ChelseyB

Quote: Originally Posted by sherryro13 Hi Chelsey, Did you use have your MC keep things rolling on schedule? I am concerned with the timeline and chain of events with there only being 3 hours for dinner, dancing etc. we did not have an official MC. i knew we had a short time period to get everything done, so i kind of worked with the wedding planner to make sure things kept moving myself. we did pay for the extra hours at the reception too which were worth it to us. the reception still seemed to go by very quickly.

Quote: Originally Posted by sherryro13 Just a few questions regarding the music system. When walking down the aisle and after the ceremony is there anyone to look after the music? I just need to know if I need to designate someone to work the ipod during the ceremony or if Jacki or someone else does this. Also, has anyone used the resort dj for the reception dance? Did you contact them ahead of time with music preferences and songs for first dance etc? Thanks for any help/info you can give Jacki has an amazing helper. and i cannot remember her name right now, but she was the one there during the ceremony with me and she took care of it completely. whenever there was a song that needed to be started at a certain time she did that. we just had everything labled in our ipod real well. during the reception our ipod just mostly played on its own unless it was like the first dance or the father daughter dance etc, and then the planner took care of it flawlessly. chelsey

hmmm we weren't charged to just plug in our ipod, so possibly we got a different wedding package than you are getting? we got the silver/middle package (i can't remember what they called it at the resort). we definitely just plugged in our ipod and it worked fine. chelsey

This was actually one of my few complaints about this resort. the resort is smaller and they just could not handle larger groups at dinner. and when i say larger groups, i mean 8 people or more. we often times would go into a restaurant with 8 or more and would end up sitting at 3 different tables right next to one another because they wouldn't even allow us to scoot the tables together. Another night we did just end up eating int eh buffet. It was fine and the food was decent, but not as good as the other restaurants. Also, they won't seat a large group all at once even if there are lots of tables, because they don't want to overload the kitchen. they want to stagger the seating. My group did actually pay to have a private area and big table for 21 people one night. the cost was not horrible, but i understand not wanting to pay for dinner when its already included. This was the only option to have all 21 of us together. Also one more key piece of advice. the restaurants get very full around 7 pm. if your group all went to the same restaurant at 5pm then you may be way more likely to all be in the same restaurant, but again they may stagger seating you so they aren't slammed with 40 people all at once. its hard to actually get a table immediately at one of the restaurants at 7, so just avoid that time. good luck!

the other big reason i really am glad i went with El Patio versus the beach is that the lighting at El Patio was soo perfect for an evening party. the lighting at the beach wedding we saw was bright white lights. it was not romantic to me at all, while the lighting at El Patio was perfect. Not one of us was hot at the reception because it cools off in the evenings and wind was blowing through el patio because they have big windows that open and our wedding was also in May, so AC was not needed at El Patio. Personally i would choose any other location besides the beach if you can. I figured that if we were going to have it at the beach then we wer going to have to get the dance floor which pretty much costs the same as reserving El Patio, so the money all worked out the same to me. i used the hair and makeup person. i thought she did a great job. i got soooo many compliments on my hair and it did look better than most wedding hair i have experienced being in other weddings. the only complaint i had was that they used some really really strong hairspray that made me kind of feel like i was wearing a helmet. my husbands hair on the other hand was blowing in the wind. iw ish my hair had been a bit more natural feeling and not so pasted into place. i should have just told her to use a bit less hairspray. otherwise very happy . maybe you can view the pictures from our wedding. sorry we don't have any from teh reception on here. http://krug.dreamspuertoadventuras.adventurephotos.com.mx/

i think chair sashes are $8 each if i remember correctly, but i would defintiely double check that with Jacki. the bonfire was a huge hit at our wedding! i had people tell me it was thier favorite part of the vacation.

the officiant we used (provided by the resort) was amazing. we got so many compliments on what a great job he did and he was a pleasure to email with before we arrived down there. his name was alejandro monroy. he had a set script for what he wanted to say and did not share it with us before we arrived becuase he said he wanted us to hear it for the first time when we were there and really listen to the words. he was very open to us providing things we wanted read and so forth though.

the chairs were white and looked very beautiful. the suggestion i had about the resort photographer is that she kept taking pictures of us from the back and we ended up with more pictures of us from teh back then of our faces. i don't see us using the back shots as much as we would face shots, so i wish i would have stopped her from turning us around so often and just asked for more front shots. otherwise the photos were very good.

