Hi Everyone,
Just thought I would send a quick followup. We got married on January 29th, 2010 and had a blast. Our dinner was at the steakhouse, we hired a mariachi band for a reception in the "VIP" bar area and the wedding was at 3pm which left us plenty of time to take some pictures between the ceremony/reception/dinner.
The food for dinner was *fantastic* (steak for most, fish for some vegetarian types). Probably the best meal we had all week in fact.
We hired outside photographers from De Sol Photography, a fellow named Vincent was the main photographer and he had someone there to take pictures of the guys while they got ready and to assist later on. We were thrilled with Vincent (who was really nice, fun and hillarious) and the final results. They are kind of pricy but we're glad we spent the money because the end product is amazing.
Our stay at the resort was pretty great, as soon as we arrived we learned we were upgraded to the "honeymoon suite" which was the top floor suite in the building closest to the beach (2, I believe). It was huge, with two flat screens that never got turned on, two bathrooms, and all the chocolate covered strawberries we could handle.
We really only experienced two frustrations with the resort. One was the size, which was great for most of the week but awful when we were trying to get in touch with people we needed (ie., to get documents signed). Our best advice is to bring walkie talkies for the wedding party- those would have come in super handy to help coordinate.
The other frustration was that they mucked up reservations we tried to make for our "rehearsal dinner". It should have been really simple but they messed it up and sent us back and forth around the resort 3 times (see above frustration about the size of the place). In the end it wasn't a huge deal but my dad has diabetes and didn't end up getting to eat with us because of the delays.
Candy and her assistant were really swell when we were down there. We had to take people's advice that you just have to trust things will fall into place when you're there in person and they did. It was annoying to not really get much info in advance (she did communicate with us a few weeks before to send us the various options/prices for food/flowers/other accessories) but it was so awesome to plan an entire wedding in 1 and a half hours. They are like a well oiled machine down there. As long as you're not crazy picky about the colour of your table clothes you should be fine.
Oh and one concern we had was with the sound system for music and dancing, which turned out to be a non-issue. We hooked up a laptop to it and even though it was only a single speaker it was definitely loud enough for 30-40 people to dance to.
I suppose it's worth mentioning that dinner in the steakhouse is extremely hot- it's sort of open air so there's no AC in that restaurant by the beach, and we ended up getting pretty toasty. No big deal I guess but worth passing along.
We've posted our pictures from the week online if anyone is curious about the general look of the resort or our private lives (hah). We can also share our pro photos from De Sol Photography but out of respect for their work we won't publish the url publicly.
Here is the link to our pictures from the week including the wedding itself:
Picasa Web Albums - jkurtz - 2010-01-31 We...
Happy to answer any questions anyone has.
Jason & Michelle