Excellence Playa Mujeres Brides Post Here!

[Amanda Gardner]

Hey Ladies, We are getting close, November 23, 2012!  It does take N awhile to get back to us, but she has answered all of our questions, she sent us an invoice like sheet with all of our choices and pricing on it, which is very reassuring.  I did have some additional questions for you ladies: Do we need to tip the salon? For those that brought their own sound system, we are using a Bose, did you use a microphone if so which one or how did you make announcements, speeches, etc? As of now, we are doing our ceremony, cocktail hour, reception, show, and then disco.  Did anyone else do the disco, I was wondering if it was fun or if it is lame? I feel like we are not doing much in terms of decorations for the spice terrace, would you recommend anything? I think most of the major things of taken care, I just want to make sure our guests are going to have a good time! Thank You, Ashley

Congrats I'm jealous your wedding is close! What type of Bose system are you using and who is going to be in charge of operating it? My fiancé wants to use our iPod, but I am concerned about having to operate it. I am planning on tipping the salon just not sure how much.

[danak71]

We got our engagement pics back and we love a lot of them. Unfortunately, it rained the day we took them so we didn't get a lot of images in the 2nd look that we love. So we're going to reshoot one more look this month.

 

Thought I'd post one for you ladies up here!

 

 

[k032379]

We got our engagement pics back and we love a lot of them. Unfortunately, it rained the day we took them so we didn't get a lot of images in the 2nd look that we love. So we're going to reshoot one more look this month. Thought I'd post one for you ladies up here!

Beautiful. The photographer's work is lovely.

[ahoff]

I do not know the exact model of the Bose, but I think that it is the only one that can run on batteries (let me know if you need more information).  The Bose does come with a remote, which will help with the operation.  I will admit that I am also slightly concerned about the operation, although, my fiance says it will be fine.  Our reception is only 3 hours, so we will have a dinner playlist and a dance playlist, so I do not think that it will be a big deal to turn on dinner music and then switch it to the dance mix, I think the best man will make the one or two announcements that we need.  I will definitely let you know how it goes, fingers are crossed!
 

[sarahbiggar]

Hi All!!

 

We leave in 2 weeks for our wedding! The resort is completly sold out!! make sure all of you have your guests reserve their rooms!! They have 3 weddings friday  oct 19 and just mine oct 20!! We are doing the legal ceremony there where they do blood work etc. has anyone done this or plan on doing this?? Do we need to fill anything or get certificate in the USA? I filled out all the paperwork for mexico and we are having it all legal there just wanted to make sure i diddnt need anything from usa also.

[Rebecca1314]

Originally Posted by sarahbiggar 

 

Hi All!!

 

We leave in 2 weeks for our wedding! The resort is completly sold out!! make sure all of you have your guests reserve their rooms!! They have 3 weddings friday  oct 19 and just mine oct 20!! We are doing the legal ceremony there where they do blood work etc. has anyone done this or plan on doing this?? Do we need to fill anything or get certificate in the USA? I filled out all the paperwork for mexico and we are having it all legal there just wanted to make sure i diddnt need anything from usa also.

You don't need to do anything is the US beforehand. When you return within the first month, your wedding coordinator will send you your Mexican Marriage Certificate. You will only get one copy unless you request extras. It WILL be in spanish and will be the document that you need to show at social security, etc. if you change your name. I had no problem just bringing it down to the SS office, DMV, bank, etc and changing it. I also went to National Passport Day (offered once a year) and changed my passport name. The reason I chose to all this in person is that they want to see an original marriage certificate for name change purposes and since I only had the 1 copy...I did NOT want to let that copy out of my sight! When you are down there, I would probably ask the coordinator if you can have more than 1 copy mailed to you (I would suggest 3).....I wish that I had! Otherwise there are legal translation services that can make certified copies of the certificate but obviously at a cost. Usually this varies from $150 to $250 depending on who you use. Hope that this helps and good luck! It will be beautiful I'm sure...I wish that I could do it ALL over again!

[KlazNov17]

I am so sad!  The CECO Terrace where we wanted to have our reception is not available so we have to have it on the Spice Terrace.  Has anyone had their reception there?  Is it as pretty as the CECO Terrace?  Thats what I get for not reserving it sooner.  6 weeks away and starting to get excited and now this. 

