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Ladies, we just wanted to pass along that Excellence has informed us they will be allowing us to use Del Sol for our wedding. Unfortunately for those of you who are early in the planning stages, this is a single exception for us right now and not a policy change. For those of you who have booked Del Sol or La Luna already and are staying at an Excellence resort, keep on them! The best advice I can give is to not back down. Be willing to change your resort, make sure they are aware of that risk and be willing to follow through. Even after we were done, we still considered changing resorts for the frustration and hassle that Excellence had put us through, but because so many of our guests had booked and we are so close to our date, we found ourselves in an apples to oranges comparisons of suites and wedding packages between resorts. There was too likely a risk our guests and ourselves would be paying more and we did not want to put our families through that, even though they were supportive of any decision we made. In the end, we did change our stay at Excellence from 10 days to 7, and are spending the final 3 days at Royal Playa del Carmen. We had no intention of staying at EPM after our last guest had left. This does show that Excellence will bend on this policy if you fight. If enough people fight it, they'll do more than bend, it'll eventually break! And we have to thank Del Sol and Beach Bum Vacations for everything. They've been incredibly supportive of us and committed to us, not their bottom line or their own best interests as Excellence has been.

Thank you! That is my biggest concern as well. Is this the beginning of a slippery slope for Excellence where they start restricting third party vendors totally except for ones they directly coordinate and arrange? Or is this a case of Excellence trying to force out specific vendors to encourage use of their own? Regardless, its something that puts fear into all of us that they will maintain their commitments to our weddings and is just an unprofessional way to handle their customers. And if this is an issue between Excellence and specific third party vendors, then pitting your customers in the middle of it and forcing them to choose is just a terrible way to do it...

Hello ladies, I just wanted to chime in. I'm Sean, becky1022's fiancee and am the one who posted on tripadvisor.com. We initially started our conversation with Ileana Romera on 6/25 when our travel agent contacted her to reach out to us so we could start finalizing items for our ceremony this October. In my first e-mail to her, I informed her that we had a contract with Del Sol and asked if we could credit the cost of the in-house photographer from the wedding package towards their event passes. In her response: As Becky said, we initially escalated this to our travel agent for clarification. We did not want to start off on the wrong foot with our wedding coordinator! During this time, we found out that another potential couple was told they did not work with Del Sol, and as some of you have been told, some photographers are allowed, while Del Sol and La Luna are not. Some of you have asked, what the options are. Simply, we feel you have to speak with your wallet, its the only bargaining chip you have as many of us do not have written and signed contracts with Excellence regarding our wedding ceremonies. We're prepared to move our entire wedding party to another resort if Excellence will not allow us to use our choice of photographer. This is a highly frustrating situation and terrible commitment to customer service IMO. This is not an unreasonable request on our part and we will not provide revenue to Excellence as long they maintain this policy. For the time being, we are letting our travel agent handle the conversation as he has the ability to escalate this to senior management at both his agency and Excellence. Once we have feedback from Excellence on what they are willing (or unwilling) to do, we'll take it to the next step. We'll keep all of you informed of what happens. Our advice for all of you is to get everything documented in writing and to get a contract ASAP! This has left such a bad taste in our mouth, we hope this isn't the beginning of the slippery slope for Excellence and they start trying to restrict more services to only those they approve in-house! IliaPSU - Juan Navarro was who we were told the in-house photographer was back in October of last year when we started our reservations. That would be the most probably reason why he is allowed to do your event.