pocobride

I did one dinner with the parents and one of my husband's brother's and his wife. The other dinner was with my husband's father's side (aunt/uncle/cousin's family). The other dinner was with a close friend and her husband and my husband's other brother and family. It was basically everyone since we had 30 guests. I think you could do 12 for one of the reservations. I would ask Maria, as she set it up.

just ask maria. she allowed me to pre-set my 3 a la carte restaurants before hand, which is not normally allowed. the buffet restaurants are quite good. i watched a wedding the day before ours to get an idea as to the walk. my son, who is 5, did great without a rehearsal. we just showed him where he was going to have to walk. you will love the venue. we had such an amazing time.

We didn't have a rehearsal. I don't think one was needed as our ceremony was pretty simple. Maria did show us the wording of the ceremony at our meeting. We also added the sand ceremony which is very nice and our guests like it. We didn't have a "rehearsal" dinner, but did have 3 different dinners during the week with groups of our guests. Most of the time we would run into our guests at night at the Meeting Point.

I was married in Feb. I was a little nervous but had my hair done at home by my hairdresser and took the photos with me. They don't speak a lot of English in the salon, but they are fabulous. They have books you can choose from. Both my bridesmaids and myself turned out very nice. I highly recommend putting your hair up, since it can get quite windy. Good luck!

Yes, the bows are free and she has a large variety of colours. The chairs shown in the picture are no longer available. They have white bamboo chairs without the slip covers.

We did the Xplor excursion and our guest loved it! It's great for kids over 7/8 years old and adults. It was $89US if you book online (without transportation). The taxi ride is short and when split with 4-5 people, it's about $15US each way. We booked Octavio Montes and he was fabulous.

We had our dinner at the Italian Buffet since we had 32 people. It has a semi-private alcove area that was perfect.

I didn't have the arch and the view speaks for itself. Everything little extra costs $$ and we didn't feel it was necessary. We added the Sand Ceremony which everyone loved.

I didn't have anything. I just told them I was signed up for it.

You're welcome. I also posted a review of the resort. If you have any questions feel free to email me at [email protected].

I was married at the resort on Feb 25th. If you sign up for the sandos4u it gives you a 10% discount. It cost me $81US for my hair do. The girls in the salon are fabulous. I gave my lady a $10 tip.

