all the love

Didn't see if anyone answered this for you - in terms of buying the bottle of wine, they do offer this, but you can just order wine by the glass and it is included in the all inclusive. You can get better wine by the bottle if you want to pay for it but you don't have to.

And we didn't once have anyone talk to us about timeshares, except when we went into Cancun for the day. We just ignored the people at the airport (apparently you have to approach them, they can't stop you) and there was nobody at the resort any of the time during the 10 days we were there.

It's a beautiful resort with top-notch service and they will do a wonderful job with your wedding. Go for it!
 

Originally Posted by MissNikki 

Hello all I am looking at getting married here but I am worried about the reviews on trip advisor.   They say that they are making u buy bottles of wine to eat in la carets ....  And tat people are getting hounded with timeshares ---  anythoughts

 

Yeah, the video was still only 25 minutes. I don't feel like there was much that wasn't in the video though. We only paid for one extra hour of filming, but if you paid for more I can see how there might be stuff left out. I actually didn't mind that the camera was still for the whole ceremony, it was nice to be able to watch it, and our photographers did a great job capturing things from other angles.
 

Originally Posted by jacqjade 

Hi! I just have a question about your DVD...when u paid for the extra hour on top of the package..was your video still just 25 min long? Cuz I had done the sme and was told that they FILM for longer..but the video isn't longer. Also, I was disappointed that 15 min. of the video was the ceremony where the camera was completely still.

 

Hi ladies,

Our wedding video DVD arrived in the mail yesterday! We used the videographer included with the resort and paid for an extra hour on top of the one that was include with our package. The DVD really is wonderful, he did a great job. The Videographer was Alex Gonzalez with cancunweddingvideo.com.

I can't figure out how to get this thing loaded up online yet but once I do I will share the link so you can see the quality of the work. We are so happy to have the video, it's great to be able to watch the ceremony again!

Hello ladies, just thought I would add my thoughts here! We did do a trash the dress, and I used my actual, original wedding dress. The worst damage it sustained was a torn hemline (from the weight of all the sand!) but I showered in it, dried it out, and the sand all shook out, and then my wedding coordinator offered to have it sent out for cleaning - they did an incredible job, and it was $40.

Here's a pic of my dress drying out after our session...

Yes dessert is also included (although ours ended up being kind of awful and almost nobody ate it.) Here is a photo of our cake so you can see the size. This is what is included in the package (this size anyway)

Originally Posted by khunt29 

Wonder if more cake is even required, dessert is included with both pkgs, right?

 

We had 32 people at our wedding, and we never even talked to Ana about getting more champage or cake, but there was more than enough for everybody. If you're only a bit over the 25, I wouln't worry about the expense. We did pay for the extra meals though (children are 1/2 price) and it was a total of $66.78 per person (Divine package).
 

Originally Posted by 82turtles 

Don't forget about the 11% tax and 15% service that is on top of that $48/pp dinner fee.. it actually comes out to about $60.50 for each additional Eternity dinner. If you add in the extra cost for dinner, cocktail hour, cake and champagne it comes out to about $95 per person after tax and service for guest numbers over 25. You can possibly save from not paying for the overage on cocktail hour or cake, since it seems they have enough either way, but for budgeting/planning reasons I'd suggest you plan around the full $95/pp for numbers over 25! We struggled with that added cost, and for that very reason limited the number of people we invited. While it does sound terrible, when we had a few people have to back out at the last minute for work reasons, I wasn't too upset, knowing we'd just saved about $300!

Good luck!

 

 

If anyone has an invite they could throw my way it would be appreciated! [email protected]

Sorry, the chair sashes are all taken!

Just remember, it's the total value of everything and not the value of any individual items.
 

Originally Posted by kitkat863 

Thanks all the love! I thought it was just gifts but I wasn't sure if what else! I don't think that I will have anything over $300. I may make sure that I keep it that way!!

So, here's the info about customs. You have to declare anything over a total value of $300 per person (or $600 per couple - so if you bring more than $600 worth of stuff) that is NOT FOR PERSONAL USE. So this includes gifts plus all your wedding supplies (favors, decorations, OOT bags, etc). It does not include your dress, shoes, clothes, or anything else that is for personal use. You only need to declare the value over $600, and you have to pay tax on that (16% I think).  I think most people are probably fine; our problem was that our wedding party gifts were $220 each and we had 9 of them.

