LuckyGal4

Hey ladies!! Ok I am so sorry that it has taken me so long to do my review... We took off for 3 weeks and so I have only been back to work for a week now and of course I have been sooo busy trying to catch up. Anyways I am ready to start my review and I am gonna try to be a detailed as possible so I hope yall enjoy!! So the reason that we choose The Royal was bc my sister and Trey's sister have kids so we wanted them to come but we didnt want to stay in a resort where there were kids. So The Royal was the perfect place cause there is the sister hotel The Gran Porto Real next door!! It was nice but I felt like all I did was always running back and forth betweeen the 2 hotels trying to entertain everyone so that was a little stressful! Plus once the guests at The Gran Porto saw The Royal they were kinda upset that they didnt spedn more money to stay at the nicer resort. I mean dont get me wrong The Gran Porto is nice but The Royal is absolutley stunning, I never seen a more perfect place! OK so just wanted to give everyone a heads up on that. Aiport/American Airlines: A We left out of DFW and it was just fine. Trey and I went ahead and boarded whenever they called the "preferred" memebers bc I was carrying my dress and wanted to make sure that I had a spot to put it. They didnt say anything to us and I was able to hang my dress at the front of the plane in the coat closet. Nobody messed with it and I just picked it up on my way out. Now we all flew out on the same flight which was SOOOO much fun! Including us there was 40 people so we had some drinks at the airport that morning and continued the party on the plane. Also, I had matching shirts for everyone and those came in sooooo handy!! It was easy to find peopleand no one ever got lost! I def think that matching t-shirts are a must Cancun Airport: A OK so the Cancun airport has changed a bit since the last time that I was there... We had no real problems getting thru just took about an hour and a half to get everyone thru all the lines and get to our bus! I had one big suitcase that had all my OOT bag items in it and they stopped the belt after that suitcase had gone thur the xray machine and opened my bag. They dug just a little bit and then asked how much everything cost. I told the man $250.00 and he said ok, shut my suitcase and let us go on our way! After that we pushed the button and got the green light so we were good to go! If you can try to get a early flight as the airport is not as crowded early in the morning. we didnt get there till like 1:30 PM. Up above is a pic of all of us on the bus. It was sooo nice to have the bus to ourselves, only problem is they didnt sell beer on the bus. Not a big deal tho we just all stocked up at the airport (kinda exspensive tho) So other people we talked to said that they will stop on the way to the resort. We were all so ready to get there that we didnt want to waste time! Check In/Room: A- Ok so as soon as we got off the bus there was someone there to greet us and take our luggage and my dress. Trey and I got a provate check in which was nice! The man asked us if we wanted something to drink and Trey said you got Coors Light (I started to laugh) but then the man said yes we do! He came back with 4 cans of Coors Light like 2 mins later! Laura checked us in she was very nice and told us that we would be in room 258 which was an Ocean Front View that we had payed for. I asked for the upgrade that came with the package but of course they didnt have any available so she said that we could get the Pres Suite the last 3 days gfor only $450.00 we said yes! Now here is my advice... I would look at your room before you decdide to do the upgrade. We got to our room and we loved it so therefore we didnt want to move! Room 258 is kinda on the side of the resort but the cool things is that it is on top of the Pelicanos restaurant so therefore we had really really big rooftop balcony. It was really great cause we actaully invited some friends over one night and had a party up there Anyways so we called Laura back and canceled our upgrade we thought everything was good until we got back and Trey got his CC bill. He had to wait 2 weeks for it to go off his bill. It wasnt that they were mean or rude it just takes a while to find the right person to talk to! OOT BAGS: OK so I am gonna do an enitre entry on my OOT bags but I wanted to let everyone know how I did it. On the bus ride to the resort I told everyone to meet in the lobby at The Gran Porto at 7:30 PM as we had some gifts for them. Since there was a bunch of us, we kinda just took over the lobby area and we handed out the bags that we had made. It worked out well for us and there is alittle bar and snack area so that was nice. Now I will tell you that if you dont have any guests at the Gran Porto and there is a smaller group of you, there is a really neat balcony off the front of The Royal. It is in the 24 hour snack lounge. We went out there one night and it was so nice, anyways like I said I will do a more indepth review of that later. Wedding Stuff: OK so my off-site wedding coordinator was Maritza, I didnt have any problems with her at all! She always responded to my email within a day or 2. Once I had made my final payment she put me in touch with Zulma who was my on-site wedding coordinator. I only talked to her once before the wedding but I wasnt stressed cause I had done most of the planning with Maritza. So before we had left for Playa, Zulma emailed me and we set up an appt time to meet. WE got married on Sat so we meet on that Fri before. I took her everything that I wanted to be at the wedding and reception. I brought pics of how I wanted the bows to be tied, gave her my cake topper, IPOD, sashes, and some other things. We literally went over everything. The problem we were facing was the rain... It had rained all day thurs and fri so I was soooo scared that we werent gonna be able to do it outside. Zulma said that we would just have to wait and see and if it did rain everything would be moved inside to the ball room. Anyways so moving on, we got everything lined up and we left. Fri night it was STILL raining so I did a dance in the ocean