Hello all!
I am a getting married at the Riu Palace in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico in June! On June 27th to be exact 
I have been in contact with our wedding coordinator for a little over a month now, but I'm not very happy. Our wedding coordinator is Guadalupe "Lupita." She hasn't been great and I'm not impressed. We've had a lot of problems, but what can I do?
My fiancé and I have 25 guests so we picked the Royal package as the Caprice package had a lot of stuff we didn't want or need.
I am not utilizing the salon for my hair or make-up, one of my bridesmaids is doing my hair for me and I will have my nails done before I go.
We are not worried about the strawberries and Champaign in the room or breakfast in bed or any of that stuff, we are pretty simple.
We have 5 children going to Mexico with us, one being our own son, so we expect this trip to be very family oriented as they always are! I am super excited. Do you know if we pay the $28 extra for each child since this is for the Champaign toast and seat? The children won't be in seats, they are all apart of the wedding. IF anything they will be sitting on grandparents/parents laps. I'm just wondering if we have to pay the money for them?
From what I've read previously we can bring cake decorations and give them to the wedding coordinator and the bakery will put the decorations on the cake for us? I'm really hoping that's true. The wedding coordinator has said bring them and they will see what they can do.
All of our friends have had destination weddings ranging from Las Vegas to Mexico to Belize and we wanted to make sure our guests really enjoyed themselves so we decided to do an offsite dinner cruise for our reception through the Cabo Mar. Since our wedding package includes a rehearsal dinner and a reception dinner we asked Lupita if we could utilize the reception dinner as our rehearsal dinner to include all our guests, but we didn't want to chose our guests meals. After all we are staying at an all inclusive resort so it's silly for us to pick their meals. The resort has agreed to let us utilize our reception dinner as our rehearsal dinner and is allowing our guests to pick their meals straight from the menu! (THANK GOODNESS!) My fiancé was not liking the idea of us picking everyone's food!!
Also, I wanted to give brides a heads up when it comes to the ARCH for the beach ceremony (which is what we signed up for since we are traveling to Mexico for our wedding, we had to have the beach!). I've seen a picture of the arch the resort provides on this BDW website and I was not impressed. It was a wooden arch that was all white, looked super old. I would pay the extra $350 for a huppah and with the Royal package Alina (the flower lady) told me we get 2 medium size flower arrangements FREE! The flowers are definitely over priced so I have made my bridesmaids bouquets and the groomsmen boutonnieres for a fraction of the cost! I also was not a fan of paying all this money for real flowers just for them to die and be thrown away before we fly back to America. My bridesmaids will be able to keep their bouquets!! I can post pictures if anyone is interested. Oh, almost forgot, I did buy 2 boutonnieres and 2 wrist corsages for my mom, dad, step-mom and step-dad. BUT I believe it will be worth it.
We are not using one of their photographers because my Uncle does photography and so we are just paying his way to the wedding! Pictures are the most important thing to us because we want to have these memories forever! Not only is my Uncle photographing the wedding, but he's also doing the videography as well! We paid a little more than $2000 to get him there (he's coming from Hawaii), but we were quoted $1900 for 4 hours of photography. We also have my Uncle for 4 days which means poolside pictures, hanging out pictures, etc.
We are also bringing our own minister!! It just so happens that another one of my Uncles is an ordain minister and is willing to do our ceremony! We are going to be legally married before we go to Mexico so it will just be a symbolic wedding! Conducting a wedding just so happens to be one of those things on my Uncle's bucket list that's pretty high up there so I am so excited as is he!!
We've also decided to bring our own music for the wedding ceremony and then for the Cabo Mar reception they suggested we bring our own music, which we don't mind doing!
This post is pretty long!! I apologize, but feel free to leave questions and/or comments! Would love to see pictures of other Riu Palace weddings!
- Amanda
