Iberostar Tucan/Quetzal Wedding Review - Nov 2004

[dakota]

Iberostar Tucan Wedding Review (LOOOONG)

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My husband and I got married at the Iberostar Tucan on November 17, 2004. All in all, it was a complete dream come true - it was all truly fantastic.
Background info – we’re both 29, have been to this area twice before – once to the Viva Azteca for a wedding 3 years ago, once to the Iberostar Paraiso in April 2004 for a wedding and this time for our wedding. Have also been to Dominican Republic and stayed at the Barcelo Bavaro. Iberostar Tucan is by far our favorite!!

I will try to get into some more details for you and I apologize ahead of time for the length of this post - I talk a lot which translates in my typing, so I anticipate this to be a fairly long post to try to get all the information in for anyone interested.

My husband and I travelled to Mexico along with 50 other people from various parts of the globe. The majority of us came from Calgary, Alberta, while there were some from Vancouver, Toronto, Ohio, England, and Ireland.

There were about 30 of us staying at the Iberostar Tucan/Quetzal, the other 20 stayed at various other resorts, some by choice, some becuase they didn't book soon enough and the Tucan was fully booked.

FLIGHT
From Calgary we flew via Sykservice through signature vacations. Skyservice was not quite as bad as I had anticipated. The seats were tight, but we learned on the way home that rows 20-30 are the tightest. Anything before 20 and after 30 has a little more leg room, which really made quite a difference on our way home.

The flight went reasonably well - it's a long cramped ride, but worth it for where you're going. Arrival in the Cancun airport at around 3:45pm on the Friday was quite smooth. We were the only flight that arrived to the terminal at that time, so while we were in line for about 20 minutes, it wasn't too bad at all. (as a side note for future Mexico brides, we did carry down with us gift bags for all our guests. We had boxed them up into smaller boxes to distribute to some of our family and friends to check as baggage on the plane, which worked quite well. Our baggage, however, was too heavy. We were overweight and had to pay about $180 for overweight luggage, which we were expecting, so it wasn't the end of the world for us. It was quite stressful upon arrival to make sure all the boxes were collected and got on the bus and to our room at the resort, but as soon as we had them in our room, it was all good. I did also carry on my dress, which I learned probably wasn't necessary, other than the fact I would have been horrified if they lost my luggage. But, in terms of wrinkles, it didn't make any difference. The airline would not hang the dress, so it went in the overhead bin folded neatly on top of bags, but fell off the hanger numerous times throughout the travels to the resort and for the most part sat at the bottom of the garment bag in a ball, but as soon as I hung it for a day, it didn't need any pressing what so ever. My dress, however, did not have any thick heavy fabric, which also helped in terms of wrinkles).

Cancun airport went smoothly, got through customs and collected our baggage and all our boxes. Unbelievably, no one in our group got the red light, which was great! Hopped on the bus and made one stop at another resort on the way to ours.

CHECK IN
Got to the resort and check-in went very smoothly. We were greeted with welcome drinks and given our room number and resort information and room keys. We were also given an envelope with a note from Mariela, the wedding coordinator, asking us to meet her at 10am the following day in the lobby to go over the details of the wedding.

ROOMS
Got upgraded to a GREAT ocean view room on the Quetzal side (we had originally booked on the Tucan, but truly, it DOES NOT make a difference. I have seen some reviews where people are dissapointed by which side they're on - it really doesn't matter - they do each have different decor to the rooms, and different sort of pathways, but they're both beautiful. You have to be really picky to be upset about one side over the other).

So, we got upgraded to the oceanview room which was great. They had left us a bottle of wine, a nice fruit basket and flower arrangement. The rooms was great. Yes, the bed was firm, but we really didn’t have an issue sleeping. Nice size bathroom with great stand-up shower with lots of water pressure. The only thing lacking in the room are drawers and places to put clothes and things – there are some shelves throughout, and lots of counter space, but more drawers might have been handy and kept us a little more organized.

