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damitAPRILurCOOL

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  1. It's been awhile since I've been on here.. hope everyone is doing well! Aquabride, your pictures look amazing! So happy for you! Christinaa23, I purchased the fireworks show and we had them display them during our cake cutting. We paid $1000 for it and we didn't feel like it was worth it AT ALL. It was SO short. By the time people noticed it, they were over! LOL. Luckily, we have 1 or 2 pictures of them and one of our friends actually video'd part of it. We were offered the sparklers like Aquabride had and just by the single picture she posted, they seem WAY cooler... and I think they were way cheaper! Chrisdior, I had a young crowd also and there really isn't much to do in terms of clubbing. They have a sports bar that is open until 1-2AM, so most of my guests would hang out there if they weren't partying in their rooms. I know some all-inclusive resorts have an actual nightclub in the resort, but H3R doesn't. The one nice thing about the resort was that there was a bunch of stuff to do during the day... the bike tour, kayak tours, exploring the cenotes, and just chilling at the pool. It's about 15 minutes from playa and it cost us $20 by taxi. It's about 30 minutes from cancun. We didn't go there, so I don't know how much it costs by taxi.
  2. When we were looking for videographers, Mediamorfosis' work looked amazing but they were out of our price range. It's so sad you haven't received your video after 8 months... sorry to hear that!! I also wanted to comment on the videographer Luis and Allibe recommended for our wedding. We booked Marco Cossu and his team upon their recommendation. We received our wedding highlight video pretty quickly (4-5 days after the wedding) and were supposed to get our video a few days after, but it ended up taking a little longer. We got the video, but it was HORRIBLE. The main reason we hired a videographer was to capture everything from the ceremony and reception and sure they captured everything, but there was NO AUDIO! They didn't mic the groom, so you can't hear ANYTHING AT ALL. I'm so upset about this. He was also supposed to send my raw footage, but didn't even though it's stated in our contract. I've been trying to contact him through email, but he is not responding. I would NOT suggest using Marco Cossu.
  3. Hi Dayna, My wedding guests all booked through a travel agent and as part of the arrangement I made with her, she set up roundtrip shuttle transportation for everyone.
  4. Thanks Jen! Thanks Riss! You have nothing to be sorry about! Like I said, everyone still had an amazing time! I was just sharing my experience in case it was helpful for any of you guys! We ordered the lanterns on ebay and brought them to Mexico with us! It was way cheaper to bring them with us than what the hotel was offering them for! The officiant that was booked through the resort helped me write my ceremony.
  5. I didn't really set up the tours before arriving, but I did tell people who I knew would be at the resort at the time that we were planning on going on our tour. I only contacted Juan at the travel agency on the resort to get pricing and details. His contact info is: ventash3r@sunrisetravelcancun.net. I'm not sure about who sets up the golf outtings, but you can shoot Juan an email and I'm positive that if he doesn't book those, he can at least tell you who to contact. When I was setting things up before our arrival, I was told to contact concierge also (Allibe told me to contact them), but I didn't find them helpful AT ALL. Even at the resort, they were all very rude! Hopefully they help you though!
  6. OH! One more thing! We did do "group" dinners a few nights (basically, just whoever wanted to eat and was ready at the time - we would all go to the restaurants together). Most of the time, it took FOREVER! They lasted almost 2-3 hours each time especially at the Mexican restaurant. They were just really understaffed there and it would just get so packed with other guests! I don't know if it makes a difference if you reserve a big group because the one night we had 13 people that we didn't reserve for took as long as another night we had 10 people that we did reserve for.