[Amanda Gardner]

I am so sad!  The CECO Terrace where we wanted to have our reception is not available so we have to have it on the Spice Terrace.  Has anyone had their reception there?  Is it as pretty as the CECO Terrace?  Thats what I get for not reserving it sooner.  6 weeks away and starting to get excited and now this. 

I was told you couldn't reserve until 1 month out. Hate you can't have the ceco terrace, but pictures of spice terrace look nice.

[kshannon]

Originally Posted by CaptLs 

 

Hello Shannon and fellow BDW brides! Congrats on your beautiful wedding! I would just love to see your photos from the onsite photographer at EPM! I'll send you a PM with my email address!

I am so excited to announce that my fiancé and I have recently confirmed our wedding at EPM on October 27th, 2013!

I've been following this discussion forum for a few weeks and trying to catch up on past posts at the recommendation of my best friend, Lorraine (Koay) Vigliotta. (@Lciz) She raved about how helpful you ladies were on BDW as she prepared for her big day. I'm already experiencing the delayed response time of the wedding coordinator at EPM, so many of the posts on here have been incredibly helpful in answering some of our initial questions. I'm still waiting for Nayeli's email confirming our wedding details. I emailed her confirmation of our room reservation on Monday and still no response in regard to confirming the details of our wedding. Based on the many posts I've read so far, I assume she is VERY busy, so I'm practicing patience. 😊

Regarding the onsite photographer - VIP weddings (?), Shannon would you mind telling me how much you ended up spending on your entire photo package with them? My fiancé and I are trying to budget out everything and planning for a photographer is causing me a great deal of Streisand I'm still a year out! Any information that you ladies have to share on photographers would be much appreciated! One of the most important things to me and my fiancé is taking home amazing photos of our special day. And we really don't want all "posed" photos. We both fell in love with del sol, but just yesterday we learned they will not contract for EPM weddings. We can do a TTD session with them, but not our ceremony. This is so odd to me!! I'm sure they are outside our budget any how....but regardless that stinks! Any recommendations on a really professional, quality photographer at a reasonable price would be much appreciated! I'm aware that EPM charges a $500 fee for outside photographers, however I guess it all depends on the costs of the EPM photographer vs. the outside photographer rate - perhaps the $500 fee is worth it??

Thanks in advance for any information/photos that you're willing to share!

I'm excited to chat with you gals!

-Ali

 

Rodrigo Del Rio Lozano.. Amazing and award winning! I love his work and he not super expensive, esp for the quality! He is photojournalistic, which is the non-pose-y style that I am obsessed with. Check him out SOOOOO excited for you! It is so fun planning (esp bc it is so laid back doing destination!). Dont stress about Nayeli, It will all work out!

[Jass7]

Hello ladies!

 

Here is my wedding review at last. We left for EPM on 9/1, 4 days before the wedding, and two days into it my then fiance got really sick (we think it was something he ate that didn't agree with him) and he actually had a seizure in the bathroom. Omg ladies I was hysterical, and called the concierge for help and we had 4-6 people in our room shortly after. They helped him up and onto bed, and a doctor lady came in and checked him out and said he should stay in bed that day, and get lots of pedialyte into him. The club concierge was extremely helpful, they ordered him pedialyte and we paid in cash. They kept checking on me too, asking me if there was anything I needed, and even sent me some pastries/sweets and coffee. It was also the day we were supposed to meet with the coordinator N. I called her and apologized for not being able to make it to our meeting, but I asked if she could come to our room instead (fiance's request actually). And she came in, and her and I finalized everything from flowers to the timeline. She took all my decorations I brought her, it was helpful that I gave it to her in a bag, and so stuff wouldn't get lost. She took it, and from that point if I needed anything to change or ask her about it, all I had to do is dial her direct extension and voila. She was really sweet and nice in person.

 

The next day we did cake tasting, and this is where I was very impressed. We met at Toscana, and they brought out a medium size cake and since we were trying 3 flavors (chocolate, strawberry, and tres leches), I thought all three flavors were in that one cake. Oh no, we had 3 cakes, specially made for us. They were all delicious! We decided on chocolate bottom and tres leches for the top. We also tested out our cake topper, which proved to be too heavy for tres leches so we had the cake topper near our wedding cake. I asked for cascading flowers as a decoration and it turned out beautiful on the wedding day.