And yes, Angel did my makeup and he had all his own stuff. Watch out for that black eyeliner (it comes in a pot instead of a pencil). It took me days to get that stuff off! The stuff he used was definitely different than my makeup, and it stood up really well in the heat.

Originally Posted by kitkat863 

@kimmysue and all the love,

 

Both of your pictures are beautiful!! I am surprisingly very calm about everything but then again I still have about 6 months to go!! I am, however, getting nervous about customs and declaring items! What exactly do you have to declare? Just gifts?

 

Also, this is probably a dumb question, but does Angel have makeup that he uses or does he ask that you bring your own? I have my own makeup but I just didn't know if I needed to bring it for him for the wedding!

 

Thanks ladies!!

Hi ladies, I finally finished writing my review! It's posted here:

http://www.bestdestinationwedding.com/products/now-riviera-cancun-resort-spa-all-inclusive/reviews/5290

The photos we have so far are available at www.tinyurl.com/lundywedding

Enjoy!

This message is for anyone who has recently been married at Now Jade - Pilar sent me home with the wrong chair sashes. I know because I had extras at home and they do not match these ones. If you ended up with the wrong light blue chair sashes and would like yours back, please let me know! I don't know how many of them there are, but it seems like a lot =)

Chair sashes are spoken for.

The dress is a size 6 and the flip flops are a size 8.

Well, the sun set about 5:11 while we were there, and by 5:30 it was pitch black.
 

Originally Posted by irishdonna 

Thanks for all the info! when you say it gets dark fast, what time do you mean?

 

Our wedding is over and now DH wants the spare room back *sigh* Here is our wedding stuff for sale.

Sorry, I do not accept Paypal, only email money transfers.

Bride & Groom beverage holders – blue text with rhinestones  $5

Chair sashes – light blue/aqua – 25 never used and packed nicely  $5

Hair flower/feather with center crystal. Worn once. Purchased on Etsy. $50

Blue & brown guestbook pen with decorative box $5

Aloe, 4 tubes from Avon. $5

Wedding dress, bought for TTD but used my real one instead; never worn. Includes matching purse and shawl $40

Flip flops, white with rhinestones. Worn for a few hours during the reception. I put them through the washing machine to clean. $10

White 'Bride' tanktop with blue rhinestones. Never worn, arrived in the mail after we left. Size L $15

Hi ladies, here is what I'm calling "thing I wish I had known about Jade." I hope some of you find some of it helpful. Sorry it's so long!

Airport & Travel

• Read the customs form carefully. We got detained for two hours and fined for not declaring our wedding party gifts (Burberry sunglasses). You are allowed to bring in $300 per person of goods not for personal use (this includes all gifts, all OOT bag contents, etc). If we could do it again, we would give our wedding party their gifts before we left.
• If you are bringing in stuff you will have to pay taxes on, make sure you have the receipts!
• Your bags all go through an x-ray machine before you can enter Mexico. I had never seen this process before.
• We were late arriving and our private transfer had already left, so we got suckered into a private sedan for $80. If you don’t have a shuttle waiting for you, be wary about how much you pay. The resort has set posted rates for taxi, and a taxi from the resort to the airport is a fixed cost of $360 pesos (about $30).
• The resort is not right on the highway. You will leave the highway and drive about 5 minutes into the town of Puerto Morelos and then you will drive out of town down a windy road for a further 5 minutes before reaching the resort. If you arrive after dark, it totally feels like they’re driving you out to the middle of nowhere.

The Resort

• The front desk staff will provide you with change (for tipping). We used mostly $20p notes for tipping.
• Ana and Pilar’s office is located in the same building as the photo desk and spa. It is on the main floor behind the photo desk.
• The resort can send your dress out for cleaning! Pilar offered this the day after our trash-the-dress session, and it hadn’t even occurred to me. It was $40 and they did an amazing job. I was quoted $300-$500 at home!
• The housekeeping service was inconsistent at best. They often forgot to leave new towels or bathmats or replenish the soap, and we never once got the nightly turn-down service (except for the wedding night, with rose petals and a bath drawn!)
• Your room should have robes and slippers. Call the concierge if they are missing, because they are quite nice to have. We didn’t even know we were missing the slippers until almost the end of our vacation. =(
• The resort means it when they say the adults-only pool is adults only. Children are evicted very quickly.
• Keep your patio door shut or you will have geckos in your room. My new husband performed the heroic act of evicting one by catching it by the tail with a face cloth. The resort kills them rather than catching them, so best to keep them out in the first place.

