Maracas - buy in advance or when we get there?

[cbott]

We are going to do maracas as wedding favors for our Puerto Vallarta wedding next month.  We have a few options for getting the maracas:

 

 - Buy through the hotel at $5-8/piece.  Pretty spending and not the best looking designs, but the most convenient.

 - Buy in advance online and bring to Mexico with us.  $1-4/piece and any choice of design you want.  Less "authentic" and very inconvenient to dedicate so much packing space to 60 maracas.

 - Buy while in Mexico, down on the tourist strip.  No idea on pricing, style, or quantity available.  More of a gamble, but probably more of an adventure and likely best combination of price and convenience.  

 

Has anyone done this before?  What do you think?

[springwater]

I've ordered custom maracas for my wedding and they ended up being 6.75/piece.  They include a design I picked ($6), our names ($0.25), the date ($0.25), and the location ($0.25).  I was able to pick out the colors I wanted and she sent me some pics as samples and I think they turned out beautifully.  I'm so excited to give them to the guests.  And, she is right in PV so you can just pick them up when you get down there, or have her deliver to you wedding planner for a fee.  There are two places I compared:

 

http://www.maracasartanddesign.com/

 

http://www.maracasmexico.com/

 

They both look like they do beautiful work but I ended up going with the first one because she charged 6.75 vs. the 8 that the other site charged.

 

I highly recommend, mine came out better than I could have pictured.  Hope this helps

[cbott]

Thanks!  I ended up going with Maracas Mexico in the end.  

[springwater]

Cool, I'm sure they'll turn out great.  We just got back from our wedding and the maracas were a huge hit...so happy I went with them.