gujarwala

Okay so this is the location they brought us to for the ceremony. Now that i think of it we should have had the bridesmaids and groomsmen stand outside the box on each side rather than cram everyone in, but like I said we were expecting the gazebo and were caught by surprise with no rehersal so had to decide on the spot. Otherwise the beach and background looks gorgeous, I will attach more to give you an idea of the background and photo opportunities

Hey everyone, I just got back yesterday night, our wedding was on Dec. 20th. I will post pictures soon. Overall it was awesome, and all of our guests praised everything, especially the reception setup and the food (the grill buffet, its offered with the private beach reception and I think its the same as what is served at the Thai Beach Club too). We did do the private beach reception. They had it set up near the beach and was very well lit and decorated, food was great, lots of servers and bartenders, and the beach bar was exclusively serving us. The only thing I was not extremely impressed about was the ceremony, we were supposed to be in the Gazebo, one of the reasons I chose it is because the previous wedding coordinator (Sandra, who has now left) told us that it fit 50-55 people inside in total which was more than enough room for our total gathering of 38 people, but of this we had 7 groomsmen and 7 bridesmaids each so I wanted to sure the actual platform where we read our vows was roomy enough, and Sandra assured us the Gazebo would be. Anyway the Gazebo is in the area that had the blast in November and therefore it is not available, however the current WC had a month to tell me this but did not, and there was no rehearsal. So the day of the ceremony we are all looking for a gazebo and are confused to find a much smaller setup, basically a wooden "box frame" without much room inside, and chairs set up behind the box for guests to sit in. So while guests had enough seating room it was extremely cramped for the wedding party inside, and there was ribbons which flowed around the frame making it difficult for guests to see us inside as well as for the photographer to take pictures. I think if the gazebo was not available we should have been told ahead of time and offered different arrangements to choose from. Anyway I did compliment the WC overall but still complained about the ceremony mishap, and requested somethign in return as a gesture of good-will. Specifically, I said I felt I deserved a $200 refund for the inconvenience, which I don't believe is a large amount, especially when you consider the total fees charged for the wedding were about $5600. However, in response all they did was send to our room two large towels which had embroidered the resort name and the words "our wedding" undernearth as a souvenir and attached a letter to accept the gift as their way of apologizing for the inconvenience. Oh and one more thing I thought was silly was that the day of the wedding the WC rushed to get me to sign an authorization form for $148 for yellow ribbons on the chairs. I'm sure this is the standard fee however they must have forgotten to include it originally when we signed our agreement and I made payment, so because of that I think they should have simply eaten up the $148 "loss" rather than rush to have me authorize an additional relatively minor charge the morning of my wedding. I dont mean to sound negative overall, just being honest about the good and the bad, and like I said overall it was a good experience, just could have had some better communication. Also a warning to anyone planning on having a gazebo wedding - as of right now the gazebo is not available even if your WC has not told you so! I have no idea when it will be available. You can feel free to tell your WC that the couple that got married on Dec 20th posted online that the gazebo is not available.

What do you consider a reasonable amount to tip? I'm really unsure and do not want to let anyone feel under-tipped. I imagine the wedding coordinator gets a decent tip, and then a bit to the DJ and servers. What is considered reasonable?

Thanks agirolamo! Actually I made a typo, I won't be returning until Dec 25th so will post my review shortly afer that. We are 38 people and booked the gazebo ceremony + private beach reception. I agree the beach reception is pricey especially considering everyone is already paying all-inclusive fees as it is, but I didn't like the idea of the a-la-carte receptions only being 1.5 hrs with no speeches, line-ups for drinks with other resort guests, no slide-show, first dance, etc. The other option is their Gala receptions (private receptions but indoor), but those can still be close in price to the beach reception depending on the menu you choose, and when you're in Mexico it just seems odd to have a reception indoors rather than on the beach.

As far as I know the entire resort including both Sunset and Riviera and all amenities and restaurants have been open in full for a while now. I'm leaving on Dec. 15th and returning on the 20th and will post here how I found the resort and service, and will answer all questions.

A friend of one of our just got back from the GSP and said all was open, service was great, and overall she had a wonderful time. That made me feel better. My WC at the resort also told me a Vancouver travel agent is coming on Friday/Saturday to do he own independent inspection of how the resort is now and she was confident to give me her contact info if I wanted to contact her to get an external opinion rather than only going off of what the hotel staff are saying. By now I do feel perfecty fine with the resort and also sent authorization for full payment of our wedding so I told her its OK in that she doesnt have to provide me with the external contact info.