 

The day before our wedding, we had our rehearsal dinner at Toscana, and what I didn't realize before that is that it's a set menu, which I didn't even pick but it turned out okay. The only thing about that was the salad was the same salad I picked out for our wedding. If I could have changed that, I would have. But honestly after the seizure incident, I'm glad we were able to go through rehearsal dinner and the wedding. I have to say my husband (squeeee!) bounced back quickly. He was feeling so much better by our wedding day.

 

On the day of the wedding, I left for the Spa at 10am for my manicure and pedicure (I got natural french tips), and from there I had hair and make up done. I was done by 1:30pm, and the bride who was getting married at 3pm before me, she was waiting for me to finish. So I got done way ahead of the schedule, but that made me not stress too much about time. I had lunch with my girls, and went back to my room around 3:30pm, and on the way to the room I saw N and her assistant. And to my surprise, she had my flowers and corsages for the girls. She left them in my room, and told me all the guests are to meet at the wedding gazebo not later than 4:45pm, and she would come get me for our 5pm ceremony. She told me under no circumstances was I to leave before she got me, so I waited with my dad for what seemed forever, but we pretty much went on time. When she came to get me, she asked me about the playlist for the ceremony, and I realized that she missed the song when everyone is getting seated, so she used that song for our sand ceremony which was not a big deal.

 

We decided to bring our own photographer, and pay the vendor fee to the resort. And I am so glad we did. We went with Juan Navarro's team (Tony Rues and Daniel), and they were right on time, and took bunch of pictures in my room, and in room my husband was getting ready in. And then they left for the ceremony.

 

The ceremony was beautiful, but lots of wind. And my curls in the back didn't stand a chance against that wind, but it's okay. But I do recommend beach brides to wear their hair up, if they want their curls to stay.

 

We had Juan Carlos from VIP during the ceremony too, and few more people (I honestly do not remember them being there). But we had asked for 1 hour of video coverage, and that covered the ceremony and little bit of the reception set up. The pictures we got from Juan Carlos, were somewhat of a disappointment. The angles of pictures were beautiful but the coloring was awful in most pictures. I was disappointed in that, and I hate to say it but I felt like maybe he didn't care about editing the pictures he took because we had our own photographer. Either way, I am happy that we went with Juan Navarro's team, and can't wait to get those pictures.

 

The video was in HD, but because of the wind some of our vows are really hard to hear, and we had my brother do a reading and you can't hear him half of the reading because the microphone for the minister was still turned out so we heard her shuffling paper for the most part. Those are things that happen during the wedding and you can't do anything about it. So I highly recommend telling them what you want from the video before the ceremony. I did make two changes (where the music starts) and they changed that for me. All in all, we are still happy with the video.

 

After the ceremony, we took some group pictures on the beach, and then the guests went to cocktail hour at X Lounge. While we had some portraits done on the beach and by the palms. That was a lot of fun, specially with the sun setting. The photographers showed us some sneak peaks from their cameras and I was shocked that was really us! I can't wait to see those pictures, I'm dying to see them!!!!

 

My dress caught a lot of these prickly things, and I had about million of those on the bottom of my dress and the train. My friend helped me get them out, but those things are really sharp and they scratched little bit of my organza dress. FYI those are all over the place by the palms.

 

We then met everyone at our reception at Spice Terrace, and had a great time. We brought BOSE ipod dock (the one with 8 hour battery), and played dinner music, dance music, first dance, parent dance, and cutting the cake song. My brother took care of the music, and it helped to have him take care of it for us. One thing I will mention is we had long table since there were 11 of us, and the table was really small, everyone was right next to each other. If I could go back, I would have asked for the table dimension and added another table to it.

 

All in all, our wedding was beautiful and I wish it lasted longer. We had so much fun, and our guests said it was the most beautiful wedding they have ever been to. That was really sweet to hear! And even though it wasn't perfect, I am very happy with the way it turned out. I was extremely thankful to N, for all her help. She took my vision and brought it to life. And I forgave her for lack of email correspondence months and weeks prior. She really takes good care of you once you get there.

 

Here are some pictures! And I will share more once we get the professional ones!