clgriffi7

Ooh - that is a good one too.  My fiance will think I am nuts for making yet another set of tags!

Originally Posted by JoanneIreland 

We are using "Bubbles of good wishes for the new Mr. & Mrs.!"

Reading reviews from past brides, they say exactly what you are thinking - guests don't eat the cake because of the dessert.  But past brides do say that the Dreams staff will take the leftover cake and keep it in the fridge for later on when you want it.  So you can order some up for room service or get all of your guests together the next night to chow down.  Imagine how great of a picture it would be to have all of your guests with their forks in your half-mangled wedding cake just going to town!  What other type of wedding gives you that opportunity?! 
 

Originally Posted by LoveKiss 

I'm booked for March 2012! 

 

When I think about it practically I don't think the wedding cake will matter so much since the guests will be served dessert. I almost wonder if the cake will mostly go to waste because of that? I think I will have a cake large enough for only 2/3 of my guests because I expect less than half will actually eat it. I've heard it's an extra $100 for an outside vendor so I may just stick with whatever Dreams Cancun provides.

I ended up choosing Dreams Cancun - so I will share my rationale in case you care about the same things I do.

First thing I wanted was a gazebo to get married at that wasn't right in the middle of the resort.  I know you can't have a "private" wedding when outside at a resort, but I didn't want the old guy in the speedo at the pool to be in all of my wedding pictures.  So with that in mind, that narrowed it down to Dreams Cancun and Dreams Puerto Aventuras.

At Dreams Cancun the gazebo is at a point:

At Puerto Aventuras the gazebo is across a little bridge on an "island":

To decide between these two resorts here are the pros and cons I looked at:

Cancun:

Pros: closer to the airport, better beaches, close to nightlife

Cons: in the middle of a big hotel area, farther from excursion attractions

Puerto Aventuras:

Pros: closer to excursion attrractions

Cons:  farther from airport, beaches that have been reviewed poorly on trip advisor, far from nightlife

Based on these things I chose Dreams Cancun.  I am sure all brides have different priorities in what they are looking for, but hopefully it helps to hear how another bride made her decision.

Best of luck deciding!!

Courtney
 

Originally Posted by Cheepers 

Hello Everyone...I just got engaged a month ago and so I say "let the planning begin".  I had no idea there was SO much to think about...thank goodness for this website and all the wonderful brides out there to help!

Anyhow, right now we are thinking of a Dreams Resort on the Mayan Riviera, but can't decide on which location...they are all so stunning. Any thoughts on how to decide?  Oh...and we are thinking May 15th for the big day!

 

Katie

That is a really tough decision!  But I agree with Lincoln that you have the same chance for bad weather in either location in August and that Punta Cana will give you great beaches and bigger resorts while the Riviera Maya offers more off of the resort.

I am getting married in Mexico and for me one of the main reasons is flight prices from my home airport are cheaper to Mexico than to any other location in the Caribbean.  For my fiance and I that isn't a deciding factor, but we knew we needed to keep prices down for our guests.  Maybe that can help you make your decision.

Also I love that the Riviera Maya does offer more to see than just the resort, and we will be taking advantage of that by offering our guests an excursion to see Mayan Ruins & a cenote.

However, you obviously had your reasons to look at Punta Cana first.  So, if you are set on an August wedding, then stick with your first instict and just make sure you are okay with their rainy-day back-up locations.  (I had to move my wedding date up a week based on resort availability, which is worth it if you have a particular resort in mind.)

I was just wondering if that tag saying is too "cutsie"?  So here is another option...much more to the point:

"Fill the air with bubbles as Paul & Courtney walk down the aisle"

or

"Fill the air with bubbles asthe new Mr & Mrs walk down the aisle" 

Originally Posted by clgriffi7 

Ladies -  I want to bounce an idea off of you and see what you think:

 

I am thinking of passing out bubbles with the programs on the chairs at the ceremony and having the guests line the aisle and blow bubbles as my then husband and I walk back down the aisle.  I was thinking that would make for great pictures with the sun setting.

 

What do you think?

 

In order for that to happen, I think I will have to tie a small tag to the bubble with some wording to let the guests know (unfortunately it is to late to put it on the programs as they are already made).  Also I was thinking of writing into the ceremony for the officiant to say something between "you may kiss the bride" and "I now pronounce you man & wife".

 

Can you think of any wording for the tag or the officiant? 

 

My only ideas:

TAG:  "After the husband kisses his wife, blow these bubbles to celebrate their new life" 

OFFICIANT:  "You may kiss your bride.  Now may I ask all of the attendees to stand and line the aisle and fill the air with bubbles to celebrate this new union."  [recessional song (which has a 30 sec intro) plays while guests line up] "I now pronounce you man and wife."

 

Any thoughts would be appreciated! 