We were married at the Sandos on February 25, 2011 at 4:00 pm. RESORT: The resort was the best choice for our group. It was large but had enough meeting spots that we ran into our guests throughout the week without any problem. My parents stayed at the beach (RM#1110), which was such an amazing location. Considering we have small children, it was nice to have a close place to run to when we needed things. My husband’s brother also stayed at the beach which was a great location for the guys to get ready. The majority of our group stayed in the Hacienda section (middle of the resort). We stayed in Hacienda 74 (RM#7403) and had a walk out to the small private pool. Maria, the Wedding Coordinator, helped make sure that our group was as close as possible. We had other guests that stayed in the Riviera section. It’s the farthest from the beach, but if you don’t mind a 10 minute walk, the pool and rooms were the best. It’s a lot more quiet from the crowds. There are also shuttles that can take you to the meeting point, which is close to the entertainment/restaurant centre of the resort. BEACH / POOLS: The beach is fabulous. We had my parents and my husband’s father reserve our seats at the beach each morning. We had the same spot all week, so it was easy for people to find us. It’s a little annoying that people would reserve seats and then not come back all day, but at least we spent the majority of the day in our chairs/area. The main pool is quite crowded and I only went once to it for 10 minutes with my 8 month old. My son who is almost 5 years, loved the beach. He chased the birds and made sandcastles. Some days the water was quite rough due to the wind, but still amazing. I highly recommend taking a walk down to the undeveloped beach next door to the Sandos. The pool in the Riviera section is the nicest, biggest and has a swim up bar. We spent one day there and it was very nice. FOOD/RESTAURANTS: the food is resort food. Over all it was good. We were fortunate enough to have Maria help us reserve our a la cartes before we arrived. We went to the Mexican, French and Steakhouse. The French was quite good. The Steakhouse was also good. Mexican was okay. We didn’t go to the Asian but apparently it was also pretty good. DRINKS: yummy, yummy, yummy. A lot of variety and the beer was good too, although that’s very subjective. I didn’t hear any complaints from our guests about the drinks. We had a lot of sparkling wine while we were there. It was very good. Highly recommend trying some. ENTERTAINMENT: There was a lot of entertainment, unfortunately we didn’t see any of the theatre shows. We mostly went to the Meeting point at night and watched the outdoor entertainment, which varied. We were luckly to have a live band the night of our wedding. I hadn’t planned for anything after dinner, so it worked out quite well that we had a live band to dance to. The kids and adults also enjoyed the play room with video games, ping pong, foosball, etc. It was located next to the outdoor entertainment, so everything was close at night. SERVICE: EXCELLENT! The staff at the resort are fabulous. We had a slight issue with the front reception, but other than that we thought all the service was excellent. Especially Maria the wedding coordinator. WEDDING: The morning of my wedding, I woke up at 5:30 am with my 8 month old baby girl and took the opportunity to walk down to the beach and watch the sunrise. I highly recommend that on at least one of the mornings that you take advantage of the quiet beach and see the sunrise. It was also a great opportunity to take pictures of the resort without all the people. The wedding day was perfect. We didn’t get a lot of extras and we didn’t need them. The resort and beach setting speaks for itself. I brought my own silk petals for the isle. We had an IPOD for the music walking down the isle and for two dances in the wedding hut after the ceremony. Maria had the DJ add some other music for the walk up the isle and also during the toast hut. The speaker system is very good and loud enough for video recording the ceremony. After the toast and our dances, we had photos taken of the families then headed out with the photographer. We had our dinner at the Italian Buffet. It was the best place since they have an area for a large table. We had 32 people and had a “U†shaped table. The food is quite good there. Actually, I enjoyed the Italian Buffet more than the Grand Buffet. We decorated the table with maracas (12 in total) which was enough for all the kids to take home. We also had mini picture frames that we used as place cards. I bought them from www.weddingfavours.ca. I gave them to Maria with a seating chart and everything was done perfectly. We had a cake that was nicely decorated and very yummy. FLOWERS: They were gorgeous. I loved my bouquet (RA13), it was very colourful and smelled so nice. I had a white lily in my hair. I wish I had brought a silk lily, because by the time we were finished taking photos, the lily was very limp. My bridemaids had silk flowers in their hair and it looked really nice. I end up using one of their flowers for the dinner. PHOTOGRAPHER: We used Octavio Montes. He was very professional. His prices are great and the photos are amazing. If you want to have a look they will be up for the next two weeks. We had Octavio from 3-6pm. I wish maybe we had a 3:30 wedding instead, so we would have had more daylight, but still love the photos. 1.- Go to http://www.octaviomontes.com 2.- In the bottom right type user name "elizabeth". 3.- And click on Log in button. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at [email protected].

Hi tad515: could you let me know how much all your costs were for the different things and what was included in your wedding package? Also, where did you get your hair done and if it was at the resort, did you book before your trip or when you arrived? Thanks for your review, it's always good to hear positive reviews. Â

I don't know who the photographer is, but from the reviews s/he is not that great. I also emailed Maria (WC at Sandos) for a website to look at the resort photos and the link didn't work. I found that Octavio's prices were quite reasonable and the reviews were all positive. I also liked his work on his website. We do have to pay $77 for him to come into the resort and we booked 3 hours at $650.00. We are getting 90 pictures printed and the entire CD of all the photos. Our wedding is at 4PM, so we booked him from 3-6 pm. Â KristaMarie when are you getting married?

I've booked Octavio. All the reviews I have read are positive and his prices are the best I could find. I've only heard bad reviews about the resort photographer. We're getting married at the resort on Feb 25th. So looking forward to it.