Jes0912 Moon Palace Planning Thread

[Wafflesmom]

I'm so sorry you're going through this. There's some of us who are lucky enough to not have to deal with booking stress but then there's the majority of us who unfortunately feel awful during booking time. Like everyone said, a lot of ppl ended up booking at the final day and hour. Although ppl said not to stress, I'm a worrier by nature. I hope it all works out for you in the end. If you need to vent, feel free to message me

[jes0912]

Hey Ladies!! Thanks everyone for all the support! You guys have all made me feel so much better-- being the hands on, control freak that I am...i honestly couldn't stop worrying but it's OVER and the turn out was greater than expected, we've got a total of 17 rooms booked and 32 deposits, which is WAY more than we had hoped for. The crazy part is, a good 10-15 guests have actually told us that they're planning on booking later (due to pregnancies, vacation days, etc.) so we're probably looking at about 45 people in total!

 

We met our 10 room minimum, qualified for the unlimited private events (we totalled to 110 room nights, when we only needed 75), and qualify for at least 1 room free (from the 12th room free promotion). So we are doing SUPER! 

 

And now it's finally onto the 'fun' part of actual wedding planning! We've been assigned a coordinator (I don't know her name, because my WP deals directly with her), but we're finalizing our wedding, cocktail and reception location. 

Right now-- we have the Caribbean Beach, or otherwise known as "Moon Grand Beach" (which is the beach closest to the Caribbean Terrace and the further location from the rest of the resort, #11 on the MP map) 

 

Now we're just in works of confirming cocktail and reception location. We initially were going to have the reception on the Venado Terrace and cocktail hour at the Venado Garden...but John and I found a video on youtube of someone filming the Terrace (

) and the surrounding areas and John was really unhappy with it. He felt like it was in the middle of nowhere, there were walk ways surrounding it, and the resort buildings were in close proximity. If any of you ladies are looking for reception venues at MP, I would suggest just typing the location into the youtube search tool and seeing if you can find a video on it to give you a good sense of how the venue fits into the resort and it's surroundings!

So we decided to switch our reception over to the Caribbean Terrace which is as private as you'll get at the MP since it's on a Terrace above the restaurant; there is also a $12/pp set-up fee for the reception, but for more privacy and intimacy, I think John and I are OK with that. Our WP did mention that the entire deck may not be all ours, but our reception area would be sectioned off. I also hear that this area is on the quieter side of the resort. My WP did also mention that the wedding co-ordinator is suggesting that we also have our cocktail hour at the CT, but the cocktail hour also costs $6 to set-up on the Terrace, so right now we're talking with the MP coordinator to see if we can maybe waive one of the fees if we have both events on the Terrace  

 

Keep you Ladies posted! <3 

[rebeccarpeck]

Glad everything worked out! Definitely not looking forward to the booking part of my planning!

 

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[ashbuoni]

Hi Everyone!

 

I'm not getting married at the Moon Palace myself (I will be getting married at Barcelo Maya Palace on 5/12/16) but I can't help myself from scrolling through a good wedding blog!

 

I'm not sure if any of you who are recently engaged are looking into photographers, but I will be working with Octavio Montes for my wedding http://www.octaviomontes.com/

 

Reading through this I could really relate to a lot of what has been stressing all you ladies out, I guess no matter which resort you go to, you always run into similar issues! If anyone is looking for a photographer, I would highly recommend contacting Octavio. He has been such a pleasure to work with so far and has been the most responsive person that I have worked with through this whole process.

 

I'm not sure if Moon Palace charges a fee to bring outside vendors on , but Barcelo does, and even with that fee it was still more affordable to use Octavio instead of the photographer Barcelo recommends.

 

Just wanted to throw that out there. Let me know if anyone has any questions! After the wedding I am happy to share any photos as well

 

Best,

Ashley

[jes0912]

Hi Ladies,

 

Sorry I've been so MIA! I guess we're kind of at the point in our planning where we're really just waiting for vendors and others to get back to us before we get to make final decisions on things. 

