ROYAL PLAYA DEL CARMEN BRIDES: were kids allowed for the day? ...and other questions

[Lisa DSO]

Quote:

Originally Posted by giraffexx Lisa DSO - I love your dress! Great choice

Thanks :-). Hopefully they can customize it to take out all the bulk, but im pretty happy how the corset holds all my stuff in ;-)

Quote:

Originally Posted by PaperBagPrincess hmmm I need to noodle this one over... and find a way to shove it back in the budget without the FI noticing....

LOL, awesome!

[msglave]

Hi ladies,

I found this map of Playa and thought some of you might like to have it.

 

 

playa_del_carmen_map.pdf

[Jenny310]

Quote:

Originally Posted by msglave If you look at the bottom of the post, you will see quote. Just click it before you type your message. If you want to multi-quote (like you sort of just did) click on mq for each post you want to quote and then click on quote on the last post you want to quote. I hope that makes sense?

Thanks for explaining bc I never knew how to quote either! LOL

[orbitingbklyn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bridetobe1515 You can chose up to 3 people that you want to have access to your hotel at least 3 hours prior to the wedding for free. Make sure when you get there you tell them this. Zulma gave me this information when I was down there...would have helped earlier, but at least that rule exists!

thanks for this information!!! had no idea!

i am considering having my photographer stay as a guest at Gran Porto (wedding is at The Royal) and then listing him as a person who i want to have access to the hotel 3 hours before like you say. i assume this will work & i will avoid the $350 vendor fee. any thoughts? it seems like from all i've read here that doing that will work. even paying for him to stay is less $ than vendor fee.

but the issue i have is: should i have him stay the night before or the night after the wedding? i assume that they make you check out & leave the property at a certain time? does anyone know about this? my ceremony is 4pm and since it is winter, we will take photos before. so i'd need my photographer there by 2pm at the latest and stay the whole night.

also, do you have to pay for the photographer as a guest at ceremony, cocktail hour & reception if he's not sitting & eating & just taking photos??

thanks ladies!!!!!

[SarahE786]

Quote:

Originally Posted by orbitingbklyn thanks for this information!!! had no idea! i am considering having my photographer stay as a guest at Gran Porto (wedding is at The Royal) and then listing him as a person who i want to have access to the hotel 3 hours before like you say. i assume this will work & i will avoid the $350 vendor fee. any thoughts? it seems like from all i've read here that doing that will work. even paying for him to stay is less $ than vendor fee. but the issue i have is: should i have him stay the night before or the night after the wedding? i assume that they make you check out & leave the property at a certain time? does anyone know about this? my ceremony is 4pm and since it is winter, we will take photos before. so i'd need my photographer there by 2pm at the latest and stay the whole night. also, do you have to pay for the photographer as a guest at ceremony, cocktail hour & reception if he's not sitting & eating & just taking photos?? thanks ladies!!!!!

I don't know about all of your q's (maybe someone who had an outside photog recently might be better to answer), but I do remember someone asking about the vendor fee before about having a family member doing the photography. If I can remember right I think that if they have professional equipment (tripod etc) that you have to pay the fee....I could be wrong though but it seems like not many people would have to pay the fee if staying as a guest was the only criteria :-/

I was also curious if people might have an idea of how many weddings there actually tend to be each day? I know that my WC rebekah told me there could be up to 6, and I've seen on TripAdvisor recently people (non-wedding resort guests) complaining about the number of weddings going on and quoting numbers like 7,8 and 9 which seems like a bit of an over estimate! Any thoughts? I just don't want to to feel like a "wedding factory" because I think the Royal is so gorgeous and perfect for what I want!! :-)

[duprk452]

Okay, so I'm going to try to post a few teasers from my photographer. She just sent them and I LOVE them. She is from Louisiana, but travels for destination weddings and has amazing prices. If you would like her information PM me and I can get it to you.

 

 

 

 

 

[Lisa DSO]

I love the gazebo pic!

[~Stephanie~]

Quote:

Originally Posted by orbitingbklyn also, do you have to pay for the photographer as a guest at ceremony, cocktail hour & reception if he's not sitting & eating & just taking photos?? thanks ladies!!!!!

Ok, so I am sure everyone gets a different answer and in fact I thought we had to pay for our vendors in our counts regardless of if they were eating...but.. when I got there, Zulma only had me count the vendors that were eating. So I didn't count any for my cocktail because they were busy with me, and I did include my photographer at my reception because I wanted to feed him...

Quote:

Originally Posted by duprk452 Okay, so I'm going to try to post a few teasers from my photographer. She just sent them and I LOVE them. She is from Louisiana, but travels for destination weddings and has amazing prices. If you would like her information PM me and I can get it to you.

Beautiful!!

[jesmcan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by duprk452 Okay, so I'm going to try to post a few teasers from my photographer. She just sent them and I LOVE them. She is from Louisiana, but travels for destination weddings and has amazing prices. If you would like her information PM me and I can get it to you.

Everything looks beautiful I especially love the cake!

[~Stephanie~]

Ok so I am not going to get to my review for a while but I wanted to share the 2 major problems I had with my wedding with you girls so you can be prepared and not have the same problems I did....I am still trying to get over it, I have been so upset ever since my wedding but there is nothing I can do and I just hope when I get my video back that I don't feel upset all over again...since its all on video!

 

I took so long writing my own ceremony script, I finally had it perfect. At the wedding the Minister (who I understand does most of the weddings and I see her pictured above) messed up our ceremony by skipping an entire portion of our script. She didn't ready any of our sand ceremony script except for one small paragraph at the end. I didn't know what to do at the time, if I stopped the wedding it would have been worse, everyone would have know. It would have looked terrible on video- stopping the wedding. But I was so angry that for a "wedding factory" everything should be smooth and no major errors as they do this everyday, several times a day!

 

The other problem was with the music. The was a short or something in the cord they used to connect my IPOD to the sound system.. the music kept cutting out. The control of the music for the ceremony was just terrible, songs cut off, the music cutting out. It was very upsetting.

 

We decided to give it a few days, try to "get over it" but by the end of out stay I was still crying over it. We went to talk to Zulma before we left, she was unaware of the problems with the ceremony script. After talking to her about it (which she was great and very sorry) she took action and by the end of the day had provided us some compensation for the minister's error. It was great of her to do this, it obviously didn't make up for what we can't get back but she did everything she could to help make it up to us. The sour taste in my mouth comes though with the phone call we recieved from the minister to our room shortly after my conversation with Zulma. The minister didn't apologize, she didn't understand why I would be upset and she was upset with me because the resort was apparently going to take part of the compensation from her. She was basically asking me to reconsider but without any apology. It made me so angry, what was I supposed to do? She skipped a huge portion of our script. I feel like my perfect wedding was ruined. It made me more angry that she confronted us about the money instead of her employer. (yes she works for the resort).

 

I want to say thought that Zulma was very professional in all of this and she was just so wonderful with everything. She is amazing and she does take complete care of you when you get there! She is aware of everything that is going on with the MI office moving and she does know what is going on with all of us brides.

 

I just felt that everyone should know what we encountered. I don't want to worry anyone but at the same time if I can prevent any problems I want to do what I can. Every bride plans and hope for everything to be perfect and when its not and its errors by someone else and its out of your control, well, its heartbreaking, at least to me.

 

We do miss The Royal so much already though, we have already been trying to figure out when we can go back... aside from a few problems with the ceremony, everything else was wonderful.