pil1

Hi, Carly! Congratulations on your upcoming wedding! I tried to send you this message privately, but for some reason, it wouldn't work, so I'm replying to your post instead. I got married at the Barcelo about a month ago. Ana was HORRIBLE!!!! She never got back to me about anything! I tried to put down a deposit for about 3 months, and I never ended up putting one down. I was worried that there would be no wedding without putting down a deposit, but I was worried for nothing. I had two guests that were staying elsewhere. I was supposed to pay for a day pass for both of them for the rehearsal dinner and for the wedding. Ana was supposed to charge it to my room, but she's so disorganized that they never ended up charging me! They also forgot to charge me for the hors d'ouvres that we had immediately after the ceremony, the guests beyond the allotted number with our wedding package and some other miscellaneous items. I think that we saved about $2,000 because of Ana's incompetence!!! Your guests could probably walk right in, as long as they head out straight to the ceremony. Just in case they get caught, I think that you should tell them to tell the staff that their day passes were supposed to be charged to your room. Hopefully, they'll get in for free, but be prepared to pay for them if you need to. Our guests didn't have any issues. They even hung out with all of us at the hotel bars afterwards on both evenings, ordering drinks and everything! They were never checked for wristbands, but...you never know!!! Ana has no idea what she is doing. She told me that they could only have white decorations (chair ties, etc.). I later found out that they had blue, pink and some other colors. I ended up bringing my own brown chair ties and napkins, and they bought them from me, so now they have brown too. She told me that everyone had to have the same meal. After speaking to another bride that got married there, I found out that they could offer options. Ana was dead against it, but I told her that I would make sure that the servers knew what to seve everyone. I made little place cards with a chicken/cow/vegetable/fish on it so that the staff would know what to serve the guest. All of the food was AMAZING, so don't worry about the quality. They did a really great job plating everything too! Make sure that you cc every email to the concierge and the person in charge of guest relations (I don't remember the name/email). By doing this, Ana will respond to your emails, although she will probably still make mistakes, even if they are on the email to which she is responding. I complained to both of her bosses, and when we arrived to the Barcelo, we were put up in one of the honeymoon suites and our wristbands were upgraded. That was AWESOME, but I would have rather had a competent person to work with than a great room. In the end, everything was beautiful and everything went smoothly. Be sure that you tell your outside vendors (hair, flowers, photographer, etc.) your room number when you arrive so that they can deal directly with you and come up to your room without checking in at the front desk. You never know--a bride I emailed said that Barcelo tried to charge their vendors with a day pass. Also, you may want to think about getting a cake from somewhere else--the Barcelo cakes are not really like tiered wedding cakes. We ordered ours from cabodessertdiva.com. It was AWESOME and beautiful. Feel free to contact me with any other questions you may have. You can email me at [email protected]. Good luck! Don't worry, everything will turn out okay!!!!! Pilar

I just got married at the Barcelo. What a headache! My wedding planner, Ana, became much better at responding to emails when I started ccing every email to the person in charge of guest relations and the concierge. When I finally got there for my wedding, they upgraded us to the honeymoon suite. It was amazing, but it didn't make all of the headaches and stress I went through in planning my wedding worth it. Good luck!!!

I got married at the Barcelo in Cabo earlier this month. The entire process was very frustrating. I recently wrote a review. Please read it before deciding on the Barcelo!! Good luck!