Well here's the update: http://www.630ched.com/Channels/Reg/NewsLocal/Story.aspx?id=1320655 Looks like it did not close but almost did. Doesn't sound very comforting when you're about to pay over $5k for a wedding a few weeks away, what if I pay it and it closes between now and then and get no refund? I will ask the coordinator for a few extra days before paying to watch what happens, I think she will be okay with it, or should be at least.

A friend told me they heard on the local radio news this morning that Mexican authorities gave the resort a deadline of noon today to produce some documents (I imagine to demonstrate safety compliance) or the whole resort would be shut down. Now I don't know if my friend understood correctly (she is intelligent which is why I'm giving it some credibility) but I've been trying to find any word of this online but all news articles in google (on the first several pages at least) related to the incident are dated earlier and therefore I haven't been able to confirm whether this is true. Even if my friend understood correctly perhaps the radio news was not credible. Has anyone heard of this? I was just about to make my final payment today but now would like to wait a few days to try to see if this is true or not, just in case I end up making payment and the resort closes down...

Sunwing got back to us today with three options, they said they can switch us for no charge to the Sandos Caracol, Grand Coba or Rio Yukatan. I looked into them briefly, not because I feel unsafe at Sunset but more so because I think some of our guests may prefer it, anyway it seems two of the three are downgrades, and the Yukatan looks nice and comparable to the Princess but one of our guests who is flying through ACV can't switch there since that resort isn't serviced by ACV. So we're going to stick to the Princess after all. Alejandra also told me its re-opening in full on Saturday. I also noticed the prices aren't really going down since the blast so I think that means not many have switched their rooms so it should still be near full capacity and a happening resort at the time we go. The ball is also rolling with Alejandra and she's much more responsive now than when I was frustrated a few weeks ago. Should have our agreement signed and payment made any day now.

Margaret I'm pretty sure the resort itself will move your Riviera guests to the Sunset side if you request so, and especially if their rooms happen to be in those that are closed down I'm sure they would relocate them.

Someone left a comment yesterday on this article http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/11/20/mexico-resort-explosion-closure.html saying that they are currently at the resort and that "only" 30% of people from the Riviera side have been moved over to the Sunset side as a precaution and otherwise the resort is fully operating.

Not sure what happened above, I meant to quote budgetingbride and typed a response but for some reason its not showing up so I'm going to try again here. Budgetingbride, can you let me know which coordinator told you that your May/2011 wedding would be cancelled due to resort closure? I just talked to Alexandra minutes ago (I think the only coordinators are her and Mara?) and she insisted that no weddings are being cancelled. She also claimed that not even all of the GRP side is closed (just a portion although she did not say how big the portion is, I asked if its about half and she said, "Yeah about that."). She also says none of the GSP side is closed, and that all restaurants and bars remain open. My agreement is supposed to come very soon and I'll need to make a payment of about $5,300 and I'm slightly worried in that I dont want to make this payment if my wedding will be cancelled or if they are not giving me accurate information. I don't think a resort would do that but I guess you never know.

Quote:Originally Posted by budgetingbride Hello, My wedding was scheduled for May 7, 2011 at the GRP resort. I got an email from my wedding coordinator yesterday she stated that she received notification from GRP that the resort is now closed and they do not have a set date as to when they will be reopening. We were contemplating on staying even after the explosion but now i guess we don't have a choice we have to find somewhere else. This is a complete nightmare knowing that now i only have about 6 months to put everything into prospect. Good Luck to all the future brides, i know im gonna need it. One good thing is DJ Mannia did say due to the circumstances they would refund us 100% of the full deposit. Now its just a headache of finding another location, that offers private beach receptions and can have 40-45 guest, then looking for a new photographer, dj, etc. I just want to scream but i guess maybe this happened for a reason and it just wasn't meant for my family and i to go to Mexico. Since having to switch resorts of course everybody in my wedding party really doesn't even wanna consider Mexico now. So i'll be searching elsewhere.