Restaurants and Food

• Remind your guests that they do not need to make dinner reservations at any of the restaurants. Many of our guests did buffet the first night because they assumed they would not get a reservation.
• If you eat outside at the buffet during the day, watch out for birds. The ceiling canopy is open and we saw people get pooped on.
• Two of the restaurants require men to have long pants, collared shirts and closed toe shoes, and they enforce the dress code pretty firmly. We saw a few groups denied entrance.
• We did dinner around 6 every night and never had to wait for a table. Restaurants all filled up by about 7pm and were full until well after 9.
• Any guests with food allergies or other dietary restrictions (in our group it was Celiac) should chat with the concierge early in the week. They are more than willing to accommodate these things but need to know ahead of time where you plan to eat each night.
• The food is never hot, anywhere. It was usually lukewarm.
• The room service takes a LONG time at night. When you are drinking in your room and think “hey, a late night snack would be awesome!†it will likely take 1.5 hours to arrive, and everyone will have left or passed out by then.
• The bartenders –especially at the Mix and in the preferred lounge - make the drinks very strong.

The Beach

• The beach is quite rocky, and I would recommend water shoes, especially for children. There is a small sandy section at each end of the resort, but it is mostly rocks.
• There are bugs, especially at night, we think they were on the beach. Many in our group ended up with lots of bites on their legs, and they are itchy for days. Not sure if bug spray helps, we didn’t have any.
• We didn’t go, but the snorkelling is apparently amazing, either on your own or with a tour through the reef.
• You are not allowed to climb the lifeguard tower, even in your wedding dress.
• The ‘romantic dinner on the beach’: I recommend pants (that was the night I got all my bug bites). Also, ours was only lit by 3 candles and the server had to use his cell phone to show us the food we were eating.

The Wedding

• Take super-strong eye makeup remover – the black eyeliner that Angel used took me 5 days to get it all off.
• You can have round tables on the Festival Terrace, I saw it! We were supposed to have that too but there was some sort of communication error.
• The sun sets FAST! I couldn’t believe how quickly it was absolutely pitch black out after the sun went down. It was nice to hear the waves from the festival terrace but there was no view.
• The outside eating area for the buffet during the day is the Festival Terrace for weddings. They pull down most of the blinds between you and the buffet, but we had a few people cut through our reception to get to the buffet.
• We found the beach very loud, between the waves and the wind, and during the rehearsal we chose to move our ceremony onto the grass off to the side of the fountain. 

Other

• If your FI is wearing shorts for the wedding, don’t let him ride the mechanical bull before your wedding. The bruises last for days (I believe the mechanical bull is out every Saturday)
• Book your couples massage ahead of time by email (ours was included in the Divine wedding package). It was wonderful. The spa has some great facilities so plan time before or after your massage for the whirlpool and steam shower.

OK, so here is the deal on the terrace: it's quite long, and is a decent size, but regardless of how many people you have, the area for dancing is pretty small, and it has a curb in the middle of it. We didn't really do much dancing, but I can imagine that with lots of people and some alcohol, it would be pretty easy for someone to twist an ankle. I'll try to find a photo of what the curb looks like to describe it better. It would be tight for 75 people to dance in the space, anyway, unless they moved a table or two after dinner.

Let me know if you have any other questions, we just got home yesterday so it is all still fresh in my mind!

Hi ladies,

I had some issues with customs, so I thought my experience might be helpful to share.

We took our wedding party gifts with us (9 pairs of Burberry sunglasses). I mis-understood the customs form and did not declare these, as well as all the rest of the wedding stuff that was "not for personal use" (all OOT bag items, chari sashes, favors, etc). You ae allowed to enter Mexico with $300 (per person) of merchandise not for personal use. Everything above that must be declared.

They saw the sunglasses when they scanned our bags and started asking questions, but I didn't know what the issue was, so then they searched ALL our stuff and basically threatened to confiscate it all. We ended up having to pay a 16% tax on the value of the sunglasses (SO GLAD I had the receipts!) and they let us go with the rest of the stuff.