I hate to be dense, but what is chocolate napoleon?  Anything with the word "chocolate" in it sounds like it will be good, but just wondering.

 

Originally Posted by NurseM 

Hi, 

 

We had the ultimate and we mixed menu's no problem at all. We had the citrus scallops (i would not get these) I would get the ceaser salad it was awesome! Then we had the lobster bisque, this was just ok. For our main we had the dreams trilogy, it was awesome everyone loved it. For desert we had chocolate napolean also good. 

 

I would have changed the lobster bisque for the seafood chowder, i had that at our rehearsal dinner and loved it!

 

 

 

Ladies -  I want to bounce an idea off of you and see what you think:

I am thinking of passing out bubbles with the programs on the chairs at the ceremony and having the guests line the aisle and blow bubbles as my then husband and I walk back down the aisle.  I was thinking that would make for great pictures with the sun setting.

What do you think?

In order for that to happen, I think I will have to tie a small tag to the bubble with some wording to let the guests know (unfortunately it is to late to put it on the programs as they are already made).  Also I was thinking of writing into the ceremony for the officiant to say something between "you may kiss the bride" and "I now pronounce you man & wife".

Can you think of any wording for the tag or the officiant? 

My only ideas:

TAG:  "After the husband kisses his wife, blow these bubbles to celebrate their new life" 

OFFICIANT:  "You may kiss your bride.  Now may I ask all of the attendees to stand and line the aisle and fill the air with bubbles to celebrate this new union."  [recessional song (which has a 30 sec intro) plays while guests line up] "I now pronounce you man and wife."

Any thoughts would be appreciated! 

Here is the wording we used on our wedding website under the "Registry" tab:

"Your attendance at our wedding so far from home is a wonderful gift in itself.  Your presence is the best present we could ask for!

For those guests that have requested a registry, we have set up an online honeymoon registry.  As we both owned separate houses, and a significant number of duplicate items had to be donated when we moved in together (to save money for the wedding of course!), a traditional in-store registry does not make sense.  We have booked a once-in-a-lifetime Mediterranean cruise on Carnival for our honeymoon/ 1-year anniversary for September of 2012.

Our registry can be found at

...."

We only mentioned the registry on the website, so there will be people that never see it - but we put it out there.  Just an FYI - we chose honeyfund for our registry because they have the lowest fees.  Their fees are ~3% compared to 7+% for other websites.  Basically Honeyfund doesn't charge a fee because they never touch your money, it is passed through PayPal and the ~3% is actually the PayPal fee.

I know guests will do whatever they want to do - which is true of a DW or an at-home wedding.  Best of luck.

My fiance and I met on eHarmony - we were matched immediately and met up maybe 2 weeks later.  After we got engaged my fiance sent our story to them online and they sent us an eHarmony hat and a visor.  The hat and visor will be making the trip to Mexico with us and will likely make an appearance during the rehearsal pictures or TTD pictures

Same here - doing a site visit just wasn't feasible.  However, for me the vacation days from work was an even bigger problem than the money.

 

Originally Posted by JayKay 

We aren't doing a site visit.  Financially it wasn't feasible for us and we trust all the months of research we did before hand, also this site has been a life saver!

Soon to be and past brides:

What did you choose/are you choosing for your menu?  What was good, what was not?

With the Ultimate package are we allowed to mix and match courses from the gold and silver menus?

Thanks

Courtney

With the amount of money I am spending on photography - you better believe I will be sharing pictures with anyone willing to look at them!!

 

Originally Posted by JoanneIreland 

I'll check out the jewelry link, thanks so much, really appreciate that!

Oh mixtures of 2 shades of blue ..... that sounds so lovely!! I really like that.
I hope when November comes and goes we all get back on here and share our experiences and pictures!!

I plan on getting a 2 or 3 tier cake but I know harldy anyone will eat it after the desser that is already included with the dinner.  But what previous brides have told me is that the resort will put it in the fridge for you and you can have it later.  How much fun could it be to get everyone together a couple of days later and pull out the cake and just have everyone eat off of it?  I am imagining a picture of everyone with their forks in the partially mangled cake

I think the great thing is that you have a To Do list...if you can see what you have left to do and keep crossing items off, then you will be okay.  I am with you on the $2000 wedding band - I think mine was close to your original cost.  You have a bit of time to find a better deal.  I know the price of gold has really gone up in the past weeks (with the economic issues) so maybe that has something to do with the price increase.
 

I am not sure what kind of jewelry you like, but I got mine from this place :

http://www.silverlandjewelry.com/

And here is what I got:

We will have a total of 10 people joining us at our legal ceremony (B&G, officiant, my parents, his parents, his brother, my sister & brother-in-law, photogrpaher, and 2 friends - one of whom wants to practice her photography during the ceremony).  But the big thing is that we are not trying to keep ours a secret.  Everyone going to Mexico knows that we are getting legally married at home first.