  7. Hi Samantha! You can keep asking questions, I am more than happy to help! There were a lot of different excursions taken by my group! We set up a group trip to Chichen Itza on Wednesday with some guests who were already there. This was set up through the hotel's travel agency (his name is Juan and he is SOOOO helpful!). He gave us a good deal because it's typically $90/person with everything included (roundtrip transportation, english speaking guide, a late lunch), but since we had 9 people going, he lowered the price to $70/person. We also set up smaller scuba diving trips through him. On Thursday, a big group of other guests went to do a mini-submarine tour (called snuba) on Cozumel. My sister-in-law organized this excursion with a company she researched herself and everything was organized before everyone arrived. They just had to get to Cozumel which meant they had to take a taxi to Playa ($20/one way), then the ferry to Cozumel (I don't know the cost). That same night, we had a welcome cocktail hour set up with the resort (Allibe and Luis helped with this) because we received a complimentary "event" as part of our contract. We opted to not have a formal rehearsal dinner because of the different times everyone was arriving to the resort and we didn't want to force anyone to have to go to all of our wedding events vs just being able to enjoy the different amenities of the resort (we had some guests only stay for 3 days). Our wedding was on Friday. We didn't have a "group" breakfast the next morning (or any part of the weekend actually), BUT there are really only 2 places open for breakfast: the buffet and Hacienda Grill so everyone basically saw each other if they opted to leave their room for breakfast. The hotel is nice in that it's small enough that we all ALWAYS ran into someone. Also on Saturday, another big group of guests went on a Tulum and Coba tour while another big group went ziplining and ATVing. These two tours were done through VI Travel which is the transportation company we used to get from the airport to the resort (set up through my travel agent). These two tours included roundtrip transportation. My hubs, a friend, and I went into Playa to go Scuba diving one day. The taxi cost ~$20/one way. Very easy to get a taxi - the bellboy just call them in, so it only takes 2minutes for them to drive up the LOOOOONG driveway onto the resort. Sometimes the taxi driver sucks though - they will charge a little more than $20 or a little less. Just depends on how much they feel that they can rip you off! We had a group of our family go into Playa to shop one day. Relatively same price with the taxi. They felt safe when they were there, but it's REALLY touristy so very expensive. FYI - Somewhere I read that the hotel offers shuttles into Playa for free, but when I asked Concierge about this, it was only free for timeshare owners. PS. In my opinion, the Tulum and Coba tour is SOOO much more beautiful than the Chichen Itza tour. Tulum is by the water, so it's gorgeous (from what I saw in the pictures). Coba is cool because you actually get to climb the pyramids still!! Chichen Itza is kind of a pain because of how long it took to get to the ruins. We left at 7am and didn't get back until 8pm - 3 hrs one way, 3 hrs back just driving!
  8. **I just wanted to post a disclaimer.. LOL. When I said my MOH got burned from the lantern ceremony we had, it was a small burn on her arm. She didn't get totally burned all over! I felt like I should clarify because I re-read what I wrote and it could be taken that way. Oops!
  9. Dessert Course: Coffee Creme Brulee and Strawberry Compote (the size of this at the wedding was NOT this big, it was tiny. also, it didn't have the hard sugar top that typical creme brulee has, but it was still sooo yummy), Flan with Kiwi, and Red Wine Canoles Our cake tasting: The 2 chocolate cupcakes were supposed to be a caramel cupcake with a salted caramel buttercream frosting. It was just a chocolate cupcake with vanilla ice cream on top, so totally not what we wanted, BUT it was still really good. They do a really great chocolate cake (not too rich, just right sweetness). As good as it was, we decided against it because chocolate isn't always liked by people. The 2 pieces on the right were tres leches cake with strawberry filling and buttercream frosting. The 2 pieces on the left were pecan praline cake with cream cheese frosting. The piece on the top is red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting. And about the lanterns, we ended up just buying them from ebay and bringing them with us. The hotel was charging us like $10/lantern which was crazy expensive because we bought them for less than $2/lantern on ebay.
  10. Hi! Here you go! Appetizers: This is the Campanario Salad: This is the Three Maria Salad (our choice): This is the Roman Lettuce Salad with Crispy Bacon, Puff Pastry Grissini, Parmesan Cheese Slices, and Creamy Anchovy Vinaigrette (Basically, a fancy Caesar Salad): Main Courses (We asked for split plate): Hacienda Chicken and San Juan Fish (FYI - The chicken is actually the tall roll covered in the green sauce. The fish is covered in the white sauce. SO GOOD!) 7 Chilies Chicken and Caporal Fish Beef Tournedo and Grilled Shrimp (The shrimp were ginormous!)
