Dreams Cancun Wedding Review

Cancunbride2009 · May 13, 2009

Dreams Cancun Trip and Wedding Review

April 12-18, 2009

Arrival

When we first arrived at the Cancun airport, while we were really happy to have landed, it was a little stressful. There were over 20 of us on the same flight so we were trying to keep everyone together. We had my wedding dress, which was very akward to carry, on top of two suitcases and another carry-on suitcase. Just a note on the wedding dress, you might want to have a back-up garment bag as ours got ripped from being in transit.

Inside the airport, the timeshare folks werenâ€™t too pushy, but once we got outside, a man came up and grabbed our suitcase and went on with it! We had to catch up with him to get our suitcase back, and then he wanted a tip for carrying it, so hold on tight to your suitcases! It took us a little while to find our rep, but we finally found our bus. Once we got seated, they were selling Corona, so we bought a round for everyone and it never tasted so good! It was nice to finally relax and once we started to see the gorgeous blue waters, we all got very excited!

Check-in / Room

We arrived in the morning, so some of the rooms were ready and some werenâ€™t. Ours wasnâ€™t ready yet, so we just put our suitcases in our friendsâ€™ room until ours was ready. With the exception of four people, everyone stayed in the Tower building and all of their views were gorgeous! I was hoping that they would have put us all together, however everyone was spread out on the different floors, so if you are interested in sticking together you may want to ask about it ahead of time. Once we arrived in our room, a junior Jacuzzi suite, we were blown away. It was sooo beautiful! The pictures donâ€™t do it justice! We were on the 11th floor, and the views were AMAZING! We received several treats in our room during the week, including a gorgeous flower arrangement, champagne, chocolate covered strawberries, a cheese tray and a pastry dessert. Our room had an IPOD docking station, which was great as we could listen to music when we were hanging out in the room. It fit both the nano and the touch. We had a few get- togethers in our room and all 29 of us fit in there without a problem. The bed was really comfy and the bathroom was really nice, had double sinks and even a bidet, which we didnâ€™t use. I loved the balcony, you could wake up, have a cup of coffee and look out at the beautiful ocean. We ordered room service for breakfast a few times and had it set up on the balcony table. One word of caution, if you have the balcony doors open, you main door will slam really, really hard, so you may want to close it before welcoming guests in.

The Resort

The resort was beautiful!! Everything was clean and very well maintained. I did not see any insects during our stay aside from a few little ants, there were a few iguanas around the property which were cute! The dolphins were incredible, it was so nice to greet them every morning on our way to breakfast! I swam with the dolphins on the resort, which I will discuss further in the excursions section. In terms of the restaurants, my favourite by far was the Seaside Grill. It is located by the water and had such a nice atmosphere. My favourite meal was the filet mignon with mashed potatoes. The mashed potatoes were sooo good, I highly recommend them! The club sandwich was also very good. The main buffet was great and had a really good selection, we ate there mostly for breakfast and lunch. The coconut ice cream was very good! This was also the easiest place to get larger tables for the group. The other three restaurants were smaller in size. I actually didnâ€™t eat at the Oceana and the Himitsu. Others in our group did and said the meals there werenâ€™t overly great. The beaches were beautiful as you will see from the pictures below, the water colour was absolutely incredible! The Tower beach was great if you wanted a bit of a breeze while tanning. The main beach doesnâ€™t have much of a breeze there and was much better for swimming. Like any other resort, most people get up early to claim their beach chairs, so if you are late getting to the beach then you will probably have a hard time finding a chair, especially the chairs under the huts. The only thing lacking was the amount of pools, I think they could definitely use another one on the property, but then again having the dolphins there definitely makes up for it. I didnâ€™t swim in the Tower pool or the Jacuzzi, both seemed to be mainly occupied by kids during our stay.

Excursions

Organizing excursions for a large group of people can be very challenging to say the least. With a large group, you are going to have many different opinions so my advice would be not to spend too much time trying to coordinate group activities for the full week, perhaps just focus on one or two main activities. We got plenty of exercise walking from one end of the resort to another trying to track people down. This is where walky talky radios would have come in handy, I would definitely recommend those! We were told that Wet and Wild was the best place to do the swim with the dolphins, however we didnâ€™t get a lot of interest to go there, so three of us did the swim with the dolphins on the property, which was wonderful! A few others ended up going to Wet and Wild later in the week, it is cheaper and you get access to the water park, so you do get more value for your money, however we did find out that we did more activities with the dolphins on the resort and it is a more convenient option since you donâ€˜t need to leave the property, so it really does depend on your preference. All of the men (and one of the ladies) did a deep sea fishing excursion, which they loved. They rented two private boats and caught tuna, a barracuda, and amberjacks. The majority of us went to Coco Bongo on Saturday night, and it was by far the craziest place Iâ€™ve ever been! It was wild, there was confetti and balloons everywhere, the acts were amazing, I would definitely recommend it! It was a bit overwhelming because of the amount of people there, but we stuck together and had a great time! My advice would be to organize it ahead of time and go as a group as we heard that one guy from our resort got mugged there that night after he was told he could get a better deal on a ticket. On Saturday, a few of us also went on an excursion to Xel-Ha, which is amazing if you like to snorkel. It was a long drive, a little over an hour from the resort, but it was well worth it. There were also a few different excursions that some of the others in the group went on, including a golfing trip and an excursion to the Mayan Ruins, so if you want more info on those, just let me know.

