gujarwala

The DJ was "okay" in my opinion. During the dinner he was playing slower tunes but some were getting stranged, for example he started playing the X Files theme music lol, at that point I got one of my groomsmen to take over as luckily he had a laptop with lots of music on it. During the dance portion yes the DJ did have some cool party music and we made a couple of requests, however he didn't have as large a selection as a local DJ would have (in north america for example), so again for the most part we relied on my groomsman's music.

It's a 15 min cab ride to Playa del Carmen and about 45 mins to Cancun. I'd recommend going to Playa Del Carmen 5th ave one day, its a long touristy stretch with souvenir shops, restaurants, and pubs and is alongside a beach as well. Then one night you should also go to the bar strip (not sure which ave it is but the cabby will know) and check out some of their bars. There's a Congo Bongo in Playa as well as Cancun. Some of us went to the Playa one and others to the Cancun Congo Bongo so hard to say which is better, I imagine Cancun's will be busier. Even though its 45 mins awya I'd still recommend going to Cancun for a day and/or night. There's an outlet mall, several bars, and restaurants. Many excursions you can go on as well, they sell packages behind the lobby close to where you book your a la carte restaurants.

Kristy1980 I'm sure they will let you mix and match. For example we had one person who only ate seafood and veggies so at La Hacienda even though the set menu only had beef and chicken they made her a shrimp meal upon request. Also yes the platform to the Yuppa is wooden.

There are pics posted of the Yuppa and set-up some pages back.

No problem agirolamo, anytime! I'm not sure how loud your ipod doc is but make sure if you're relying on the WC to bring audio equipment to the ceremony for the first dance on the beach after (that's what I understood your plan to be, correct me if I"m wrong), that you specify this in advance and make sure it's in the written contract. I imagine they will charge a fee for it. For us audio equipment rental (with the DJ) was I believe $757 for the four hour ceremony, but when I asked if I can rent audio equipment and use my own music I was quoted $252/hr - which strangely is equal to exactly 3 hours with the DJ and hourly costs more than having the DJ...I know its weird, its basically cheaper to have a DJ than to just rent the equipment w/o the DJ. Maybe they've fixed some of the prices but regardless there will probably be a fee to have them bring audio equipment for the first dance to connect to your ipod. As for times I would check the sunset times for your wedding date to see if it'll be bright enough to have pictures after the 3 oclock reception and dance and with enough time to get ready for the ceremony. I'm sure the sun won't set shortly after 3 but you also want the sun to be higher in the sky and at least about 3 hours before sunset during pictures. An idea - maybe you can do your photos before the ceremony so that the sun is brighter? Thanks for all your well wishes too - I'm sure you'll have a great time despite all the stress right now...that's how it was for us too!

Last few

Someone had asked for pics of La Hacienda, here are a few from a dinner we had there:

Lots of cool pictures here, Emma especially yours look fantastic! Not claiming to be the sexiest by any means, but just thought I'd contribute

That sounds like a fair bit, so say your wedding fee was $2k you would have tipped about $700 in total to the coordinator and the servers? I hope I didn't under-tip

If you scroll back a few pages you'll see. Actually several questions are answered in this thread, good to browse back some tens of pages....I did that when i first joined and got a bunch of info that I wouldn't have thought of asking. Someone else asked for the price of the private beach reception - its $85/head. I believe the min. is 40 people, so if you're under 40 they might still charge a flat fee of $3,400.

When I'm on my home comp I'll post pics of Mama Mia, the seafood restaurant, Hacienda, and I don't think I got any shots of Miso but will check as well. I don't think you will see any signs of construction from anywhere on the Sunset side. None of us did, although none of us stayed on the riviera side either.

When we got our photographer's pictures they were better than we expected given the restrictions of the yuppa. She had placed her camera near the ground and angled upwards and was walking around the box to get various angles and shots of different bridesmaids and groomsmen. I might post some later on when I'm back on my home computer. I wouldn't be too discouraged about not having the gazebo available although I still would have preferred the gazebo and more importantly would have preferred if there was better communication with my WC in which I could have been informed of it not being available. But overall we had a good experience as the reception and all else made up for it.

