Paradisus Riviera Brides - POST HERE!

I didn't have a whole lot of interaction with Victor. His attitute irked me fairly early on and I started looking for other options right away. However, he never suggested I call. The 6-8 e-mails we exchanged were it.

You can use any DJ you want, the only catch is that Swank has to be there to "supervise". Basically, you pay them a fee for not using them. I am using Carlos at Mannia Cancun. He's great. Came down to meet with us when we were there for our site visit in may. There's a thread about him - just search for Mannia.

My photographer is doing a slideshow at the reception - I understand that he's uploading a small batch of photos to a laptop and letting it run during party time. I'm sure that the hotel can accomodate a slideshow, but you may have to bring your own laptop. Check with Perla or Elisa.

For our welcome/rehersal dinner, we're hosting a cocktail hour on the mexican patio (where the fountain is by the theater). For the dinner following, I just booked a group of tables at the reef grill.

We booked L'Hermitage for our wedding dinner - not the reception. They are very careful with L'Hermitage because of it's 4-diamond status, and you will pay a small fortune for the priviledge of having a private meal there. We had to use existing chairs, tables and linens. They will not remove unused (empty) tables and chairs from the room. We hd to order from their existing menu. We could not bring in musicians or a DJ (we're using their standard canned classical music). However, if you can get over the restrictions, go for it.

We are having the beef carpaccio or crispy shrimp for apps, then the lamb, beef or mahi mahi for entree. We are skipping the soup course, because who wants soup in August? We're having the yummy profiteroles for dessert. Cake will be afterwards, out on the terrace. We are paying approximately $85 per person for the dinner.

If you want something you can customize, want to make speeches using a sound system or want to have dancing between courses, I'd abandon the idea of L'Hermitage. It suited us, but mostly because we were willing to work within their rules.

We are using Swank - we went back and forth between Swank and Mannia for a long time - I have only dealt with Swank through email and while in the beginning I didn't get a good vibe he turned out to be a really nice guy.

 

He will negotiate with you - we managed to get the same rate that Carlos Mannia was offering (b/c we told him we would walk if we didn't) - I think the cost is about the same once you factor in having a Swank person "supervising" for the four or five hours...

Hey Kim, thanks so much - feel free to PM your e-mail address and I'll send it out to you as soon as I receive it.

You're going to have a fabulous wedding in 2 weeks!

 

LeShay

 

 

Ladies,

 

My reviews were moved to the review section: Wedding Reviews

They're titled LeShay's Paradisus Wedding Review part 1 - part 3, I put info in there about the DJ, food, and more. If you need any add'l info - don't hesitate to PM me.

HAPPY PLANNING!

Hi ladies,

I wrote my paradisus review on a seperate thread in accomodations RM. It's kind of long. We chose a great resort! My mind is finally at ease....

Thanks so much Becks!!! Hey I love the idea for the rehersal. Did they give you an option for the appitizers and cocktail hour or did they just charge you a per person charge for food and alcohol? And for dinner did you just ask Perla and Elisa to block you the reef grill? Was there an extra charge for that?

And thanks for the dj info.....does swank have a website or email??

The apps for the cocktail hour at our rehearsal are straight of the regular app menus, but we went pretty light - chips and guac, crudite, and a couple of other nibbly things. But they are charging us on a per-person basis because we have the open bar. I think all in it's $16-$18 per person.

Elisa booked the reef grill for us - it is not private though. Any space we don't use will be used for seating hotel guests. And, we had to have it at 7:00 PM when the dinner service starts so that they could seat other guests after us. There is an extra charge for the lobster of $18 per person, but that is standard. If you serve shrimp or something else rather than lobster there's no fee.

I don't have Swank's information any longer, as I've booked mannia. Missy: do you have it?

Thank you Becks! So the open bar and appitizers are all included for the $16-18? Thanks so much for your help.....your day is coming so quickly!!!

Becks, your meny sounds yummy! I finally got the banquet menu from Perla which allows us to do customization for the dinner, which is looking mighty good! the welcome dinner sounds like an awesome idea as well. I would definitely look into that. Do you know if there is a maximum number you can have without the charge?

Thanks!!

anna

I don't know. But we're having around 40, so at least that many. (In the same breath, we assured her that at least 30 of the 40 would be having lobster, so they may have given us some flexibility because of the extra fees we're paying.)