Westin Los Cabos brides post here!

[Maura]

There seems to be a growing number of us Westin Los Cabos brides on here lately, so I think we need a thread to share what everyone is up to!

Post your date and as many details as you have!

 

WEDDING DATE:August 9, 2008

 

WHY WE CHOSE LOS CABOS/THE WESTIN

We chose Los Cabos because almost my whole family is from Chicago, and almost his whole family is from Mexico City. No matter what, someone's family was going to have to travel far, so we decided on doing a destination wedding to a place we wanted to go. We aren't into huge traditional weddings which is what we felt we'd be obligated to have if we married in either of our home towns. I'm an anxious person anyway and am not comfortable with tons of attention, so we also figured that by having our wedding out of town we could cut down on the number of people who "have" to be invited. Since my FI is from Mexico originally, we wanted to get married in Mexico and Los Cabos was one of the few places he deemed acceptable.

 

For some reason, my FI doesn't like AI resorts. So, we wanted to pick a place that was private, not gargantuan in size and that would give us a guarantee that we would be the only wedding held on our date so we could have the full attention of the WC and the staff for whatever we need. We absolutely loved photos we saw of the Westin and from other weddings held there and knew it was the place for us. The mix of the modern architecture plus the colors make for very dramatic scenery, which we loved. We also love the fact that it has a timeshare section of the hotel, the Regina Club, in case any of our family members want to spend the whole preceding week vacationing with us.

 

CEREMONY

**UPDATE**

Ceremony is now for sure at the Westin. Padre Juvencio gave away our ceremony time so we are doing a private quickie church thing with our parents to make it "legal" in the eyes of the church, and then doing our big thing with the guests at the westin.

 

RECEPTION

We were given two options: Restaurante La Playa or the pool deck.

We are heavily leaning toward La Playa because both locations have equally beautiful views of the ocean, but La Playa has a roof over it. The sides of the restaurant are open air though. I have some photos I will post later today to show the difference between the two. End of August begins the rainy season, so we shouldn't need to worry too much about rain in the beginning of August but you can never be too careful. If we do it on the pool deck and it rains, they would move us indoors and we don't like the indoor options. I also had spoken with another BDW member, KarlaV, who had her reception on the pool deck, and she told me that if she had to do it over again, she would've picked a more private location at the Westin because there were other hotel guests walking by throughout the night.

 

MENU

We will be doing some kind of cocktails between the ceremony and the beginning of the reception so that we can sneak off for some photos of just the two of us. We have still not decided our menu selections yet, as we have a bit still before we have to do so. We do know for sure it will be a plated dinner served to the guests. Amazingly, one of FI's best friends owns a wine/tequila importing and exporting company and has generously offered to provide the wine and tequila for the evening as a gift.

 

WEDDING COORDINATOR UPDATED 3/2/08

We still dont have one. Been dealing with Karina Jajan who is the general sales manager and Maira Gallegos who is the group reservations coordinator. They answer emails fairly quickly but seem to be trying my patience a lot lately.

 

PHOTOGRAPHER Bradley Fraser. We booked Bradley for 5 hours based on many wonderful examples of his work as well as recommendations from other clients.

 

NEW!

VIDEOGRAPHER Enrique Diaz from Baja Video Productions. Very excited about this because I wanted a video and originally couldn't afford it, but they gave me a great price so I reworked my budget to fit it in and I am so happy I was able to!

 

I can't think of anything else right now...

 

Welcome to all the Westin Brides out there(and anyone thinking about becoming a Westin bride)!

 

Share your details and experiences with the Westin here!

[marip123]

Hi there,

 

I've just found this forum last night, and have I'm so excited to be in touch with other brides getting married at the Westin. We are set for June 8, 08. Our planner at the Westin has been Lorena. We visited last year in May and fell in love with the architecture and all the colors!

 

Right now, I have been under the impression we had to go through the hotel to hire all the vendors, but it seems that is not true. Are you going with outside flower vendors and such? Our wedding is 5 months away, and I'm highly confused, but know things will come together.

Congratulations and glad to be here!

 

Stephanie

[marip123]

So, our ceremonu will be on the beach and our reception is going to be at the bugambillias terrace. (sp). We loved the fire pit and the way the Westin morphs into all these colors at sunset. That's why we chose the terrace. Still discussing the menu.