that night lol and low and behold we woke up Sat morning and the sun was SHINING so bright with not one cloud in the sky!!! OMG I was sooo happy Ok so I had breakfast with the bridesmaids hung around the pool for a bit then we to get my hair done at 12:00 PM (ceremony was at 4:00PM) I had Zupita do my hair and she was wonderful!!! I showed her a pic and she made my hair look exactly like it. She also used a can of hairspray which was fine with me cause I didnt want my hair to fall! I have long hair so I just wanted it curled and half way up. I dont have any close ups so this is as good as it gets (sry) OK so I had 1 bridesmaid get her hair done at 1:00 PM and then the other 4 at 2:00 PM we cut it close BTW.. Actually were ran about 20 mins late. The girls just were so rushed getting everything together so my suggestion would be to give your girls at least 3 hours before the wedding. Flowers: Marvin A++ I ordered flowers from Marvin bc the resorts flowers are sooo exspensive. He did such a great job. I paid him a week before we left thru PayPal and he said they would deliver the flowers at 1:00 PM on Sat. I sent my cousin and a friend down to the lobby and they meet them with no problems what so ever! They even brough a flower for my hair which I thought was very nice! I go 5 BM bouquets of white Gerbre Daisy's 6 boutineres for the GM and minister and then 2 crosages for my mom and my MIL. After a $50 delivery fee I paid like $480.00 oh and he threw in 2 bags of rose petals for my flower girls! Here is me and my girls. I actually ended up giving my sister my MOH my bouquet that came with the wedding package and then the other 4 carried the Gerbre Daisys and then I had my brooch bouquet. I threw the other white one for the "single ladies" The guys just had a pink rose as their boutineres. Ok so moving on with more wedding stuff...I had the wedding on the beach, the cocktail hour in the little grassy area behind the gazebo and then the reception at the gazebo. The wedding part went fine all my songs were played in the correct order. Zulma was there for everything, if there was a problem she was on it!!! We had brought our own "minister" if you will to do the ceremony. He is a friend of ours and he did a great job! I put the ceremony together and then he just read everything. The ceremony was only like 20 mins which was fine with me They played our exit song and were were greeted at the end of the asile with some beers (as we suggested!!) Here are some pics of the wedding. OK so after the ceremony, we all went up to where the cocktail hour was. This is when it got stressful cause I got the cocktail hour so that we could go take pics and have everyone else stay there and munch and get some drinks. This was no the case as everyone wanted to come down to the beach and watch us. I wish I would have been more stern with everyone by telling them to stay up there while we go take out pics! Oh also be prepared for ladies and gents to come up to you in theie swimsuits and ask to take pics of you. I thought I wouldnt mind when I was reading everyones reviews but you are hot, stressed and the last thing you want is to be wasting time and taking pics with people you dont even know! Anways so we spent an hour taking some bride and grrom pics and then BM and GM pics. Here are some for you to see! Ok so moving onto the reception... I had 7 table of 6 chairs. I had a pink sash tied onto the back of the chairs then I had purple and aqua shashes running down the middle of the table. There was a mix up with the center pieces that were supposed to come with the package so I ended up not having any center pieces which to be honest I didnt even notice till looking at the pics! The things that you think are a big deal while you are planning dont mean anything once you are there. There was so much going on I didnt have time to pay attention to the little details. We had a caesar salad, beef and mashed potatoes, and then chocolate cheesecake for the dessert. Everything was soooo good. I also got the Tres Leche for the cake and OMG it was amazing. Dont upgrade your cake as we had over half left over. The waiter brought it to our room and it just sat there for the rest of our trip lol. I wanted to speed thru dinner so we could get to the dancing!! BTW we got a DJ and the light up dance floor and it was SO SO SO worth it! DJ Ivan played everything song that I asked him to play plus it was so nice not having to mess with an IPOD. It seemed like everything just fell into place like it was suppsoed to Umm lets see Im trying to make sure I cover everything but there is so much!!! Here is a pic standing under the gazebo looking out onto the reception area and behind it over to the left was the cocktail hour area with the open bar. The DJ set their stuff up under the gazebo incase it started to rain! This is the caesar salad and the beef with mashed potatoes. They were both really really good!! You have your own personal waiters that are there whenever you want or need anything. I always had a drink We danced to our songs which turned out great, the DJ knew what songs to play and what order. WE also did the cutting of the cake and the tossing of the bouqet and boutinere. After we did all that it was PARTY central... I stuck with the 3 hour reception only bc it was gonna cost way to much to add an extra hour. Plus 3 hours was a great time limit we were done by like 9:00PM then we met all our guests in the lobby and went out on the town for the rest of the night! It was really a lot of fun!! OK so I am sure there is things that I forgot so if you have any questions please feel free to ask me!! I am gonna post a some more pics then I will do another entry after lunch more about the resort cause lets be honest the wedding is one day and then the rest of time you are just hanging at the resort. We were there for 10 days so we had 1 day of wedding and then 9 days of pool, sand, excursions etc!! So I hope you enjoyed again please feel free to ask me any questions as I AM SURE that I have forgot somethings! OK so we also did a TTD session the next day so I will get those pics uploaded soon. I am gonna submit this before I loose everything