the bonfire was awesome. it just was too short! but we had alot of musicians in our group and my husband had planned a little musical show, so that's why it was soo amazing. i wouldn't have given it up though for sure. we skipped the cocktail hour as well which was a very wise decision. all of the guests just went over to the barrcuda bar which is the bar out towards the ocean with swings. that is where we were taking pictures anyway, so we were with the party the entire time pretty much. the cocktail hour flew by and jackie was quickly ushering us into the reception. i defintiely recommend opting out of the cocktail hour. i unfortuantely did not get to eat any of the wedding food because that was the day i was dealing with "mexico tummy" so i had saltines for dinner. isn't that sad! we had the carribean menu and he said teh coconut fish and the beef shishkabobs were his favorite. the cold salads didn't get eaten much it seemed so if you can substitute more warm items for the cold items that may be a good thing. we got the silver wedding pacakge so it didn't include the mexican trio so i can't speak to that. the silver package had everything we thought we needed. the massage was nice. we did it the first day there which i think was a good thing because we were so anxious when we arrived. we did not bring chair sashes but i dont' think we needed them at all. the flowers they provide are quite large so they serve as plenty of decoration. i just brought two starfish to hang on the first two chairs as we went down the aisle. we did not give favors at the wedding. just a gift bag when the guests arrived. we kept it simple but did include inflatable flamingo drink holders which i got off of amazon which were a hit. are you using the resort photographer? if so i have some suggestions on that as well. so let me know

i just returned from the resort for our wedding. man o man was it sooo much fun. overall it was 100% a wonderful success and so much fun, but i'm going to share the things that i wish i had learned before i went, so this post may sound negative, but i'm not trying to be negative . it was 98% wonderful and only 2% negative. promise. jacki was amazing and took care of everything. she would just say "dont' worry about it, i got it" and she did. the reception was at el patio which was the perfect space. i'm so glad we decided to do that versus the beach. the beach weddings were just too bright with all the lighting they used. and everyone at the resort was watching the entire time. el patio was way more private. we saw a wedding not quite on the beach, but on the bonfire location and that looked alot better than the beach location. i had my hair and makeup done at the spa and pedicure. the spa is beautiful but it was the most expensive pedicure that i've ever had and it wasn't that impressive. i would suggest just getting them done before you go. the makeup looked good and the hair looked pretty good but they used tons of hairsparay that kept my hair in place in case it was windy and now when i look at the pictures i just feel like my hair looks glued in place. i wish i would have asked them to just let it blow in the wind a bit. i think that would have looked more natural. some other unfortunate things is that a large group of us got "mexico belly" if you know what i mean. luckily we had three doctors in the group who had brought stuff to deal with it kind of. but it still put all that got it out for about 24 hours. i would definitely suggest going to teh dr and getting some medicine from your doctor in case you need something for vomitting or diarrehea once you get there. also, we had one person have their wallet stolen from the room. he had not put it in the safe. noone that used the safe had any complaints. my sunglasses disappeared from our room (again not in the safe) and we heard a story of a guy walking in on the maid going through his back pack. the food was very very good at portofino(italian) and el patio(mexican). i got the lobster 2 nights because it was so amazing. teh lobster costs extra but to me was worth it. the rooms were awesome. there are different size rooms in the same price bracket. the first night the room we got was smaller than my mom's room, so we asked for the larger room and they moved us the next day. the 7th floor is the preferred club level and that was awesome. we are so glad we got that. they had top shelf liquor and snacks all the time. a lso they had breakfast up there so we didn't have to go down to the loud busy buffet in the morning and could just have a quiet breakfast up with our family in the morning. often i would order room service and then take it out to the 7th floor lounge to have with my family. the room service food was much better than i've had at other resorts. especially the chicken fingers. super yummy. okay now i just really want to go back so i'm going to stop writing, but please ask if you have any questions. chelsey

yes we are doing the bonfire. you can for-go the food option at the bonfire and bring the price of that down as well, which is wha twe are doing. i figured everyone would have just eaten dinner anyway, so we didn't need to provide food. we are also doing a private dinner for just our wedding party and family. (we have 71 people coming to our wedding. way more than we expected, so we wanted to have something much smaller for family and wedding party). the private dinner for 20 of us is $18 a head at one of the restuarants in a private area or room or something which isnt' a bad cost at all. i leave in 4 days and have not chosen the reception location yet and Jacki says that is completely fine. i'm leaning toward el patio as well. we are doing welcome bags but kept them pretty small due to exactly what you said about already carrying so much stuff down there. they charge extra if you have the resort deliever the bags for you, so we are going to just hand out the bags to our guests on our own. and we are not bringing any decorations at all. we are also going to just hope that its pretty enough with what the resort has to offer. we did buy maracas to bring with us which filled up an entire carry on suitcase, but i convinced one of my friends to bring that down for us. we got light up maracas to have at the bonfire which we thought would be fun.

So included in your package is dinner for 20 people, so you will only have to pay the extra for 14 people. also the $55 a head is for a sit down dinner which if you read back a lot of people don't recommend doing that because it takes up your entire reception time. lots of people recommend doing the buffet option instead. the buffet is only $38 a head so it brings the cost down. also if you choose to for-go the cocktail hour, they put $200 towards other expenses you have, which is what i'm going to do. i figured my guests could go to the bar on their own during the cocktail hour scheduled time without me having to pay extra for it. hope that helps. chelsey

ahh i hadn't heard the patio didn't have AC but am glad to hear that for sure before we chose that. my fiancee would n ot be happy to learn that if that's what we had chosen. thanks!

okay i'm getting married in 30 days! has everyone decided on locations for their events? i havn't decided on one for the reception. figured i would do it when i got there and saw the options. unless anyone has some wonderful advice for me. chelsey

i have it written down as $38 per head on my budget list. i believe i got that information from Jacki, but you may want to confirm it with her