feedback would be immensely appreciated. I don't always trust the reviews on sites like Trip Advisory. Also, if anyone has any insider tips for upgrades or freebies from the resort would also be great.

 

Let me tell everyone a little about me and my fiancée's experiences so far with planning our destination wedding.

 

First the bad, after making the decision to do a destination wedding we contacted my fiancées high school friend who is a travel agent that works for an independent travel agency (out of respect to my fiancées friend I will not name her agency) that deals with Apple Vacations to help us pick a destination and to book our trip as well be the main travel agent for our guest. She is the one that sold us on Secrets Akumal because of a pre-opening promotional rate. Shortly after hiring her as our travel agent she had some personal issues to attend to and then went on maternity leave after that, but before she left, she handed everything to her "boss" to handle and insured us that we were in good hands. Unfortunately it wasn't. Even though we already paid the resort a non-refundable deposit to reserve our Wedding date, The "boss' kept telling us not to book the trip right away because Apple's charter flights for January from BWI (Baltimore) have not been posted yet and that "if you book your package thru Apple, we would basically getting out flight for free", so we held off on sending out our invitations. After a few weeks went by waiting on the charter information, my fiancée stumbled onto a Facebook post from the resort saying "hurry promotion ends in xx days!!!". We then contacted the agent to notify her of the post but she was of no help as she said oh that's not good and also the charter flights have not posted yet. Because of this my fiancée contacted Apple Vacations and the airlines XTRA airways directly to see what the hold up was. It turned out it was due to contract issues between Apple and XTRA. Long story short, we created a wedding webpage and had to call, text and email everyone that we wanted to attend our wedding and tell them that if you want to attend our wedding you need to contact our travel agent to reserve a room and then either book a flight thru them or book on there own immediately. (this was truly embarrassing and tacky) Luckily enough we have awesome family and friends and they put a deposit down on the rooms thru the agent and booked their own flights. And as our trip approaches we still have to constantly email and call the travel agent to get information and updates out of her.

 

 

Now for the good: So while still dealing with the above we still need to make arrangements with the hotel for the wedding day and find a DJ, photographer, etc. Due to the fact that we are in Baltimore and the resort is in Mexico, we had to coordinate everything via email, which can be slightly frustrating but overall was pretty painless. The Wedding coordinator at Secrets Akumal Elisa Guadarrama has been great, she helped plan everything down except the photographer, which was not her fault as the photography options that the resort provides were subpar in our opinion. So we decided to look for a local photographer that travels and does destination wedding.

 

So this brings me to our brightest spot of our whole planning experience, our photographer James Berglie of Be Photography in Baltimore, MD. After doing multiple interviews with different photographers we chose James. And I TRUELY TRUELY WISH that we knew about him prior to booking our trip because he can do everything for you, not just photos. Turned out that he is the whole package, he is also a travel agent. If we would've used him as our travel agent and had our guest book thru him, our photos would have been included for FREE. But unfortunately it was to late to do that. Because James was so great, we decided to use him for our engagement photos which I have to say came out great, he even made me look good which is not an easy thing to do. I can't wait to see the photos he'll take at the wedding and how he'll make me look good again.

 

This is basically how our planning has gone so far and I look forward to some feedback and tips as the forums on here have been helpful to us throught this planning process. 

 

Thank You

Herman

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Moments That Matter]

Welcome to our forum community, Herman and Congrats on your upcoming dw at Secrets Akumal next week!!! how exciting to be so close

 

Akumal is such a gorgeous area - it's sure to make a stunning backdrop for your Wedding Day Love Story in Photos!!!

Wishing you all the best with Big Day and safe travels.....cheers!!! team MTM

 

 

Edited January 7, 2016 by Moments That Matter

[acw271011]

@@Hermdogg62 Welcome to BDW! Your wedding is so close - just a week away!

 

I'm sorry you've had such a difficult time putting your wedding together. Definitely dealing with a brand new resort can have it's challenges and it's always recommended that you try to work with a travel agent that is a destination wedding specialist. Having said that, the fact that you're only a week away and have everything organized is good news! Having faith in your wedding coordinator will absolutely makes thing go smoothly. Once you arrive, you'll meet with the WC and they'll go through your details at that time. That's when you'll be able to confirm how you want things done, table layouts/seatings, and your timing for everything.

 

Please come back and provide a review on the resort afterwards. I haven't as yet seen anything about this resort and wasn't aware that it had opened so I'm not sure how much response you'll get yet.

 

Good luck!

[lorishultz2016]

I am sorry to hear that you are having such a hard time with all your planning. I belive the tragent should have given you opitions instead of making you wait and I would see about getting my flight for free since she made such a hugh mistake.

[jenhayes]

I'll be getting married at Secrets Akumal on May 6.  I, too, started with a painful travel agent experience after they dragged their feet so long and we kept losing out on good deals.  Luckily, a family friend agreed to help and we locked in to Secrets Akumal prior to their opening, which was a risk, but because they are an established resort were confident it would all work out by May. 

 

I have also been working with Elisa, and while planning everything via email has been challenging, I think she is doing the best she can possibly do.  (We did go in February to see the resort in person and meet with her and iron out a few details).  I did feel limited on the photography because it was included in the package, and thought having someone travel international would be out of my price range.  It wasn't until I stumbled upon you and Rebecca's wedding pictures from a Secret's Akumal Facebook post, that I fell in love with the work that James Berglie with Be Photography did.  When we were there in February, I met with Adventure Photos and also thought that their work was a little subpar (but again, I felt limited in my options).  After some anxiety about this and realizing I don't want to regret my decision, I reached out to James on a whim to see if a) he was available, he was affordable, and c) he would be someone I would want and trust to document one of the most important days of my life.

 

He immediately responded to my inquiry, set up an hour conference call where he walked through his background, his portfolio, and his process.  This only assured what I already knew, I had to go with Be Photography!  My only regret is not using him as our travel agent as I know he has a ton of experience with destination weddings, especially in the Caribbean and would have provided a seamless and easy planning experience. 

 

Excited about my wedding, we leave this Saturday!