Cecilia (Our Wedding Coordinator)

Cecilia was the third wedding coordinator I had dealt with at Dreams, so needless to say I was a little worried about things going as planned, but Cecilia put me at ease from the moment I met her, she was such a sweetheart! Before we arrived, we had planned to meet the day after our arrival, and had scheduled an appointment for our bloodwork. I had the contract pretty much finalized before we arrived and had sent her copies of our documentation and the documentation for our witnesses, so that made our meeting much quicker, although I did end up changing a few details. For the bloodwork, the doctor came right to our room as planned, and it was quick and painless. I did however, end up getting a huge bruise on my arm afterwards, which I managed to cover up a bit with make-up. I think if the band is removed before the needle, this can cause bruising. When I met with Cecilia, I gave her all of the items for the wedding such as the favours, the guestbook, cake knife, etc. and she made sure it was all set-up on the wedding day. We also requested special drinks for the cocktail hour, which she arranged no problem. She works extremely hard, there were weddings at the resort almost daily, and sometimes several in a day, so I quickly understood why responding to e-mails right away can be a challenge.

The Wedding Day

The Spa

The spa was fantastic and the people who worked there were very nice. I had a back and neck massage the morning of the wedding, which I highly recommend to help with those pre-wedding nerves. I felt so much more relaxed afterwards. I also did a hair trial the day before the wedding, which helped put me at ease since I knew what to expect. I brought some pictures with me of what I had in mind (although they had some books there as well) and I also brought clip-on real hair extensions that she put in for me. She did an excellent job on my hair, I was very pleasantly surprised. It was very windy the week we were there, so while I did have a veil with me, I decided against it and decided instead to put some mini orchids in my hair. I also purchased flowers for the bridesmaidsâ€™ hair, I just arranged this through Cecilia, so if you would like to do this, just make sure you arrange it with her in advance. I decided to do my own make-up although I heard many good things on this site about the make-up. If I had my time back, I probably would have had them to it because my hands were a little shaky. The bridesmaids were all happy with their hair as well.

Flowers / Cake

I absolutely LOVED all of the flowers! J They turned out better than I expected. I had given Cecilia a picture to give them an idea, and I also gave them a swatch of the bridesmaid dress fabric, so that they could match up the flowers, and they did an excellent job! The ceremony and reception centerpieces were also gorgeous, I had just asked them to match it to the bridesmaid flowers, and they matched it perfectly!

I also loved my cake, and it was DELICIOUS!! I am normally not a big cake person, but I loved that cake! We ordered a three-tier, which was too much, but my husbandâ€™s parents werenâ€™t able to make it to the wedding since his father is ill, so we ended up sending the top tier of the cake to them through my aunt, so they could have a piece! And on our last day at the resort, we had the whole group up to our room for coffee and cake, so it all worked out! They just put it in a freezer for us and delivered it to our room for us along with the coffee and some plates!

The Ceremony

The ceremony was beautiful, I could not have asked for a better location to be married. The sun was shining and the water was beautiful! We decided to forego the red carpet and were going to have rose petals instead, however since it was a windy day, we decided to save the petals for the end of the ceremony, when we were walking down the aisle together. The judge was a little hard to understand at times, but overall it was a beautiful ceremony. We rented the sound system, and the technician played all of the music correctly. I didnâ€™t realize that we had to do our fingerprints when signing the wedding certificate until we got there, but she had tissue there for us afterwards. We did have some onlookers, but I honestly didnâ€™t notice that they were there until after the ceremony, I guess I was in the zone!

Cocktail Hour

We had the cocktail hour in the terrace, and they brought out our drinks, bahama mamas and rum and cokes, so that we could do our toast. We didnâ€™t spend too much time there, and I didnâ€™t get a chance to have any food, since we left to go get our pictures done, but I heard the food was good! We rented the sound system for this as well.

Dinner / Reception

We had our dinner and reception on the tower beach. It was so nice being right on the beach! Our table was set up like a square so that we were all facing each other, and we also rented the dance floor. We ended up renting the larger dance floor, and Iâ€™m glad we did because I donâ€™t think the smaller one would have given us much room. For dinner, we had the caesar salad, the french onion soup, the jerk chicken breast and strawberry cheesecake. Everything was delicious except for the french onion soup, which I wasnâ€™t really fond of. It wasnâ€™t very hot and didnâ€™t have any cheese on top, which would have made it much better. They were able to accommodate special requests, which I had confirmed with Cecilia prior to the wedding, and they got everything right and nobody was kept waiting for their food which was great!

The reception flew by! Our dinner, first dances and speeches took up a fair amount of time. We did get in some dances, I just wished we could have stayed there all night, but it was expensive to extend the reception, so we ended up moving on to the lobby bar. We took dance lessons leading up to the wedding, and did a rumba and cha cha routine for our first dance! We were both really nervous, but it went really well!

Photographer - Citlalli from Claudia Rodriguez Photography

We booked Citlalli from 2:30 to 5:00 and she was wonderful! She came to my room at 2:30 and took some photos of us getting ready and then proceeded down to the gazebo to take some photos of the guys. She was very easy to talk to, patient and not invasive at all. I didnâ€™t even notice her there during the ceremony. I am still waiting to receive my pictures in the mail, canâ€™t wait to see them!! For now, I will include a few pictures from friends and family that were taken during the photo shoot.