Thank you I love it, I put all kinds of pics in there so its def like a storyline just with pics in a book and not on a screen I really didnt pay that much attention only because I knew that I only had like a week and half once I ordered it for it to go thru production and then get it delivered to me. You wedding is in October right? You should have plenty of time if you decide to go this route!

Sure, no problem! I will send it that way

Hey Melissa-- OMG I am so ready to leave, Im sure will be fine!! Here is the document that I made. There is a guy who works in my unit who is hispanic and he made sure to proof read this for me as you can never REALLY trust the internet. For the wedding location you can take out the Playa and insert Cancun as they are spelled the same in both English and Spanish. You can do the same with the names! How this works for you and hope you have a GREAT wedding!!! Best of luck to you and your FI!!! <3 Kelli Customs Merchandise Document.doc

Thank you so much Missbizzybee for the information!!! Luckily I was able to fit all my wedding stuff in one big suitcase but I love the idea of having of the letter with the info in English and Spanish!! I have already typed it up and translated it into Spanish :-) Thanks again!

SparksFly-- Oh how exciting, good luck tomorrow!!! We arent going to the JP till we get back from Mexico! Our flight leaves Dallas as 11:10 AM that would be so funny if she was on the same flight as us! Well we will all have the same matching blue shirts so we should be easy to spot! I cant believe how close we are getting Queen-- Get review!!! Your pics looked amazing! Hedges-- Cant wait to see your review!

