loripanori

No we didn't! But we ended up switching to the beach from the pool terrace and really loved it. There was something special about being right on the beach for us. All of our guests commented on how much fun it was to have dinner and dancing right on the beach. It was super windy on our wedding day, but we didn't have any problems with sand in the food or anything like that. And we found it just as windy at the gazebo during the ceremony, so I think the wind could be an issue at most of the locations, depending on the day.

Quote: Originally Posted by JBarks Hey Ladies, This is probably a dumb question but when the technician was playing your cd or ipod before the ceremony, how did they transition from song to song. The song for my bridesmaid is not going to be close to over by the time I'd be wanting my down the aisle song to start, so do they just do an abrupt stop of the first song and start playing the other, or is there some way to fade between? Just not sure how this works! Our technician faded the songs out and started playing the next song as needed. It seemed to go very smoothly for us, all of the songs playing at the right times etc., without abrupt changes.

Quote: Originally Posted by emmyss Hi everyone, We are getting married in one month whoo whoo! We are having our reception on the pool deck but have not requested to have more lighting (hanging paper lanterns, lights under the table, bamboo poles with hanging lanterns etc). Do you think they are necessary? will there be enough light without adding the extra lighting options? Thanks, Emmy They will definitely still set up some lights if you don't purchase any extra. They won't have you sitting in the dark! They just charge extra for the fancy-looking decorative lights. At our reception on the beach we didn't pay for any extra lighting (other than the light-up dance floor), and they set up a bunch of light-post type fixtures that were actually quite cute (at no extra charge). I imagine you might get something similar on the pool deck. You can see them in this pic:

Quote: Originally Posted by LeashAC Was anyone told they cannot exchange cocktail hour for some kind of credit towards extra dinner plates? I could of sworn I've read numerous ladies that were able to switch it out for credit. So frustrating if your having a lot of guests :/ Destination wedding was supposed to save us some money. My wedding coordinator (who was switched 3X already) is now Claudia and she has informed me I can't switch it for any credit. We definitely switched out our cocktail hour for food credit - we were given a $400 credit for it. Which was somewhat less than I expected, since 20 people @ $26 each would be $520. But it was better than nothing! We were able to use the credit towards extra dinner plates (over the 20 included in the package), and the cost of extending the reception by an hour. I would definitely try to argue and get at least some credit for not having it, make sure you say that you've talked to many brides who were married at DRC and were given credit.

We didn't even realize that our credit card had a foreign transaction fee before using it at the resort to pay for the wedding. Whenever we used it for smaller charges (billed in other currencies) in the past, we just assumed that what showed up on our bill was the current exchange rate. It's certainly less noticeable on lower amounts. Anyway, it's just something everyone should consider ahead of time and keep in mind, as the resort will definitely charge you in pesos and not USD.

Quote: Originally Posted by JBarks I have a couple questions about the gold plated dinner menu: - do the planners require your guest's meal choices way ahead of time, or are guests just given the options at the reception and pick at that point? - did anyone make/bring their own menus? - were your guests allowed to choose between the gold menu two options, as well as the vegetarian menu? I'd like to choose the lamb and seabass options, but I think picky eaters might take advantage of the vegetarian option, if I can have all three options. - did anyone order these meal options and have comments on quality? Thanks ladies! A lot of times the wedding planner will try to get you to stick to a single meal choice for everyone (plus a vegetarian option). In the menus where it lists the appetizer, soup, salad, sea bass OR lamb, and dessert - what they actually want you to do is choose either the sea bass OR lamb to be served to everyone, in combination with the app/soup/salad/dessert that is listed. I know some brides have been able to talk their wedding coordinator into having two choices for their guests though - in those cases, I'm almost positive you will have to send in the numbers in advance. It's either a week or a month in advance, I forget which. We only finalized our menu after arriving at the resort, so I'm sure a week or two ahead of your date would be fine. My guess is that you'll still be able to have a vegetarian option, because they wouldn't want any vegetarian guests to not be served a meal. But I would definitely confirm that you can have two meal options for your guests, because they will try to get you to stick to one only. My husband and I are both picky, and we honestly had a hard time finding anything on the menus that we would eat. We had the ultimate package but ended up going with the beef wellington from the silver menu, and changed the soup, salad and dessert that comes with it (even though we had never had beef wellington before, lol). Anyway, it wasn't our favourite meal of the week. But they were very flexible in terms of working with us to make a menu with items we would actually eat, so that was a plus.

Quote: Originally Posted by Wedding2014 for the 300 dollars higher than signed fee, did you contact the hotel about it? Or credit card company? We didn't pursue this issue... I don't think it was an actual billing error, more an unfortunate side effect resulting from how they do the billing. We didn't realize this in advance, but basically the wedding coordinators give you your final total in US dollars and then you have to go to the front desk to pay your bill. However, the front desk will only bill in pesos. So they convert your bill from USD to pesos, according to their exchange rate. They charge your card in pesos, and then the credit card converts this BACK to your local currency, and usually charges a fee to do so (usually around 2.5%). So it's quite likely that the currency conversion rates at the hotel and at VISA aren't equal (especially since there are usually different rates to convert from USD to pesos, vs. pesos to USD). Plus a fee gets added on to the conversion. I don't think there's much you can do about it, other than paying in cash. And I've heard that some credit cards have no foreign currency fees, so that might be something to look into.

