Wpgbride17 Grand Sirenis Planning Thread January 21, 2017

[WPGBride17]

First thank you for all the kind words on my dress. I love it and really I can't wait to wear it!

 

Ok I know it's been a while but it's been a crazy couple of weeks. I feel like I have so many ideas for my wedding but a lot of my decisions depend on how many people end up coming. My deadline for deposit is April 11th so I'm just going to try and wait patiently. We are still only sitting at 2 people booked so I have decided to send a reminder email in about a weeks time just so people don't forget.

 

Wedding Podcast

One tool I have found that has helped me with wedding details is Save the Date Podcast. It's done by an Australian Comedian Aleisha McCormack and not only is she hilarious but she offers some really great tips for planning your special day. She has guests from all over the world that specializes in various aspects of weddings and I know I have discovered some great information through her so if you have time check it out!

 

Photography

I think I can safely say this has been the most stressful part of my wedding planning so far. Never in my wildest dreams did I think wedding photography would be so expensive! Maybe I'm cheap but when you're working with a tiny budget neither myself or my FI could imagine spending over $1,000 for pictures. At first I was totally content with family and friends taking our photos but everywhere I turned I kept hearing that this was people's biggest regret was not spending the money on photography. Then one night I had a dream that we got all the photos back from our wedding and they all had a thumb in the middle of the pictures. Needless to say I woke up and immediately started researching possible options. The problem with DW is as soon as you are looking for photographers outside your resort they charge you and outside vendor fee so it ends up being more expensive. I had contacted a few companies but all of them were out of my price range and another thing that didn't help is they all charge US funds and the Canadian Dollar socks right now.

Eventually one company put me in touch with a photographer who was the wife of one partners I had contacted. She was amazing and I still couldn't afford her with the vendor fees. I emailed her back explaining just that and she replied back saying I deserved professional photography and offered to do a couples shoot in my wedding dress around Playa del Carmen a on a separate date from my wedding for a super reasonable rate of $400 US and because I'm doing the shoot off resort I'm avoiding the vendor fee. She is making my dreams come true and while I know she won't be documenting my special day I'm OK with that because I will still have beautiful pictures of me and my husband in our wedding attire. I will still get family and friends to document my special day but now I feel more comfortable with that.

http://www.mayanrivieraphotography.com

 

Social

Specifically in Manitoba we have a wedding tradition called a Social. Basically a Social I'd a fundraising event that you hold either in a banquet hall or bar. You hire a DJ , have a silent auction, 50/50 draw and charge $10 entrance fee and all proceeds go to the wedding g couple to help with the cost of the wedding and to help start your lives together.

Our social is set for September 17th and I really need to get my butt in gear and start getting some prizes for the silent auction. Normally your wedding party helps by donating prizes but I only have my maid of honor so most will have to be bought by us. I am lucky though because a lot of family has stepped up and said they will donate.

While this is a great event to raise money it also takes a lot of planning and it's another event to worry about. The most stressful part was finding and booking the venue but that went pretty smoothly. We decided to go with a bar so then we wouldn't have to worry about liquor licensing but in saying that it means the bar will profit from the liquor sales and not us. In the end we though this was just one less thing to worry about so we thought it was worth it. The bar also offered out a free $200 prize for our auction and they are printed up our tickets for free.

 

 

 

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[WPGBride17]

Wedding Theme and Colors

Early on I decided my colors were going to include purple and I was going to do lime green but after talking to FI we are going with orange. He rarely asks for anything and says whatever I want makes him happy so when I was showing him pictures of boutinieres and he said he loved the birds of paradise I quickly agreed to change up my lime green to orange.

I think with flowers and color scheme I've had some difficulty because I want it to look good and for whatever reason I can't get a clear picture in my head of how it all will come together. In my head I'm trying to picture how the altar should look like with orange and purple and whether I should spend extra money for the color cloths instead of the plain white. I've tried researching or should I say googling for different pictures of destination wedding altars/archways but haven't found much.

For the theme I chose a popular one because it's my favorite... Starfish! This forum gas bit awesome but also a bit dangerous. I really was just going to go minimalist for decorations and choose based on my package but I've been so inspired by what all the brides have posted on their threads that I have gotten a bit of the diy bug myself so below are some ideas I want to incorporate.

Flowers

Aisle way

I really want petals lining the aisle way but the resort charges so much! I got so excited when I found a diy to make your own runners so I have decided to go this route. The only thing is I'm not sure what colors I'm going to do purple, orange or both. I found that you can buy the petals super cheap on ebay so that's what I'm going to do. I also am going to buy bulk starfish and scatter them along the runners. I figure by buying starfish bulk I can reuse them for my reception decor as well.

Chairs

I'm not exactly decided on whether I should go with the standard chairs with covers and do something like this:

Or if I will dish out some extra cash for the Tiffany chairs and do this :

I also noticed that someone bought the chair slashes in bulk and wonder if it will be a cost saving to do the same.

