DomSim2013

Dear future brides and grooms, what may sound like an advertisement is "just" the story of a trip to our dream wedding. The story starts bad with 19 hours delay at Frankfurt International Airport. It then got a lot worse, just to end up better, than we ever dreamt of. And all this thanks to Bego and her team at Kukua Restaurant Beach Club (short: Kukua) in Punta Cana. For all those of you, who do not want to read our whole story, here the short version: If you want to have a real Caribbean dream wedding, do NOT do it in a hotel. They are inflexible and just wedding production machines. Bego and her team do not only take care of everything you have in mind. They add a secret ingredient, which makes your wedding a fairytale wedding <3 <3 <3 For all, who want to get to know the full story, let's start from the beginning: We are a couple from Poland and Germany that had one dream: the perfect beach wedding in the Caribbean. So we planned for 6 months (a quite short time), gathered friends and family and flew to Punta Cana (with one day delay). As you can imagine, we were already stressed out, when we arrived in the hotel. But from there things got worse. Without going into detail about our hotel (Gran Bahia Principe Bavaro), the service at the reception completely sucked. In addition to a lot of trouble with the rooms, we were stood up by our wedding planner and wasted the whole first evening waiting instead of relaxing. At this point we have to mention, that the plan was to get married in the hotel (they have several packages) and have the reception and party in Kukua. This plan was the outcome of endless in advance mail exchange our wedding planner from Bahia Principe and the outcome that 2 hours of wedding dinner in a restaurant which is open for other guests and does not even offer bigger tables than for 8 persons is not acceptable for us. We finally found Bego, who offered us a great, fair-priced opportunity to realize all our ideas for our wedding reception. 4 days before the wedding we thought, that our biggest problem was the time of the ceremony in Bahia, which was scheduled for 12pm and confirmed by the hotel wedding planner to be unchangeable. This problem would soon solve itself, when we saw a live wedding at our chosen location, the sooo romantic gazebo at the beach. It turned out to be a nightmare. Imagine a wedding at a spring-break location. OK, you have the beach and the sea...but you also have drunk, naked people that are taking pictures, screaming and singing as far as 6 yards from the gazebo. You can also forget nice pictures, because no one from the hotel staff is caring enough to block the space between the gazebo and the sea for the 10 minutes of the ceremony. Sorry for the detail, but it made a bad impression and led to our nervous break-down. We did not know what to do. How could we find a new place in 3 days and organize every detail, which makes a wedding special?? As we were going for a legal wedding, also lots of bureaucratic challenges were in the way. The only one, we had to go to was a ever smiling lady called Begoña from Kukua. The first thing she said, when she saw our sad faces arriving from the beach after the shock was: "Honey, don't worry, everything is going to be alright." And it was the truth. Within 2 days she rescheduled the judge to Kukua and to 4pm (remember: impossible in the hotel), arranged the most beautiful flowers and decoration and did so with an ease that took away all our sorrows. The day was more than perfect. She even managed to get us beautiful weather :-) The reception and the party, which we anyways would have had there were also just great. Delicious food, always smiling waiters, a DJ who made everyone dance all night (yes, even our parents), the best MC you can imagine (Tutti Frutti) and her family (Toni, her brother and la mamá) who took care of everything from cake slicing over shooing away unwanted guest to ironing and shortening the wedding dress. The best is, they do not work for you, they live and feel the day as if you would belong to their family. Here is the link to a couple of pictures that should help you to understand what a great day it was: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.371301849669471.1073741870.359689087497414&type=1 If you have any questions, please feel free to write us a PM. But we honestly think, that you should ask Bego, she always has an answer or solution ([email protected]). To Bego and the whole Kukua team: Thank you so much, we will be always thankful for what you did for us. You fulfilled our dreams and made our wedding a fairy-tale wedding!!! Besitos, Dominika and Simon