My fiance keeps trying to say that what we are doing for the legal wedding is all he needs and all of the rest of the stuff in Mexico and AHP aren't necessary.  I want to beat him every time he says that!

My colors are a light blue and navy blue.  I felt like those were pretty neutral (and not too girly for my fiance's sake) - so I will have bright multi-colored flowers that I won't have to worry about matching or clashing.
 

Originally Posted by JoanneIreland 

LOL, I hear you on the cake, I'm not too confident in their abilities (and really how much can you expect from them anyways), so i just wanted something simple that was decorated with seashells. Like you I hear that the cake tastes fabulous, but after a 4 course meal I'd say the cake won't be eaten much. When we get down to Mexico I will look at their options and decide whether to change or not.
I just looked at my "To Do" list and my heart literally almosts stops every time I do!
This evening after work myself and my fiance are going to purchase the clothing for him, both dads and the best man, so hopefully that will be one big thing off the list.

Yesterday my fiance called the jewelry store he got my e-ring from to order the matching wedding ring (we think we were originally told $800) but they said the price is now $1,900 plus tax. No way, absolutely no way do I want or need a $2K wedding band, so that's a bit of a panic in what to do now. We might pop into some other stores this evening to see if we have other options.

I'm also going out of my mind trying to find jewelry I like. I heard Nordstoms have some good options so going to pop in there as well this evening when we are at the mall.  

It's amazing once you mention the "W" word how the prices of everything jumps so much, it's actually funny. Trying to find white shoes under $200 was huge challenge!

Do you have many people going to your legal ceremony at home? We originally said just both sets of parents, but I so badly want my sister there, but if we do that we'd have to invite his 2 sisters who can't keep their mouth shut on anything, so I'm so torn. Oh and that's another thing as well on the "To Do" list - we already did a 2 day pre-marriage course, but apparently there is a second course we need to take and also have to have a follow up meeting with the priest.

I wish I had a dollar for everytime in the past few months that i said to my fiance "I was right from the begininng, we should have eloped".

LOL, sorry for the venting, some days everything just feels so overwhelming.

What color theme is everyone going for? We are going with yellow, and here and there I will add a splash of orange.

 

Thanks!!  Having that "double happiness" symbol as part of our wedding logo has been really convenient for me as far as all of my tags, labels, etc.  I am not the type to want to put my name all over things I give to other people, so I just use that Chinese character to tie things together.  For example, here are the tags we will put on maracas:

Originally Posted by Starfish0512 

I love this for it's simplicity, it's meaning, the cultural background and that your FI designed it! The script font looks so nice with it, I definitely don't think it's masculine at all (I'm not a girly girl either)!!

 

 

Wow - you have done A LOT more with your coordinator than I have!!  After signing the contract I have had 2 communications with her (and those were through my wonderful travel agent):  1) I will be bringing my own photographer and 2) I want a DJ and a dance floor.

My thought was almost to get closer to the wedding (when I have a guest count) and send almost everything to her at once so it is all in one or two emails.

Up until about 6 months out we still had quite a few people saying they were coming, but then a lot of them went quiet.  The ones that continued to bring up the topic and say how excited they were are the ones that have booked - and I am sure the rest won't.  My group rate runs out in about 2 weeks, and I am just wondering whether one more friend (possibly with a +1) will be coming.  After we hear about him, I am going to move forward with that guest count and assume no one else is coming.  If someone surprises me and books last minute, then they will be worked in the best we can.

I got a bit jealous when you mentioned sending your cake inspiration.  From the pictures I have seen from other BDW brides at my resort, their bakers are not the best decorators.  All of the brides say how delicious the cakes are, but they aren't a whole lot to look at.  I am thinking of asking the coordinator for pictures and then choosing what it seems like they can do best.  I don't want to get my heart set on a beautiful cake and then have it turn out to look like what I would have made myself.

Originally Posted by JoanneIreland 

Yeah I am the same. My wedding co-ordinator has been brilliant with how quick she replies, but at the same time I haven't exactly been tormenting her. I still have no idea on numbers so it's been hard to give her exact details. We did pick ceremony and reception locations, menu, sent pictures of inspiration wedding cake, choose color theme, picked huppa, booked mariachi band, but anything else like seating charts I can't do just yet. I have all these people saying they are going but yet haven't booked so I don't know what to think!  It's frustrating, I'm begining to think they really have no plans of going, but why not just say that and make my life easier.

Thanks.  Let's just hope the wedding coordinator goes for it!

Now that I have hit the 3 month mark, I feel like it is time to start getting the details set with my wedding coordinator.  All of the previous brides from my resort kept saying that until your wedding was just a couple of months out they would take forever to respond to you - so I have tried to leave them alone for the most part up to this point...