 

 

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[calgarybride2015]

I think with purple and orange you can save your cash on the colored cloths for the alter. It'll be overkill. You can see my pics below in the links. I had fuchsia turquoise and orange. I feel less is more in Mexico

 

Agree though. Hard to envision stuff. Get on Pinterest and Google to find pics in your color scheme and such.

 

For chairs, if you want pic two or three you'll have to upgrade your chairs! The basic chair included is like a patio plastic chair. It will come standard with a white cover. The chair bow is extra.

 

Love we have the same wedding date at the same resort.

 

 

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[WPGBride17]

I know it's been a while but I've been busy especially now that our deadline for the deposit has passed. Of course true to my belief all of my guests waited until the last week to book so no surprise there. What I was completely shocked about was the number of people booked! We estimated that around 25 people would book and now we have 46 guests including us and 10 kids. We are so grateful for such an outpouring of love from our friends and family as we knew we were asking a lot for them to come to a destination wedding.

We qualified for one free trip and are just short one booking to get the second to get a second trip free. You never know who will book closer to the wedding so it's still a possibility.

Now that we have more concrete numbers I have reworked our budget and I have started buying items for our big day.

One thing I really wanted to do was welcome bags.

I have budgeted $25 per bag and so far these are the items that are going in them:

Tumblers with personalized stickers

Deck of cards

Sudoku book

Coloring book with crayons for the kids

Advil

Emergen-C

Bandaid

Chapstick

Week Schedule

Door Hanger

 

These are the waterproof labels I ordered from etsy

 

I ordered the bags through totebagfactory and I was going to screen print them myself but for $5 extra per bag they will do it for me which I figured it was worth it to save me the headache.

Here's the design I did up myself:

 

I also order kids activity/coloring books off of etsy for $5. It's just a digital file so you can print it off as many times as you want. It has a whole bunch of small games and is in black and white for coloring.

 

Most of the other items I either bought at the dollartree (I highly recommend this dollar store, awesome selection and nothing is over $1.25) or Amazon.

 

I've been thinking more about decor I think I'm going to scale back and just bring a few items:

Starfish which I will order off of eBay

Love Marquee Sign bought at 60% off at Michaels for our table at the reception

Chair Ribbons ordered off of eBay for a fraction of the price of what the resort is charging ($29 for 50 ribbons)

 

Finally I've been taking advantage of the fact that grad and summer attire is finally come out!

I bought flip flops from Le Chateau for $30 for the reception

I am going to buy barefoot sandals of of etsy for the ceremony

 

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[calgarybride2015]

Everything is looking good

I read in the other thread you have decided on an a'la carte for your dinner -- do you think you'll do the add on later for the dances and stuff (can't recall their names but either at the health or beach bar). Or is your dinner the 4 hour one so can be done in the a'la carte? We had 45 people too

 

 

 

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[WPGBride17]

@@calgarybride2015 We compared the silver package which is 1.5 hours non-private a la carte with the add on of the beach bar cocktail for 2 hours to the gold package which is 4 hours private a la carte with the add on of a DJ. The gold package also had a few extra perks including hair, makeup and a welcome dinner so in the end the gold package ended up being cheaper for us.

The one thing I want to check is if it's an open bar if it's private or if this is extra as well. The most frustrating part for me is all the "extras" such as paying extra for meals for any guest over 10 people or paying for an open bar as I feel that's what we are paying our trip costs as this would be included if we were a normal guest vs wedding guest. I know this is the norm now with a destination wedding but frustrating nonetheless.

 

 

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[calgarybride2015]

I didn't get any people included. As I upgraded my location I had to pay for all. Yes it's an AI but you are paying for the one on one service and it's good! So try to remember that as you can't get them to change it, so we gotta live with it.

 

All packages include open bar for the length of the package. So for you - 4 hours. If you extend your time (unsure if you can in an a'la carte) then you'd pay open bar. Unless something major has changed.

 

 

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[WPGBride17]

@@calgarybride2015 yes I'm doing my best to remember that and in the end I know it will be a day that I'll remember and cherish forever!

For some reason I thought when eating at the a la carte they only served wine. I thought I read that somewhere but I'll double check to make sure.

 

 

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[calgarybride2015]

@@calgarybride2015 yes I'm doing my best to remember that and in the end I know it will be a day that I'll remember and cherish forever!

For some reason I thought when eating at the a la carte they only served wine. I thought I read that somewhere but I'll double check to make sure.

 

 

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That's odd. I ate in an a'la carte 3 times (rehearsal and 2 others) and I got any drink I wanted.

 

If they try to charge you over and above wine I would fight that tooth and nail lol

[WPGBride17]

Just a quick message today. I'm so excited because my welcome bags came in and my waterproof stickers came in!

I order these online from the Totebag factory. I was originally going to screen print them myself but for what they charged it wasn't worth the headache of me doing it myself. I would highly recommend them as they did an awesome job!

These are my DollarTree tumblers with my waterproof stickers on them. I ordered these through Davet Designs and again I would highly recommend this company as they were amazing to deal with. You can find this company either through Google or she also has an Etsy store. She has a ton of designs to choose from and all reasonably priced.

 

 

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Here's a little better picture of the labels on the tumblers.

 

 

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