 

WEDDING DAY DETAILS:

 

We've finalized our wedding date/times and location:

January 19, 2017

4pm Ceremony at Caribbean Beach (Moon Grand Beach)

6pm Cocktail hour Caribbean Terrace

7pm Reception dinner Caribbean Terrace (which we've decided we would extend for an additional hour, bringing the reception until 10pm-- this costs an additional $8.50/pp)

 

MP was nice enough to lower the combined set up fee for both the cocktail and reception to $15/pp. Normally they charge $7 for cocktail hour and $13 for dinner ($20/pp for both cocktail and reception). Initially I was also super adamant on having plated food for our reception dinner, but plated dinners cost an additional $37 per person...so for that cost, we opted for buffet instead. I've started to find that even though we're at an all inclusive resort, a lot of these weddings costs add up daily quickly and almost creep up on you unexpectedly! Right now, John and I are looking at about an additional $23.50/per person (which is almost an extra $1000 based on the amount of guests we're expecting) So i'm actually thinking of contacting my WP so we're not adding the additional hour for the reception (this saves us about $400!)

 

HAIR & MAKEUP

So I've been debating for about a week now on hair/makeup vendors and I know a lot of people have been recommending the StylingTrio, but after looking at their price list i was SO TORN...especially with the resort credits that MP offers, I can almost get my hair and make up done for free (still having to pay the 16% service fee and that's it!) vs. paying the $500 for my hair and makeup through the StylingTrio; and this is for the wedding day hair and make-up with their senior artist, not the master artist and the trial isn't included. You have of course get the trail with the package as well, but it's almost another $200. So...needless to say, I just couldn't justify. But after doing some more research on the MP salon/spa, the look I'm going for, and reviews I've decided to just bite the bullet and go with StylingTrio. The last and scariest thing is to be walking down the aisle HATING how you look and having all the pictures to haunt you for the rest of your life, lol. 

I'm also going for the soft low up-do with natural makeup and i find that sometimes with the resorts style, it's harder for them to achieve this look. 

 

Aside from that, we're waiting on the decor vendors to come back to us with quotes, which then at that point we can decide to add or trim down from what we've chosen. Keep you ladies posted!  

[bride2016]

Awesome! Exciting times ahead now that the ball is rolling

 

I'm actually really really glad that I paid the additional amount to extend my reception. Originally my reception was due to start at 6 and only go until 8? I think it was 3 hours of private event per day and I was already using one hour on the cocktail hour. I ended up paying the additional few hours to bring our time up to 11. It ended up working out really well because time really flies when you have to get through the first dance, parent dances, speeches, dinner, cake cutting etc. Even with purchasing the additional time, I felt like we didn't have enough time and I wished that I extended until 12 am. 

Beach Palace doesn't have a club and the one night that it would have been nice would have been after the wedding because we were all still in party mode at the end of the night.

That's a huge plus with MP! At least even if you cut your reception off a bit early, you guys can continue the party at Noir.

 

Good call with styling trio. I personally did my own makeup after spending a ton of time practicing, watching tutorials and spending lots of $$ at Sephora, but if I were to have hired someone, I definitely would have gone with them. I've heard that the spa doesn't do the best job. Really good call with wearing your hair in a low updo. I think my biggest regret was choosing to wear my hair down. I was swaying toward a low 'boho' style updo closer to the date and after seeing how my hair held up in the heat, I wish that I had!

[jes0912]

@ -- Congrats again on the wedding! I read your review and it immediately got me so excited about my wedding. So happy everything went smoothly for you guys. 

 

So I think I might have forgotten to mention that being on the Caribbean Terrace, the latest the reception can go until is 10pm...so even with extending the reception, we would just be moving up our cocktail hour, but instead now we're just ending at 9:30 and i feel like on the day of, we may end up just taking the 30 mins up until 10pm to move everyone out of that area... into the club

 

I'll post some photos later on my hair and make-up inspiration     

[bride2016]

for sure! although I will caution you, they do kind of kick you out right at the time the event is scheduled to end. haha

 

They did that the night of my rehearsal dinner 

[jes0912]

for sure! although I will caution you, they do kind of kick you out right at the time the event is scheduled to end. haha

 

They did that the night of my rehearsal dinner 

 

That's a good point! Thanks @! 

[tuppup]

I'm planning my wedding for summer 2017, and was curious if anyone knows how much set up for reception decor is if you bring your own? It would be pretty simple for us, just a centerpiece to place down, and a few candles per table. Does anyone have experience with this?