mochamakes3

That is the same deal for all Palace Resorts, plus if you have 60 nights booked they refund 4 nights and for 75 room nights they refund you 7 nights.

seasidebride - El Caribeno is delicious. It was our favorite restaurant. You can meet upstairs on the terrace for drinks beforehand or go up there afterwards. We went to Barracuda our first night and there was a long wait, some of our meals didn't turn out great either. I think you ended up with a much better reservation.

Here's a few of the templates I used: Mad Lib: Dear Bride & Groom I/we are so ________________for you! You two are _______________ together, and we’re ________________ to be able to ____________with you today. Your lives together will be full of ____________ and _____________ as long as you always____________ , never ____________, and remember to . Some advice for the future: When you have children, name them and . Take a romantic vacation to ____________ together. And on your 50th wedding anniversary, don’t forget to ____________. I/we ____________ you both and wish you nothing but ____________ ____________________. Love _____________________________ And the nice pdf version: Drink Tickets: madlib_final.pdf Drink Tickets.pub

My DH never set a budget, but it was my goal to keep everything under $10K. Now that we are all done with everything, including AHR, here's what we spent: Resort: 4500 for 11 nights Airfare: 1050 License Fee: 350 (incl. translations) Save-the-date: 100 (incl. stamps) Engagement Photos: 50 DIY Passport Invitations: 300 (incl. stamps) OOT Bags: 350 Flowers & Decor: 500 Bride's Attire: 500 (incl. 3 dresses) Photography: 2800 Set-up Fees: 110 Horse & Carriage: 130 iPod Speakers & Technician: 220 AHR Luncheon: 2600 That brings our total expenditure to $12,710. I did not include the cost of DH's suit because he purchased a black suit that will be worn several times again. We used resort promotional dollars to pay for hair, makeup and our wedding video. Our resort also included a welcome dinner for 30 people, cocktail hour after ceremony and a private reception for all our guests. And as a final bonus, because we had enough room nights booked, we received a refund from the resort for $1600. Overall, our dream wedding cost just over $11,000.

Leigh, congratulations on your anniversary. Is Palace resorts doing anything special for you? I thought I read somewhere that if you do a honeymoon within a year after having your wedding they give you 2 free nights with the purchase of 5. We were hoping to do that in November as our honeymoon.

I decided to do this thread in several posts, so that I wouldn't lose any information in between. When guests entered the cocktail/bar area, they were greeted by my nephew that distributed drink tickets. We asked him to give one ticket to every adult. Since it was lunch, we didn't expect many people to drink. We also supplied an alcoholic and a non-alcoholic punch. My sister/bridesmaid was also there to welcome guests. We had set up our pro photo album, as well as two smaller photo books with pictures from my parents' camera. While guests were flipping through the photo albums, we asked them to complete a wedding mad-lib instead of signing a guest book. I can't remember how I stumbled across this one, but it was great. My only regret is that we didn't read them aloud at the wedding. Some were very funny. It's amazing how many people think you should have lots of babies and name the babies after them. My plan is to put the completed mad-libs in a scrap book with pictures from our AHR. Of course, I forgot where I found it, but I will post it once I remember to bring a copy to work. To decorate the dining room, we used the chair sashes and table runners from our Mexico wedding. I washed them all once we got home and really should have folded them, but DH said they looked great wrinkly. I love that he always says nice things like that so I don't stress. I also set up a candy bar in one corner. For our candy bar, I purchased several glass jars from Winners, ranging in price from $5 to $10. We filled 2 jars with peach gummy hearts and mike and ike candies. I purchased kettle corn from a marked vendor, which is delicious. For those of you unfamiliar, it is popcorn that is popped in melted sugar and butter, so it is sweet and salty yumminess. I made chocolate dipped pretzel rods for another jar. I also made three flavors of cupcakes and iced them all in mounds of butter cream. We displayed these on metal cupcake holders that were purchased from Michaels. Finally, set upon a glass pedestal was our beautiful homemade wedding cake. I made the cake and while searching for inspiration, chose a rosette cake. We didn't cut the cake, but instead brought it home to indulge. We also made favors for everyone that were set at each place setting. The favors were smores. We purchased strawberry and chocolate marshmallows which we packaged with graham crackers and a hershey bar. I made DH drive across the border with me so that we could purchase the marshmallows and chocolate. For our favor tags, we gave instructions for making smores in the oven and on the front I wrote a little poem. More Hugs, More Kisses, More Memories, and S'More Love to Share. The food that they served at the Courtyard was delicious. I didn't hear any complaints and when we walked around between courses, it looked like everyone had cleared their plates. Overall, we had a wonderful afternoon. Our guests were all very thankful and it was a great opportunity for the two families to mingle. I'm glad that we didn't do a more simple reception because we were able to enjoy the time with our guests instead of worrying about getting food ready. I will try to post some pictures as soon as possible. But sadly, it looks like our wedding journey is now over. As I told DH on our drive home, time to clean out the wedding room and get rid of all my wedding porn.