Thanks Agirolamo for all of your compliments! And I did pass on your kind words to my wife too. I think we could have gotten a rehearsal if we really pushed for it. I did ask her if we can do a rehearsal and she said "yeah sure, we will be there a bit earlier around 1:40 and we can go over everything then (the ceremony time was 2 pm) and they didn't give good instructions as to how to find the "yuppa" - so by the time we finally found it it was closer to 2 pm even though we tried to be there for 1:30 to 1:40. Perhaps if we knew we weren't looking for an actual gazebo it would have been easier to find. The WC didn't arrive until close to 2 pm so there wasn't a proper rehearsal. I think the only way we could have gotten one is if I specifically requested that we all meet and rehearse a day before the ceremony, as opposed to just asking for a rehearsal and accepting the response that we can meet 20 mins before the ceremony to rehearse. The WC's office is a good 15 min walk from the yuppa, so that's probably why she did not want to accomodate a separate rehearsal. The ceremomy was 20 mins long. As for a la carte's, I ate at Mama Mia, La Hacienda, Miso and the Seafood restaurant (I forget what it's called now). They are all decorated nice and formal inside, although most of the group did not like the food at Mama Mia (was very salty, maybe its the cheese they use in Mexico, not sure)...the seafood restaurant had some nice dishes but some seemed under-cooked...Miso (Japanese) was the favourite for most of us, and I really liked La Hacienda too (Mexican restaurant). Miso has the option of seating you in front of a tepan grill where they cook it in front of you, not sure if they offer that with wedding receptions but I dont see why not. Good luck with everything, let me know if you have any other questions.

Well thank you for the kind words!

It should be the exact same as Sandra's. I know this because I was in touch with Sandra and once I got switched to Alejandra and she gave me her email on the phone it was the exact same email address as Sandra used to use. Might be hard to get a hold of her over email without first being in contact with her on the phone. I wasn't hearing back on my emails at first until I called and spoke to her, intro'd myself, told her I've been emailing her a few times, explained my sense of urgency, etc. and from there on I'd enter my name and wedding date in the subject and woudl get more prompt replies...although part of it may have been since my wedding was just weeks away lol.

AlbertaCarrie - I didn't find any significant difference in the resort from the explosion. It did seem to be under-capacity for most of the time but got very busy by Christmas Eve. We were staying on the Princess side so perhaps the Riviera side was under-capacity. In all I think it being under-capacity is an advantage in that there is more room on the beach and pools, less lineups, etc. Margaret - that's nice you got a heads up that the gazebo won't be available. To answer your questions, we brought a photographer with us. It worked out well because she knew several of the guests and the bride from beforehand. I was there from the 15th to 25th and out of the 10 days there were probably 2-3 days/nights that weren't optimal temperature. We were lucky that our wedding day was probably the warmest, but there were a few nights where an outdoor reception may have been a tad chilly. I do think 4 pm is a bit late for the ceremony. By 4 the sun is getting down and its not as warm or sunny outside. We had ours at 2 pm, and I think having it any later than 2 pm would have cut the photo time too short between the ceremony and reception (which started at 6 pm). Even though we specified a 2pm ceremony it wasn't until closer to 2:30 that we began becasue some guests will be late or will have trouble finding the place, so you need to plan for these things and leave enough time for photos while considering that you want the sun to be high in the sky during pictures. That's one advantage of bringing your own photographer in that they won't charge hourly so you can keep a sufficient gap between the ceremony and reception without having to pay by the hour.

For the last few hours we danced in the sand, may have been easier with a dancefloor (I think you can get one for an extra fee) but I opted out because i figured dancing in the sand barefoot is unique in its own way

Me, my wife and our WC Alejandra

here's a picture of us cutting the cake, they cake looked nice and had seashells made with white chococolate

The reception photos are a bit blurry because we haven't gotten our professional pics yet, these are just ones taken by our camera or friends' cameras. There were 4 round tables of 8 and one head rectacular table of 6 for a total of 38.

Just to the side of the "wedding box"

This location is opposite the beach, they have many huts and trees such as this to take photos with:

Bridesmaids with me in front of the beach (yes I'm the odd groom who posts here instead of the birde like most couples :-) BTW we haven't gotten our package of professional photos yet, these are just to give an idea of how the ceremony and reception will look (on a day with good weather)

Us inside the "box" (not sure what its supposed to be called lol)