taylorwd

I think a lot of us out there feel that way! It's like it's something you HAVE to do, even though for many of us it's not our style or doesn't fit our budget or we'd rather be creative in other ways.

It's almost taboo, isn't it, to say you don't want to do them?

In our case, our families would end up throwing most of it away, so we'd much rather put the money into something they will remember, like sailing!

Right there with ya ladies! I don't want to wait any longer!

Maybe with all of us flying in other photogs, Karisma will get the hint that they need more than two photography choices to offer their couples! I highly doubt it since they don't seem to care about such things, but their photography policy is ridiculous!

Just confirming a previous post that it's either-or, not both.

Our photographer's in-laws have a house in Puerto Morelos, so his lodging isn't costing us a penny! Just the $500 outside vendor fee and travel costs.

I love her sand ceremony! I haven't seen one like that before. Great pictures!

Although I'm at AB and not AS, I'm curious as to who all of your photographers are? Elizabeth Medina is not offered for AB. We get Caribe or Matias Cano and we didn't really like either of these options, so are flying in a photographer. He's absolutely AMAZING! Andrew Jordan. In fact you can find him on here under GroomsArePeopleToo.

Hi Yael! Love your choice for signature pictures!

I am so sorry that I came to this forum after I already had my TA! Be assured, I will refer future DW brides your way, Tammy!

 

Thank you for this wonderful forum!

This is what the fine print says about our dinner reservation:

 

This is not a private event.

Will not have a private location.

Set up is done in 1 or 2 rectangular tables seating up to 12 people each.

All guest will be served our "Chef's Special of the day" menu.

This reservation is for a maximum of 25 people.

Any additional guest will have an extra charge, payable directly at the Hotel.

This dinner reservation can only be booked to start at 18:00 or 18:30 hours. Any Special request must be approved in writting by the Hotel's F&B department.

Hi Suzanne!

Glad you found Bree's pics. Yeah, the thread disappearing is a mystery. We leave on the 23rd, so we'll miss you by a day!

About the Free Reservation and the restricted menu, that's something they don't tell you up front. It's in the fine print on our details sheet that Tiffany put together for us. We were up in arms about it, so Tiffany called down to the resort and asked them directly. They said that with your dinner reservation you absolutely have to order the Chef's Item of the Day. No exceptions.

Maybe it has to do with the group size? We're 22 adults and 6 kids.

As for dancing, we're bringing our own music, and with so few guests, it will be very low key. Sarah, how many people do you have? The Blue Terrace has plenty of room for dinner and dancing.

Nevermind, I'm mixing things up. I'm confusing our Private Event discount with the dinner reservation. The discount is based on the occupancy in our contract, possibly exclusive to DWT.

I don't remember where the dinner reservation came from. Is it not part of the free wedding package?

By the way, that's $9 a chair for an uncovered chair. Covered is $12 each. And a bow is an extra $4 each.

I too have regretted my decision many times, all b/c of the ridiculousness of having to deal with the Miami people. This would be much easier if we could just talk to someone at the resort! Tiffany has never stayed at the resort, only visited a few times. So she has no way of answering a lot of my questions.

Karisma never contacts me. I always contact them. Tiffany said our preliminary details sheet needed to be done by 1/8, and ever since we've been going back and forth ironing out the details. Even before that I was constantly asking her questions.

The Dinner Reservation was part of the promotion when I signed up. It's based on the number of rooms in our contract. If I'm remembering right, it was an exclusive promotion between Karisma and DWT our TA.

We're doing the free wedding package and adding on a lot of stuff. We priced their packages and it still came out better to go with the free one and add on.

Yikes! I've never had Tiffany send me a link to the webpage in response to my questions. I would be pissed!

They took away the donkey cocktail hour?

Do you mean dancing on the property to your own music and/or to a DJ you hired? Or do you mean the nightly events scheduled at the resort?

Our reception is private and is on the Blue Terrace. Plenty of room for dancing there. You can also reserve the Wave Lounge if it's part of your Private Event. They'll move out the furniture for you. It depends on how many people you have.

Doing postcards down there is a good idea. I was planning on making postcards when we got back with pictures from the trip and a thank you note on the back, and then mailing those off. But it'd be neat to have the Riviera Maya postmark.

Oh my gosh that's awful! I wonder what their criteria are for TA's? It shouldn't be this hard!

Good luck! Do you use destinationweddings also?

Mmmmmm, Amy's...

I'll PM you about it. By the way, where are you in Texas?

Hey dirtymartini, aren't you getting married at AB around the same time I am? Or maybe I'm thinking of someone else. Someone on here has the day before us.

Thanks for asking about the planning--it's almost wrapped up! I would say our major crunch time for planning was between 3-5 months out. Karisma needed our initial requests by the beginning of January, and that was the hard part! I don't know your experiences, but I find that dealing with Tiffany and the Miami office is very frustrating! It would be much easier if we could talk to the resort directly. My comfort comes in knowing that once we get down there, all will be taken care of and fabulous!!

Our biggest decision right now involves the Dinner Reservation we get. We were going to use it as our Welcome Dinner, but found out that guests don't get to order from the regular menu with your reservation. You get one choice, whatever the item is the chef picked that day. One reason we picked AB was for the wonderful food choices. By using our reservation, we would be limiting what our guests eat for 2 of their nights (reception and welcome dinner). For those only there 3 or 4 nights, that really sucks!

We'll probably end up scrapping the reservation.

That is interesting, I use her too! But I would not recommend her. She's timely in her responses, yes, but really doesn't seem to know much about the in's and out's of DW. She's also been wrong on some things and caused us a lot of unneeded stress.

We're not doing a cocktail hour between the ceremony and reception. After all, this isn't a typical wedding where guests are either stranded at a church or at closed reception hall killing time between the two events. They're at a fabulous AI resort! Our guests will have plenty to do without us actually planning something during that time: the tequila bar, one of the outdoor bars, sipping cocktails in the Wave Lounge...they'll be just fine!

We use weddingwindow.com

It's not free but it's a fantastic site!

Well, this is weird...this is not the one that went missing!

Meghan,

That's interesting your reception could start at 5:30pm. Our contract with Karisma says that private events can start no earlier than 6:00pm and end no later than 11:00pm, giving very little wiggle room to vary the reception time.