I've noticed that although many brides have an AHR, very few of us share the details involved with the planning. I don't know if the lovely moderators will want to move this to the planning forum but I figured it might stand out a little more here in the AHR forum. Since most of DH's family was unable to attend our Moon Palace wedding, we decided that it would be a good idea to hold a reception for them to meet my family. About a month before our actual wedding, I started searching for a venue that would hold about 70 people. Of course, my parents live in Ottawa, his family is mostly about an hour South of Ottawa, and we live 6 hours East of Ottawa. This meant that I had to do all my research online, and hope that I would stumble across something suitable. We debated on the style of our reception, and finally decided that since we didn't want his family to feel obligated to rent hotel rooms, we would host a luncheon reception. We found a beautiful, historic restaurant located in the Byward Market area of Ottawa. We were able to reserve the top floor of the Courtyard Restaurant: I sent an email request to the event staff and they were very quick to reply. They offered us a variety of available dates, unfortunately our preferred date got booked before we made a final decision. We had originally picked a Saturday afternoon, but ended up with Sunday. I think this worked out better because we had more time to prepare once we got into town. It would have been too rushed if we had to get everything done over night. It did take a few emails to remind the event staff that we were out of town and that we would already be married by the time our reception took place. But eventually they figured out that we were not interested in missing a full day of work to attend a one hour planning session and tasting. The restaurant offered a variety of menus. We settled on the wedding luncheon menu that included soup or salad, a choice of three entrees, and dessert. It also included a cocktail reception with cheese and crackers.

We loved our TTD session, and had so much fun with our photographers! I used my actual dress and it turned out fine. The day of our wedding it probably got trashed more from dragging the train through the sand and across the grass. We started the shoot in the later afternoon when the pool was starting to empty, but it was fun to shock people by jumping in while dressed up! By the time we were finishing our shoot, it started to rain (the only day) and it worked out fabulous. A couple of weeks after we got home, I turned my dress inside out and washed in on the delicate cycle. It took a couple of tries because it was stained by clay (from the wedding day) and a lot of oxy clean, but it looks great now. Here's the link to our photographer's blog about the session: http://lightscapephotography.wordpress.com/category/trash-the-dress/ I'd almost be tempted to do another one where I complete trash the dress beyond recognition.

My BMs wore Tangerine dresses from David's bridal. It was a great color, but only available in store. The same dress is also available in watermelon. I think the style is 83690. And my favorite thing about the dress, it has pockets!

Teira - Good luck. I hope you get a positive soon. Somehow we missed last month, but this is a fertile week so fingers crossed it works out for us this month. Joanne, from what I've learned about charting your temp rises around ovulation for a few days and then drops back down for one of two reasons, implantation or preparing for AF. I hope it's the first one for you.If it goes back up, usually that means implantation.