My advice is to declare everything, and have your receipts. And give your wedding party their gifts before you go!

I kept a copy of the declaration form, I will scan it and post it later incase you want to read it before you go.

Hi ladies,

I just got home last night from our wedding and it was fabulous! I'll post my review shortly and I'm also putting together a 'Things I Wish I Had Known" list that I will share with you.

I want to let you all know that I left with Pilar our bubble machine so it can be used for other weddings. You'll just need to take bubble juice for it. I honestly didn't even see it, but apparently my niece quite enjoyed it. We had them turn it on for the recessional.

Well, we are back from our wedding week and it was amazing! We got so many compliments about the OOT bags, and the things people used most were the Aloe, the sewing kits, and the tylenol and tums. I don't think anybody used the candles or bath soaps.

My biggest recommendation about the OOT bags, if it works for you, is to greet your guests when they arrive at the resort and hand deliver the bags. Every one of our guests commented on how nice it was to have a friendly face waiting when they arrived, and it was nice to see their reaction to the bags.

This is what Ana sent me:

Menú vegetariano

Vegetarian menu

Ensaladas/Salads

Ensalada de rucula con láminas de pera con vinagreta de limón y aceite de olivo extra virgen.

Arugula salad companied with pear layers, lime vinaigrette and extra virgin olive oil

Esalada toscana, lechugas mixtas, tomate, champiñones, espárragos, endivias y duraznos californianos y alcachofas, con vinagreta de tomate deshidratado.

Toscana salad, mixed lettuce, tomato, mushrooms, asparagus, endives, californian peaches and artichokes with sun dry tomato vinaigrette

Sopa/ soup

Sopa minestrone y espinaca

Minestrone soup and spinach

Plato fuerte/ Main course

Penne pasta en salsa de tomate y albahaca con vegetales

Pasta penne in a tomato and basil sauce with vegetables

Lasagna de vegetales

Vegetables  lasagne

Postres/Desserts

Espuma de queso cottage y fresas

Cotagge cheese foam and strawberries

Originally Posted by jmac 

Does anyone know what the vegetarian options are? I don't eat much meat or fish and am struggling with the menu choices quite a bit....

Any suggestions on what to say in a thank you speach to the wedding party when only 2 of the 6 of them actually did anything worth thanking them for?

So we met with our photographer yesterday to go over the final details (only 9 days to go!) and they asked if there were any cool shots we wanted to try and I didn't really have any ideas.

Is there that one picture you've seen that you can't wait to have your photographer take? Some cool pose or effect you want to try? I want to hear your ideas for awesome photo ops!

The reason we chose not to use the resort photographer was because we have photographers from home we have worked with and love and they are coming down with us for the week. We have 'donated' our photos from the resort to some friends of ours who will do a photo shoot with the resort photographer and they will get all their prints which are included in the package.  If we hadn't brought photographers from home, we would have used the resort photographer ourselves.
 

Originally Posted by jmac 

Hi All

 

I have Pilar as my WC as well and she told me the same thing - it was just a day pass for the photographer. Ive been looking around to see what is in my budget for photos etc vs using the resort photographers. Its quite expensive from what I have found so far - but am struggling with what to do since pics are pretty much the only thing Im really concerned about.

 

It sounds like most people aren't using the resort photographers. Any particular reason why? I checked out their work - it looks ok but it definitely didn't blow me away

I got Ana to agree to give us an extra hour of video since we weren't using the judge or minister, but with an extra $100 fee, which is about what an hour of video SHOULD be worth, rather than the $400 they charge. She did tell me it was a 'special circumstance' and that they are not allowed to make swaps, but she seems to tell that to almost everyone. I've heard from previous brides that it is sometimes easier to get her to agree to the swap once you are down there, but it sure makes planning ahead of time difficult.
 

Originally Posted by kitkat863 

I have Pilar as my WC. I didn't really have to do much, I just asked. I am not using the resort photographer and I am not having a band play during the ceremony (I think that is what they changed in the package instead of having a DJ.) Who is your WC...it seems that Ana doesn't let any switching but so far with Pilar I haven't had any issues. Good Luck!!