 

Originally Posted by JoanneIreland 

Courtney I prefer option number 2, before the actual sunset time the sky will change into beautiful colors which you'll have the chance to capture during ceremony and immediately afterwards.

Okay ladies - please help me think this through....

The original schedule given to me by the wedding coordinator was:

5:00 ceremony (I am guessing ours will take maybe 20 minutes - so the sun would set at 5:10 in the middle of the ceremony)

6:00-7:00 cocktail hour

7:00-10:00 reception

- I had planned to take the bride and groom pictures before the wedding (this doesn't bother me because 1) we will already be legally married and 2) I will stage a first look with the photographer so we will get even better picture of him seeing me for the first time) and in the 5:20-6:00 time have the entire group (only 29 ppl) take pictures together.

Now I am thinking:

- still take pictures with groom before hand

4:30-4:50 ceremony (hopefully there will be a beautiful and colorful sky in the ceremony pictures)

4:50-5:30 (sun will set during this time) to take more pictures

5:30-6:30 cocktail hour

6:30-9:30 reception

ending earlier makes me think we might need to plan to go out dancing afterward

What do you ladies think?  I really hesitate to pull the ceremony up any earlier because I don't think my group will do well if they wander off and then have to come back.

I personally prefer the first one, but that is because I bought a mermaid dress with a ruffle bottom.  The dresses are quite different with the tighter mermaid and the more voluminous A-line.  Do you picutre a sexier dress or a more fairy-tale type dress? Both dresses are beautiful and they both look good on you - so it is a matter of what style do you imagine yourself in? 

Originally Posted by X-Tina 

 

Hi Ladies!

 

I really need your opinion on my dress selection. I can't decide between these two dresses. 

 

http://s1116.photobucket.com/albums/k575/christina22210/

 

Help!!

Question:  what time is your ceremony?

I want to have a sunset ceremony for 2 reasons

1)  I think it is romantic and the pictures will be gorgeous

2)  it will be closer to dinner time, so the wedding can flow from ceremony through to the reception without a break (we will take our bride & groom pictures before the ceremony, including a staged "first look")

Looking online, on my wedding date in Cancun, sunset is supposed to be 5:10pm.  Currently my ceremony in set for 5:00pm.  Do you think there will be good lighting for pictures throughout the ceremony?  Or do I need to move the ceremony up to say 4:45pm?

Thanks for your advice

Courtney

A previous bride said she put hers together and sent it to Claudia.  Then Claudia gave it to the officiant.  However, she took an extra copy with her in case the officiant didn't have it....  (which sounds like a really smart idea)

Thanks...I will have to tell my fiance that his handy work got a compliment on the bridal forum....hehe

 

Originally Posted by torilynnsmith 

This is great and I love the intigration of your FIs culture, it works perfectly yet is still so subtle!!!! Very nice Courtney!!!!!!
 

 

This is the logo we are using most often (my fiance is of Chinese descent and the character is "double happiness" which is used for wedding celebrations).  I asked my fiance to design something for us, so our logo is a little more masculine - which is fine with me because I am not a girly girl.

Those are soo nice.  I am not surprised all of your guests called and raved about them.

I am not sure my fiance would be willing to go for it, but I may just have to sneak around and do this on my own!

And congratulations on your wedding - it looks like your group had an amazing time.

I actually purchased a waterproof digital camera last year for about $100 (they were having a sale on the less desirable colors!).  Here is a link to the options at Best Buy:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Compact-Cameras/Waterproof-Cameras/pcmcat214000050004.c?id=pcmcat214000050004

If you find one you like, search for it on ebay and you will likely find it cheaper.  One recommendation is to buy a wrist-strap for your camera that floats, so if you drop the camera it won't sink out of sight.....

Originally Posted by Jwed12 

What??? Underwater digital camera? How cool is that? Thanks everyone for the input!!!

 

 

Alright ladies - this group is starting to come up on the 3-month mark.  I have told myself throughout my long engagement that at 3 months I would allow myself to start getting excited

The major things happening in my wedding planning at the moment:

- my group rate with the resort runs out in just a couple of weeks, so we are having to nicely nag the remaining few guests that verbally committed to go ahead and book

-  I just contacted a seamstress the other day to set up my appointments to get my dress altered.  This lady has all 5-start reviews online so I wanted to book her in advance.  I take my dress in for the first appointment September 12th.  That date is a bit early, but I need the dress back by mid-October for a bridal portrait session.

- working on my programs this week...it is way early to be doing that, but since they are DIY I wanted to get them out of the way

Another thing to get excited about:  my legal wedding is just over 2 months away (October 9th).  My fiance keeps referring to it as the "real wedding"....grrrr.  No, that is the "legal wedding", the "real wedding" is the one in front of our friends and family when I wear the big white dress!!!!!  I think at this point he continues to say it just to get me riled up.

Hope all of you are starting to get excited to!

Courtney