Sarafish81's Playa Pesquero Review - April 18, 2009

[sarafish81]

All in all, we had a great day. Yaly, the on-site wedding coordinator, arranged a time to meet with us the day after we arrived to go over the details. I was very specific on my requests (no red carpet aisle runner, no huge bows on the wedding arch) and she wrote everything down with a "no problem!"

 

Our symbolic wedding was at 4pm on the beach on April 18 (our legal ceremony was the day before). My mom, MOH and I had our hair appointments starting at 1pm. I had met the hairdresser the day before, together with my mom and MOH to explain our hair requests. I had brought my clip-in extensions, as well as pictures of my hair trial done at home (curled, half up, half down) and she said that she was familiar with the extensions and would be able to replicate my hairstyle from the trial back home. My hair initially took an hour to do and I was not happy with the results. The extensions were not curled but my real hair was very tightly curled so the separation between real and fake was blatantly obvious. I thought I would cry when she exclaimed "all done!!" -- at this point, my mom and MOH still had to get their hair done so I started on my makeup and tried to maintain composure. After my mom and MOH were finished, the hairdresser removed my extensions to curl them to "match" my real hair and it seemed better. Unfortunately, my MOH and mom weren't happy with their hair either (they both had it pinned up, requesting curls and then up-dos), but the hairdresser had just pinned their hair up so it looked almost "spiky". At this point, they were gracious enough to say thank you as there really was no time to fix theirs and we went back to my mom's room to get dressed. My recommendation would be to allow for ample time with this hairdresser and to be patient. She is very sweet and a hard-worker. I've seen pictures of other hairstyles she's done and they are fantastic, so maybe it just wasn't my day!

 

The horse and buggy met us at my mom's room at precisely 4:05, as Yaly had promised. When we got to the beach, everything looked great. The archway had green with pink flowers as I had requested (Connie (teacherbride)'s pictures inspired that!) and the ceremony went off perfectly. After the ceremony, we had champagne and appies on the beach and a band played some music for us while we did some pictures and enjoyed the congratulations from our guests. After 30 mins or so, we were taken by golf carts to the lobby for some drinks and visiting. It's amazing how wearing a wedding dress gets you the VIP treatment! Other guests came up to us to congratulate us and clapped for me as I walked to the bathroom LOL and I sure felt like a celebrity. I learned at that point that my FSILs (now my SILs!) were watching the decorating of our wedding arch that afternoon. Apparently, the red carpet was set up and there were huge bows all over the arch, specifically not what I requested. They were sweet enough to have the staff fix those things (after some confusion as to who these women in bikinis were telling them how to decorate our wedding!) - I was thankful that they were there to supervise. I also learned that the cd player had no power to it up until 5 minutes before I arrived at the ceremony. So poor DH was stressed out trying to get everything "perfect"!

 

At 7pm, the golf carts came back to pick us up and take us to the beach for our reception. We had made luminaries and bought some fake flowers for the tables which were decorated beautifully for us. The food was ok (Cuban food is not the greatest and we knew that already), but the staff were magnificent, catering to us and our guests and making us feel like royalty. We had brought our own music to play during dinner and it was lovely.

 

We had our first dance on the beach which was great! Our families are not big dancers LOL but we thought we'd go to the disco since our time was up for the beach (7-10pm) and let loose, however, the golf carts were not able to pick us up. Unfortunately, our photographer had a fractured foot and couldn't walk far, but after waiting for 30 minutes, we decided to just walk up to the lobby. This resort is quite big so we were hoping that we could get some carts. I'm not sure what happened there. By the time we got to the lobby, I just wanted a cappuccino and a seat! So, we sat for awhile with our guests and then off to bed!

 

The other thing I will say is that the reason this resort has little to no mosquitos is that there is a fumigator truck that comes around every night and smokes the place out with chemicals. On our second night there, my SIL was caught in the smoke, right next to a beach bbq wedding reception!! She said it was awful, that the guests had food on the tables and were covering their noses with their shirts. We were concerned so had checked with the PR desk who said that the truck comes around between 5:45-6:15pm at night and that we had nothing to worry about for our beach reception. As it stands, we tried to notice when the truck came around in the days leading up to our wedding and for 3 days before, it never came. It didn't blast our reception either, for that we were thankful! Just something to keep in mind.

 

We paid for the DVD and extra pictures from the resort photographer and I'm so glad we did! It was well worth it.

 

Our day really was wonderful and I look back on it fondly. As with any big event, there were a few glitches. My advice is to go with the flow, pause to breathe and enlist help from your family when you need it! It went by so fast. If anyone has any further questions, please contact me and I'll be happy to help. Pictures soon!!

[DTHSLove]

Congrats to you both. Long life and love.

[beach2009]

Congrats on becoming a MRS! Looks like you had a perfect day from your siggy pic.

Can't wait to see more pics.

[krayzeekitty]

Congrats Sara and thank you for sharing! Very excited to see pics.

[Soon To Be Mrs. Gomez]

Congrats. Can't wait for pics.

[Sloan]

Your siggy pic is awesome, love the colour of the water in the background! Congrats!

[jax_the_beach_bride]

CONGRATS fellow Cuba bride!!.. hope to see ur pics posted soon!!!!... I CANNOT WAIT!

[K'osh]

Thanks for the review...excited for the pics!!!

[JTAlberta]

Thanks for sharing!!! You looked amazing!!!

[*Nadine*]

did you ever post pictures sara I want to see them and don't think I did