So I got my guestbook yesterday and I am so pumped about it!!! I knew that I wanted to do something different as I didnt want just a white guest book that I put in a box and never look at again. I looked around on here to see what I could find and I found some reallly cool ones that brides had DIY'd but then I came across one thread and I thought that the idea was so cool. It is a guestbook with all our pics in it and the guests can sign anywhere in the book like on their favorite pic! Anyways so I got my book from MyPublisher.com Also I wanted to share the coupon in case anyone wanted to use it... Go to www.mypublisher.com/friend and enter your email address and you will get a $20 gift card!! I got the Deluxe Hardcover Photobook which is normally $59.80 but if you use your $20 then you can get it for $39.80 oh make sure to give yourself enough time, since I didnt think of this till last miunute I had to pay an extra $50 to RUSH the order (oh well still totally worth it!!!) This is the front cover and the first page in the book... Inside I have our engagement pics, some of my bridals and other pics of me and Trey throughout our journey! This is the back of the book! I think that they did I really good job and cant wait to get back and put it on the coffee table!! I figure it will be a great conversation piece!

You are so welcome!! You can view my planning thread too if you want some more answers The name of my thread is.... "Planning my Big Day at The Royal Playa del Carmen"

Thank you I think I love that more than my dress My future MIL is soooo amazing, I am so glad that she was able to do this for me! She told me she was super nervous cause she didnt want to mess my dress up, I had a lot of faith in her!!

Thank you for the info Queen!!! I've got to make a finale decision today and get them downloaded! I am officially runnning out of time

Thanks MissBizzyBee!! Usually I wait till the last minute to pack but I knew with as much stuff as I was taking, I thought it might be a good idea not to procrastinate!! I found that those ZIPLOCKS really do work well when packing just some FYI that I got from another Bride on here!

Thanks Tiffy!!! I paid $50 for the BM bouquets, the resort was going to charge me $80 which I thought was ridiculous!!! Thats why I decided to use Marvin.

SparksFly-- Here is my suitcase that I packed last night! This one was supposed to be for my clothes but I guess that is not happening!!! Anyways I got everything but my OOT bags and the ceremony paper fans in here. I think I can get the fans zipped up somewhere in there and hopefully see if my bestie has enough room for the bags! Just thought I would share as I know you said that you had a lot of stuff (there is hope) Oh BTW I used gallon ZIPLOCKS for my OOT bag stuff. It worked really well, seems to not take up as much space!

Well I got a few more things to post today!! I ordered these money holders from www.specialistID.com they were sooooo fast and cheap too! I got 35 Lanyard's for .32 a piece and 35 Heavy Duty Badge Holders for .49 a piece I got the idea from another girl on here. She had posted the template. Her's looked a lot better than mine did as she printed on cardstock but when you work 7 days a week doing 12 hour shifts not everything turns out exactly how you want!! Nevertheless, I got the sparkly cardstock at Michaels and used Modge Podge to glue it down then coverd the from with it too! I figured our guests could use these for their room keys, tip money stuff like that I am going to put these in the OOT Bags! Here is the attachment in case you want to use it! The only other thing I wanted to share was my FI's wedding present, YAY IM SOOOO EXCITED about this!! Trey loves watches so I thought that a watch would be a great wedding present. But I didnt want to get just any watch so I went a head and went all out for him! I hope he loves it cause he wont be getting another present from me for a while!!! Now hopefully he got me something special too!! money holder.docx

SparksFly-- Including my FI and I there are 40 of us... Just think that there will be more room on the dance floor for you and your guests to get down!! OMG I have alot too, Trey said that he will be lucky if he gets enough room to pack his swim trunks and some underwear lol. We will be there for 10 days and I am planning on getting everything into 4 suitcases. Im actually gonna put all my wedding stuff in a suitcase tonight and see if it will all fit into 1 (fingers crossed!!) Oh geez my planning thread is all sorts of scattered!! I kinda wish that I would have waited so that it would flow nice but oh well at least I got all the info on there (guess that is the most important thing) Cant wait to see your pics!! SO SO SO Excited too

I just looked at The Royal in Cancun and it looks beautiful!! Your wedding will be amazing, that gazebo is so pretty looking out onto the ocean! Im sooo ready for Next Thurs to be here, thats when we are leaving! When are yall leaving??