I just got an email from the old the coordinators at GSP, looks like they are now with BlueBay Grand Esmeralda, the email was a general message that if, due to the unfortunate events at the Princess, anyone would like to switch that they have capacity at BlueBay. Misshh sounds like your agent doesn't want to go through the effort to try to switch you, although I do believe it is pretty difficult. I called our vacation provider and they refer all requests to switch out of GSP to a separate line which seems to ALWAYS give a busy tone. I think mine is too close and group too large to switch, so I'm hoping all goes well and I have a good feeling it will. Will post a review here for sure.

Where did you hear that GSP is closed down? The Nov 21st news article says 450 people were moved from GRP (not GSP), which sounds to be about one-half of the Riviera side, so in total I thought that meant about 1/4 of the overall resort is closed. I called GSP two days ago and they were insisting that their full resort is open, and that only a portion of the GRP is closed. But then again its hard to trust what is said on that side. However I would like to know the source of the rumours that half or even all of the combined resort is closed?

I talked to Alexandra today (I believe her and Mara are the two new coordinators) and was a bit relieved in that although I still haven't gotten my agreement at least this time she knew off hand who I was and some details of my wedding. Every other time I've called over the last few weeks neither of the coordinators knew who I was and would always ask whether or not I've received my agreement yet. My wedding is in about one month and she also told me they are waiving the one-month payment due date because they know its their fault for falling behind in sending couples their agreements. She insisted I will get it soon, didn't give me a hard date but I do believe her this time and generally feel more at ease than I did each of the other times I've tried contacting them over the last few weeks. Also I think its premature to be cancelling trip plans to this resort due to the tragedy, I did a tv news interview on the subject (as well as another woman who had a different opinion than me), if you want you can view it by going to http://edmonton.ctv.ca/ and clicking on the link "Couples set to be wed at Mexican resort now faced with tough decision." Its near the bottom of the page and will probably get booted off soon since it was up for a while already.

When is your wedding? If it was just a few questions I was waiting on I probably wouldn't be frustrated either, but mine is coming up and its almost 30 days away...they said final payment is due 30 days prior to the wedding but you can't make your payment without the agreement...and the agreement contains the terms and the total...so they haven't even told me what my total is yet...and when they do I might have questions or may disagree with something in the contract...if payment isn't really due 30 days prior then I wouldnt be concerned, so I wonder if they strictly enforce that payment due date when they send the agreement just a day or two before the due date (right now they are quoting me they will email it 4 days before payment due date and based on their past history of not meeting their deadlines I imagine it will be even later lol)

I'm having the same problem as a few others here, I was in touch with Sandra who was very prompt and helpful, was supposed to email her my final numbers after which she would send me a contract with all the terms for our ceremony and private beach reception but when I emailed her I didn't hear back...later I found out she's not there anymore but no on else has been emailing me and whenever I call they say they will get back to me "today" but they never do lol...getting a little worried because my wedding is next month. Will keep you guys posted, hopefully they can get organized.

Thanks for all the info! It's very applicable to me since we are having the private beach reception as well and have almost the same size group as you (36 of us so far)

Has anyone had any experience with this site? http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cancun-discounts.com%2Ftours%2Friviera-maya%2Findex.htm&h=cb435FxJ_TO9odIn7KEDfglNBeA Would you recommend it or not? Â Or are there any other sites you would recommend? Â Thanks.

Will have about 20 guests that will be seated (not including the bridesmaids/groomsmen who are standing).

Thanks for your detailed response! What I read was from a guest in 2008 who said the resort fee for the tour to the Chichen Itza was $100 whereas on 5th ave they were going for about $45. Not a huge difference but since we are going with a large group and may be going on more than one tour if indeed tours are cheaper at 5th ave then it would be worthwhile for us to go there on our first day to pick out some tours

I read on another site one reviewer recommended going here to get tickets for various tours as they apparently cost much less than what is charged at the resort, the example given was a tour to the Chichen Itza that is about $45 if purchased from 5th ave vs. about $100 when purchased from the Princess resort. If this is the case I was going to recommend to our group to go 5th avenue on the first day since it's only 15 mins from our resort, but before decided on that I was hoping to verify it with some of the experienced travellers from here.

For whoever has gotten married here - how big is the Gazebo? Reason I ask is so far I have 7 groomsmen and the bride has 5 bridesmaids (thinking of adding another) and we're just concerned whether we will all fit while standing up there. What do you guys think? Also, does the audience sit inside the Gazebo or outside? Thanks!