Quote: Originally Posted by ZachJess2013 Doesn't the beach bar close at like 6p tho? The beach bar does close at 6pm... depending on what time your reception starts, that might not work for you. In the winter months it gets dark quite early, so a lot of the receptions start earlier.

Quote: Originally Posted by MrsSmith2BMex Hi Lori We are having a legal wedding on Jan 6. Mu wedding planner says only symbolic ceremony has sand ceremony but it is something that we really want to do and include our childen ( we have both been married before and so it's a blended family sand ceremony), where you able to personalise your legal ceremony ? And how long did your wedding certificate take to arrive ? Thank you x Hello! We had a legal wedding and it included the sand ceremony! Our minister's was named Pedro, and he did all of the legal ceremonies we saw that week. I'm not sure if maybe they sometimes use different ministers that don't include the sand ceremony? We didn't request it, or ask for it to be included, it seemed to just be included by default. So I would assume you would be able to have it if you wanted. We went over the legal ceremony script with the wedding planner, and didn't make any changes, but I think you probably could if you wanted to personalize it in some way. They seemed quite flexible, even though it was a legal ceremony and not symbolic. We were given a copy of the marriage license to take home with us, but it was completely in Spanish. The translated & certified version arrived probably 3 months after our wedding date (we were married April 18th, and it arrived here sometime early in July). You can see most of what was included in the legal ceremony in our wedding video, if you're interested... this is the video that was taken by the resort videographer (included in the ultimate package). I hope this helps! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRv6MIAelSc

I also just found a post I made shortly after getting home containing a lot of the price breakdown... We were only given $400 credit for not having the cocktail hour, which was less than the actual cost for 20 people (I think they charge $26 per person. Anyway, thought I'd repost it in case it helps anyone.

I ended up putting together a word file with all of the important details for our wedding - approximate timeline, music choices, bouquet choices, menu, centrepieces etc., and sent that to Lorena in advance. She said it was a huge help - it basically just compiled all of the important details (and expected prices) in one place. The wedding planning form is so long, and a lot of things end up not applying to your wedding, so I thought this approach was a lot more useful. If anyone wants a copy of mine to use as a template, just send me an email at lori_mceachern@hotmail.com as I haven't been checking here as often lately. I also have all of the legal ceremony info for the person who was looking for it, but don't have it here with me, so I will try to report back when I get home tomorrow. Happy planning!

Hello, We had 4 songs for guest seating (should be 10 - 15 minutes of music), a song for bridesmaids & flower girls walking in, and a song for me walking in. Then a song for the sand ceremony, and one for us walking out. If you are doing the legal ceremony you can also have a song for signing the papers - we didn't know this, and the technician just replayed the sand ceremony song. We had all the songs in order in an iPod playlist, and gave Lorena a list with each important event and the name of the song.

For the legal ceremony we had a man named Pedro. I'm not sure if he does all of the legal ceremonies, but during the week we were there we saw him doing some weddings, and Linda doing some, so I assumed Linda did all of the symbolic ceremonies and Pedro did the legal ceremonies. But I could be wrong! His english was also very good, I don't think anyone had trouble understanding him... You can hear him doing our legal ceremony in our video, starting around 06:30, if you're interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRv6MIAelSc For the person wondering about the extra charges for the legal ceremony... I forget the specifics, but it ends up totaling $500 plus 11% tax, so $555 total. This was the total for everything required for the legal marriage (the blood tests, marriage license, translation of the license, etc.).

Hi, I haven't heard that before! I thought there were some ladies on here who brought their own flowers and received credit for the flowers included in the packages, but maybe I'm wrong. I know I've heard from several people that you could exchange items for credit within the same category, but I only personally did this with the cocktail hour (used the credit towards dinner and an extra hour of reception). Seems strange that they wouldn't offer any credit at all for the corsages and boutonnieres.

One option to keep in mind is that you can rent the sound system and play your own music during the first hour of the reception to save a bit on the cost of the DJ. We did this because I figured we didn't really need a DJ while we were eating dinner, and it worked out quite well. Our dinner actually ran quite long - closer to 2 hours - so in the end I was kind of annoyed that we had payed for 3 hours of DJing, when we could have easily played our own music for the full dinner time (2 hours) and had the DJ for 2 hours of dancing. We had a seated (non-buffet) dinner on the beach, and I'm not sure if that's why ours ran so long, but I did find it awfully slow. Especially since I had stressed to Lorena in our meeting that I wanted dinner to move as fast as possible, and she said it wouldn't be a problem to do it in an hour. Desires is very hit or miss depending on the night. On our wedding night everyone ended up going there afterwards, and there were two other weddings on that same day, so it was quite busy with lots of people drinking and dancing. But other nights during that week we went in and there was hardly anyone there. If a group of people from your wedding all decide to go together after the reception, you can kind of make your own party and it should be a good time!