Umm I looked at the Azul Sensatori, I loved the rooftop weddind idea! Plus it just looked so pretty. But They didnt have the date I wanted and I wanted to be closer to the shops and nightlife. The Azul Sensatori is out a little ways from downtown Playa. The new Paradisus looks really nice! They have 2 different sides one is adult only and the other side is for families. Since they hadnt opened yet when I was booking, I was worried that I wouldnt like it cause I hadnt seen all the pics. I have looked at some of the brides pics on here and it looks really really pretty!! I looked at tons but those where the ones that stuck out to me!

Aww how awful!! I mean it is your wedding, do you think he will be ok going?? This is such a hard thing to deal with esp since he is your brother and you want him to be there. Can you talk to him and maybe see whats going on? I would hate for you to be out that money!! What does your FI think about it? Yes you are right though it makes it hard if they are always going back and forth. Well I wish you the best, I bet everything will turn out ok. Speaking of family drama, my FI just informed me that my brother-in-law who is an alcoholic and has had 3 DWI's is going to be taking his ankel monitor off next week before we leave!!! He has been waiting a year and half now for the DA to figure out what they are gonna charge him with so on his own will he bought the ankel monitor put it on and so everything has been great until now!! UGH he acts like a complete idiot when he is drinking and I really wish he wasnt even coming to the wedding! Sooo annoyed

Congrats Amanda-- Everything is gonna depend on where you are getting married at but I can share with you what we paid for things so that it might give you a better idea! Oh we are getting married in Playa at The Royal. DJ- We payed $950 for the DJ and then another $700 for a light up dance floor. I know it sounds crazy but our friends and family love to dance plus we wanted a professional doing the music as we didnt want to have to deal with it. Photographer- I cant really help to much here as one of mine and my FI's friends is coming to Mexico with us so she will be taking all our pics. She also did our engagement and my bridal pics. We are paying for her and her husband to come to Mexico. Wedding Package- We got more of a basic package and then added a cocktail hour and a private reception. It turned out that it was cheaper than going with the bigger package and then us having things included that we didnt want or need! I know some people that booked like a Master suite which cost more but it came with a free wedding. Ballpark for wedding was about $4000.00 that was for everything and includes 40 people. Since we have a larger group going, we are gonna do a meet and greet in the lobby at the bar area the day that we arrive (which is 2 days before the wedding). I've heard that it is a good size and I figure with 40 people we can just kinda take over :-) This is when we will be handling out the OOt bags too! Yes, def ask a lot of quesitons and go thru this forum as much as you can!!!! It helped me soooo much. All the brides on here are amazing for sharing all their great ideas and experiences. Good Luck!

Congrats Kara!!! What time is your ceremony if I am around I will come by a sneak a peak :-)

We used a TA and she went thru a travel company called GOGO vacations which gaves us a great deal!! Basically the more people you book the better the price. Gran Porto: 2 adults-oceanview jr suite-4nights/5days-flight-transportation to and from resort- and of course all-inclusive approx $2000.00 The Royal: 2 adults-oceanview jr suite-4nights/5days-flight-transportation to and from resort- and of course all-inclusive approx $2400.00

Aww thank you so sweet! We had so much fun taking them :-)

I know what you mean, I had a hard time with that too!! I finally started doing away with what the name said and just going by what it looked like. Im sure it wont all match but im good with that :-) After a few beers and tequila shots no one will know anyways!

Thanks ya'll!!