  11. Our wedding day highlight video courtesy of Marco Cossu and team: http://vimeo.com/32215392 Our wedding day photo teasers can be seen here: http://www.danielgalangblog.com/?p=2215
  12. Hi everyone! My hubs and I got married at H3R on 11.11.11. We wish we could say it went smoothly, but it didn't. It sucks because everyone before us had an amazing wedding, but unfortunately, we just lucked out. The day before our wedding, Allibe (whom I planned everything with for a year) had an emergency so she couldn't be there. She had left my wedding to be coordinated by Luis and her assistant, Guillermo (I think that's what his name is?). I'm basing our bad experience with the H3R team on the fact that as a part-time wedding planner/coordinator myself, the second most important aspect of our wedding (the most important aspect, of course, being that my hubs and I got married) was that neither myself nor my groom had to worry about ANYTHING on the day of - which the team failed at. Since Allibe was not there to coordinate all the things we had discussed prior, Luis was supposed to but he just did NOT step up to that role at all. During the planning stages of our wedding, I actually took control on a lot of the coordination. Allibe was there to help me with pricing, vendor recommendations, etc, but when it came down to planning the specifics - I did it all (which I was fine with). For our wedding day, I ensured that we wouldn't have to worry about anything by planning absolutely every. single. detail. So all Allibe had to do was be there. I had everything planned, sent the documentation to Allibe and all the vendors, put together diagrams of what I wanted, everything.. Yet, despite all the little details that I planned (and some left unnoticed because of choices the H3R team made), the biggest disappointment was the fact that the groom ended up having to coordinate a lot of things that day/night since there was no coordinator. To be fair, regardless of everything that didn't go as planned, everyone had an amazing time. We had 70 guests at our wedding and a lot of our guests told us that it was the "best wedding ever" which was a huge compliment when I felt that everything was going wrong. To be honest, there was only one part of the wedding day which people knew there was something wrong, so all the little things I cared about.. no one else did or even noticed.. so it wasn't horribly bad. Anyway, I'll get down to the nitty gritty so you know what didn't go as planned, but I'll start with the good: The resort is absolutely beautiful!!! We were worried because we didn't do a site visit prior to the wedding, but there were definitely no complaints here. They kept it well maintained throughout our whole week there. All the wedding food choices we tasted were DELICIOUS. On the day of our wedding, the food was even better than at the tasting. The cake and dessert entree were both soooo yummy! The alcohol was high-end and free-flowing all night. The servers (on the night of the wedding) were amazing. They were VERY attentive to our guests. A couple things to point out: Everyone was drinking and after dinner, some guests were still hungry so the servers even went out to grab pizzas from the pizzaria for them! How awesome is that!? Also, at the end of the reception, our guests jumped in the pool and the servers had towels waiting for everyone coming out! So thoughtful! We were able to do a sky lantern ceremony which was, by far, the most amazing part of the night. It was awesome! It is pretty dangerous to do when everyone is drunk though (unfortunately, my MOH got burned from the fire), but it really was worth it! Everyone, except my MOH, loved the experience and the pictures of it are amazing! Food: We arrived the Sunday before our Friday wedding and we had our food tasting on Monday afternoon and our cake tasting on Tuesday evening. So in case anyone is wondering, there's enough time to do it in the same week! All the food choices we tried were delicious. For our first course, we tried the campanario salad, three maria salad, and roman lettuce salad with creamy anchovy vinaigrette. We chose the three maria salad. It was a more "basic" choice that we felt everyone would enjoy even though all 3 were yummy. For our second course, we decided we would have the same split entree for all of our guests (non-vegetarian). We tried: 1) hacienda chicken & san juan fish, 2) 7 chilies chicken & caporal fish, 3) beef tournedo & grilled shrimp. We chose the hacienda chicken and san juan fish because not only was it so damn good, but also of the 3 choices.. it was a little safer choice than the rest. But like I said, they were ALL SOOO good. What REALLY amazed us was how good they cooked chicken. It was so tender and moist, not dry like typical wedding food is. The night of our wedding, we thought the quality wouldn't be as good on the chicken, but it was still so good if not better!! For our dessert course, we were given the option of having 3 dessert choices on one plate: coffee creme brulee with strawberry compote, flan with cajeta, and red wine canoles stuffed with cheese and pear mousse. Ugh, they were all sooo good. Thankfully, we were able to have all 3 on one plate and didn't have to choose just 1! [i have pictures of the food from our food tasting if anyone wants to see how they are plated.. let me know!] Cake: We tasted: red velvet with cream cheese frosting, tres leches cake with strawberry filling and buttercream frosting, pecan praline cake with cream cheese frosting, and a caramel cupcake with a salted caramel buttercream frosting. We chose the red velvet with cream cheese frosting. It was the best out of all the ones we tried, but we weren't completely in love with it at our tasting mainly because it didn't taste like the typical US version of a red velvet cake. However, surprisingly, on the day of the wedding, the cake was soo good! We got a lot of compliments on how good it was! (As well as how good the rest of the courses were!) [i also have pictures of the cake slices we tasted from our cake tasting.] So.. what could have possibly gone wrong? Like I said, Allibe was called out because of an emergency and unfortunately, everything I expressed to her did not completely translate to Luis and Guillermo. I was very particular about a lot of things and how a lot of things were displayed, so I had specifically requested a lot from her. That was probably the biggest problem because I'm sure that someone who isn't so particular wouldn't have had the expectations that I had. Luis knew that Allibe was gone, so on the morning of the wedding, he should have let me know. This would have avoided A LOT of stress because I would have been able to tell him (or even my bridesmaids) what needed to be done, how everyone was supposed to line up, basically everything he did not know. (PS. He did not know ANYTHING!) I had brought a lot of stuff to use for the decor/setup. For the most part, it was set up correctly, but just not when I had expected. There was a table in which they just threw our decor on it, so it looks horrible in pictures. Luis did not line-up our wedding party for the ceremony even though Allibe was supposed to. She was also supposed to coordinate with the officiant to determine which side I was supposed to stand on depending on the direction of the wind (so my veil/hair would blow away from me). My groom had to do it, so he basically had to scramble to get everything together last minute. Like I said, there was only one time that our guests knew there was something wrong. It was right before I was supposed to walk down the aisle. They had the wrong ceremony music. Unfortunately, our wedding party ended up walking down before me and walked down to the wrong music too, but I wasn't around to hear it in order to catch it. When it came time for me to start walking, I heard the wrong music and gave Luis a look of, "What the hell is this music? It's wrong!" Luis tried to make it better by saying he would get the right CD, so that I could walk down to the right music. I ended up waiting through 1 whole song (~4 minutes) for him to try to get the right CD, so of course my guests were like.. what's going on!? since they could see me just standing there. After that song finished and he still didn't have the right CD, I decided to just walk down to whatever song was playing at that time. I designed/put together ceremony programs and fans for our guests and they were supposed to be put closer to the ceremony setup so that our guests could take them. Unfortunately, they setup the table so far away from the ceremony setup that no one knew to take them! This was frustrating because of all the time, energy, and money spent on these! Allibe was supposed to direct our guests from the ceremony to the cocktail hour, but no one did. They all, eventually, found their way. Our favors that had our guests' names/table #'s attached were not set out like they were supposed to be which caused my groom to have to look for them which also caused our reception program to start little later than expected because no one knew where they were sitting. The events of the reception didn't go as planned because of the lack of coordination between the DJ and Luis. We purchased fireworks and planned for them to go off during the cake cutting. It cost us $1000, but it was SO SHORT (10 drums that lasted 20seconds, if that)! For that price, it's definitely not worth it! Save your money! By the time most guests realized there were fireworks, it was over! Some tips: If you can afford it, do a hair and makeup trial OR bring your own hair and makeup team! Like I said, I absolutely hated my hair and makeup, but there was no time to change it on the day-of because we ran out of time. OR ensure that the hair and makeup team arrive on time. Regardless of how busy the weekend is, fit in a wedding rehearsal, so everyone knows what they're doing and where to go. We decided to forego a rehearsal because of the different times everyone was arriving to