[Maura]

Quote:

Originally Posted by marip123 Hi there, I've just found this forum last night, and have I'm so excited to be in touch with other brides getting married at the Westin. We are set for June 8, 08. Our planner at the Westin has been Lorena. We visited last year in May and fell in love with the architecture and all the colors! Right now, I have been under the impression we had to go through the hotel to hire all the vendors, but it seems that is not true. Are you going with outside flower vendors and such? Our wedding is 5 months away, and I'm highly confused, but know things will come together. Congratulations and glad to be here! Stephanie

stephanie, can you share any photos from your visit in may?

you do not have to go through the hotel for the vendors (except for the food i believe). we're using as many outside vendors as possible, because the ones suggested by the westin are expensive.

[Maura]

For anyone wanting to see an audio/visual quote from the westin -- i got this from another westin bride and i edited the document to remove her personal info. but this quote was from last summer so keep that in mind!

 

 

Westin AudioVisual.pdf

[Doc2B&LosCabosBride2B]

That audiovidual quote isn't bad....are you guys finding things cheaper with outside vendors? We're doing some logo projections during the reception as well and some uplighting. Are the outside vendors you're finding capable of something like this? So far the only outside vendors I have is the florists, photographer, decor for ceremony and reception and we're doing our rehearsal dinner off site. Ceremony is on the beach and reception is in Arricifes. We're doing a welcome reception on the beach as well.....using La Playa and the beach area right in front of it.

 

Do any of you have room blocks with the Westin as well?

 

What other outside vendors is everyone else using?

 

Thanks

[Maura]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doc2B&LosCabosBride2B That audiovidual quote isn't bad....are you guys finding things cheaper with outside vendors? We're doing some logo projections during the reception as well and some uplighting. Are the outside vendors you're finding capable of something like this? So far the only outside vendors I have is the florists, photographer, decor for ceremony and reception and we're doing our rehearsal dinner off site. Ceremony is on the beach and reception is in Arricifes. We're doing a welcome reception on the beach as well.....using La Playa and the beach area right in front of it. Do any of you have room blocks with the Westin as well? What other outside vendors is everyone else using? Thanks

things are def. cheaper with outside vendors. we arent doing any audio/visual stuff thats complicated. we are going to hire a DJ, so i assume they will have a mic we can use if necessary. we havent really gotten into talking about DJs yet but we need to! so any suggestions are welcome.

who did you book for flowers, photographer and decorations? i only have my photographer booked, bradley fraser. i need to look into flowers from an outside vendor because the prices we got from the WC are pretty high. and i have not even thought about decorations yet haha.

we have a room block that we set up through karina, i would be happy to share the info with you if you'd like. did you do a room block? we've been having problems with the contract coming back to us with incorrect stuff on it several times, so i dont know 100% whether or not my FMIL has signed the contract for the room block yet.

we wanted to use la playa for our reception but it turns out that we will likely have too many guests so looks like we are headed for the pool deck now, which is less private, but still nice.

[Doc2B&LosCabosBride2B]

Fowers I'm using Mazartes Florists...she is pricy but her work is great...you can cut down costs based on the types of flowers you choose. For example, orchids are crazy expensive.

 

We have a room block too and went through the same thing you are going through. Now, I'm just sweating bullets hoping the block fills.

 

Photographer I chose to bring from home because she does awesome work and I know her personally plus I wanted to chronicle the entire weekend of events and not just the wedding ceremony and reception.

 

Decor is with Del Cabo Designs....they have a website.

 

That spanish speaking trait is a good touch....my wedding planner is from puerto rico so when we were there in Dec. for the site visit, she was shakin' and bakin' with getting things done for us and making sure we didn't get taken advantage of.......that is one major recommendation I would give to anyone planning in Cabos is to have someone on your side who speaks spanish.

 

How many guests are you having?

[Maura]

awesome can you post some of the websites/contact info for your vendors so i can check them out?

 

i know how you feel about the room block. my FMIL refuses to sign the contract until its written in a way that isnt designed to screw us! we are expecting around 80 guests to show up out of the 150 invited, because many are just courtesy invites who we know will never come but are friends of his parents' or people living overseas we wouldnt expect to come. how many are you having?

[coreyphil]

HOORAY! Maura --- I haven't been on in awhile because things have been crazy here .... but I'm so excited you got the church!!!! That's wonderful!!!