Simistar - Yay! I hope they do find a second heartbeat and they both stay strong for the rest of your term. Sorry to hear about hyperstimulation. That's so scary, especially when you were all alone at home. Hopefully, it will clear up or at least subside. Keep us posted.

Simistar - How did your U/S go? I hope your baby is doing well.

Ayita that is such a wonderful story, thank you for sharing and congratulations!

I still haven't taken the time to do our review from our wedding in April because I want to include some of our pro-pics, but here are my answers: We chose the comp package so that we would only pay for what we wanted and not be limited. I was able to reserve our first choice locations about 6 months in advance and was in contact with the Cancun coordinator at that time. We used palace $ for our video and are glad we have it, but would have been upset if we had paid actual money. My parents did photo shoots with the Smile Market people and although they were good, they weren't great. We used wonderful photographers from home that enjoyed 5 nights at MP so we did not pay any vendor fees. Since we didn't upgrade very much at the resort, we only spent the following $300 for civil ceremony, $130 for horse and carriage, $28 for additional copies of certificate, $250 for speakers and technician, and my mom spent about $250 on two floral arrangements and two wrist corsages for the mothers. I brought almost all of our decor. I bought chair sashes and table runners for less than $80. I made real touch bouquets for BM and boutonnieres for GM. I had a real touch bouquet for myself, but at the last minute I had MP bring it to the florist so she could incorporate fresh roses. I spent about $300 on real touch flowers to get exactly what I wanted. Let me know if I can help any more. It is tough to make selections, but pretty much if you ask for a quote on specific items, they will provide them. From this forum, I had a better idea of what I wanted and based my budget on that. I also decided in advance that I would not spend over a certain amount.

No, we just requested the speaker package that was around $200. I really don't even know the name of the technician.

Oops.... sorry I typed it wrong: Mauricio Moncada [[email protected]]

We used them for to provide speakers for our laptop music and were really happy with the service and sound. They provided a microphone, a technician, speakers and all the proper connections. We never put together a play list, so the technician used pretty much whatever we had on our laptop, plus what he had on his phone. He did a great job playing current popular songs, which is what we wanted. I gave him a list of the important songs and they worked out perfectly. The only problem we had was that I had accidentally downloaded a "dirty" version of one song, so I had to run over and skip past it once I realized what was happening. So I can't really blame him. It was totally worth it! If you don't trust their song selection, just make your own playlist.

It's PSAV. That's the one we used and were really pleased. I'm pretty sure I attached the pricing on the Moon Palace wiki, but here's the email contact: [email protected] PSAV Wedding Packages - Moon Palace 2011.pdf

Thanks for the recipe! With only three weeks left, I better get cracking on my AHR DIY list!

So Erin, how have you been feeling lately? Have you told anyone?

Oh Laura, sorry that they upset you and hubby so much. I'm glad to hear that everything you planned turned out so well. It sucks that you spent so much time setting up your playlist and picking out songs only to have it pushed aside. I'm glad your friends played your music through dinner. I think that's why I have completely taken over all the plans for our AHR. I have been so worried that someone else will step in and try to make it something that isn't what we want. My hubby is already worried that his family will be under dressed or cause a scene. MIL doesn't even want to sit with FIL's family because she doesn't get along with them. I'm also worried that some will show up hung over or drunk, and it's a Sunday lunch! So big hugs Laura, just remember there's usually someone out there that has it worse off.

Some people will be back at work sorting tonight, and mail service should resume tomorrow. I'm so glad we did phone in RSVP, got way better response and I didn't have to worry about any getting delayed or lost. Now it's time to start working on thank you cards.

I recognize the palm tree image... good to see how it turned out!

Every time I try to type my new last name, I get about three letters in before I realize that I automatically just type my maiden name. I haven't been able to change my name without a translation of our marriage cert, so I still have time to get used to writing it.

Even the spider mums? I always love getting those in bouquets.