the resort, so in lieu of a rehearsal, I had sent out a pamphlet to my wedding party prior to leaving describing everything that was going down on the day of. It still woulda been a good idea to actually go over their line-up/placement prior to the day-of. I depended A LOT on Allibe and everything I had planned with her, but she just didn't pull through like I needed her to. Given, she was away because of an emergency, but she should have made sure that Luis would step into the same exact role that I had expected her to be. Either don't depend solely on her OR hire a (separate) day-of wedding coordinator! I have absolutely NO faith in Allibe, Luis, and their whole team when it comes to actually coordinating the events of the reception and as the bride and groom, you really don't want to worry about anything! Vendor reviews: Hair and Makeup by Alexandro Makeup. They arrived late and with 11 women getting hair/makeup done, this was NOT a good thing. We ran out of time at the end, so one of my bridesmaids didn't get her hair done like she wanted. It was rushed through at the end. I actually hated my hair and makeup, but unfortunately, since we ran out of time I couldn't fix it. It was a mixed review from everyone else who got hair/makeup done though - some girls liked it, some didn't. Photography by Daniel Galang Photography. They are based out of San Diego, CA so we flew him and his wife (his second shooter) out for our wedding. They did an AMAZING job! Videography by Marco Cossu and team. I had hired 1 videographer which included a wedding highlight video, 3 copies of the fully editted wedding day on blu-ray, and all the raw footage. Shipping was included. We also rented a video projector and screen to show montages throughout the night. On the day-of, I expected one person, but a different person showed up. Matthew(I think?) was great though. His presence was not intrusive at all and he was friendly to all our guests. There was a miscommunication when it came to the projector and screen rental though. Flowers by Latin Asia Flowers (Saku). Some things you can't really control. I had specifically asked for full bloomed roses for my bouquet and the bridesmaid bouquets, but received bouquets of tight buds. Everything else she did for me was fine. After the wedding, I asked her why they weren't like I wanted, and she was honest with me and told me that the roses didn't bloom and open up like she hoped they would before the wedding. She had the choice to either use the buds she had (in the right color) or use fuller roses that did bloom a little more (but were not in the right color - ivory, not white). She made the choice to use the right color (white roses) in tighter buds. Because of this mistake, she compensated by using a lot more roses throughout the cocktail hour and reception area than she was supposed to. DJ/Emcee by Mayan Vibes (Bijan Zade). I don't have much to say about him. He played the music I asked him to play. He was not a recommended vendor from the hotel and someone I found on my own. Just to ensure smoother coordination, I would suggest just going with what the hotel recommends.
  13. Hi! Do you mind telling us what your surf and turf option consisted of? We are doing a tasting when we go there the week of our wedding and wanted to do a split plate also! Thank you, April
  14. For Marco, his contact info is marcocossu16@gmail.com. Examples of his work can be seen here: www.vimeo.com/16372447 and www.vimeo.com/16377435. For Alex, his contact info is alexandromakeup@gmail.com. Here is his website: http://www.alexandromakeup.com/. He can definitely do hair and not makeup. A couple of my bridesmaids are only doing hair.
  15. Hi everyone! Just wanted to add my two cents about our vendors: I am using Saku for florals - she's been AWESOME! She responds quickly and is so helpful in helping with budget-saving ideas! She is providing my gazebo for the ceremony (it's pretty basic though, not as nice as the one Becks had at her wedding - see her pictures in the previous posts) as well as aisle flowers, centerpieces, and bouquets! For hair and makeup, I booked the person Allibe suggested: Alexandro Zavala. I have a lot of bridesmaids doing hair and makeup and he offered me a 15% discount when we put together my package pricing! He is also really great at responding! Allibe initially recommended Fernando, but he never responded to my emails so I said forget it. I enjoy the peace of mind of getting responses when I need it. He was also more expensive than Alex since Alex offered me a discount. For videography, I hired Marco Cossu - he was also suggested by Allibe. His prices are way more affordable than mediamorfosis. From the few videos I've seen of his, he does a pretty good job at editing. For the price I'm paying though, I really can't complain! He's also supplying us with a screen and projector, so that we can show a video montage during dinner. Let me know if you need any more info!
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