The night was pretty low key - had something to eat at the buffet, had a few drinks and went to bed.

WEDDING PLANS
The next day we were up nice and early (weather was perfect throughout the 2 weeks until the last day we were there). Went to the beach for a while before our meeting with Mariela. Met with Mariela and her assistant (Anna I think was her name). The meeting was great. They showed us pictures, we picked our decor (Traditional white or Mexican - we went with White), we picked our flowers (you can pick traditional bouquets, roses, gerger daisies, etc, we went with the tropical flowers and weren't dissapointed in the least). They showed us pictures of cakes, we chose one, they gave us the cake flavours, we picked one. And we went over some of the other details of the day.
All in all the meeting took 45 minutes. 45 minutes to plan a wedding - how wonderful!!

The next couple days were great. Oursleves and all our guests were extremely thrilled with the resort - everything about it.

GREAT RESTAURANT IN TOWN…
Tuesday night the immediate family and wedding party went into playa del carmen for a rehearsal dinner (we didn't really have a rehearsal dinner, we just wanted an excuse to go out with all of them). We did it at Yaxche restaurant - HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!! It was great. We were set up in the garden area. The food was the best we had in the whole 2 weeks in Mexico. SOOOOO good and the service was fantastic too.

WEDDING DAY:
Next day was the wedding day. I had always wanted to be sitting by the pool the morning of my wedding, so I made a special point of getting up and out right away so I had a couple hours at the pool. At 11:00 I headed up to my room for a shower. Headed over to my mom’s room with my bride’s maids and dropped off our dresses, then over to the spa to get our hair done. We all did our make-up ourselves in the spa while others were getting their hair done (they only have 2 girls doing hair, so we had to take turns). Though the ladies doing hair in the spa spoke very little English, they gave us a book of up-do’s and had us pick which one we liked and they did an ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC job! And no worries about my hair staying in place – they have some SERIOUS hair spray! They incorporated my tiara and veil into my up-do and I was really really happy with what they did.

By now we were running a little behind schedule, so we rushed off to my mom’s room and got dressed. Flowers were delivered on time – WOW!! They were absolutely fabulous, I was so thrilled with them, could have never gotten flowers so beautiful here in Canada. The boys lapel flowers were delivered to the room where they were getting ready – also great!

PICTURES:
I know some of you brides to be out there are wondering about pictures – I was lucky, my uncle is a professional photographer and he came to Mexico with us and did our pictures for us down there. The resort does not allow off-site photographers unless they are part of your wedding group. I have seen the on-site photographer and the pictures done, which are great, but really you can’t go wrong with the scenery there, however, I do have to admit it was nice having a REAL professional photographer rather than the same one that takes pictures of the iguanas and parrots throughout the resort that day. I’m really not meaning to ‘diss’ their photographer, I’ve just grown up with an uncle as a professional photographer, so I really know the difference, but the albums that the resort photographer was doing looked beautiful – I’m just biased.

I had my pictures with me and my bridemaids and my mom before the ceremony. We took a bunch of them throughout the resort as we made our way to the beach for the ceremony.

WEDDING CEREMONY:
We arrived at the wedding ceremony and had to wait hiding behind a building for a little bit because the guests wouldn’t take their seats! But, eventually we got underway. We were given a list of music for the processional by Mariela to choose from, but it was mostly filled with cheesy Mariah Carey and Celine Dion type music. Instead I asked her to just play some ‘Mexican’ music. She had a mariachi CD she used, it was great.
We also cheated a little bit with the legal requirements. We legally got married in Canada prior to our departure, which saved us some of the paperwork. Usually, for a non-legal ceremony, they offer a ‘non-denomination Christian minister’ to perform the ceremony. This didn’t sit well with my husband and I as we wanted no religion in the ceremony at all. So, instead, since it wasn’t a legal ceremony anyways, we asked one of our close friends to perform the ceremony, it was a wonderful way to include someone so important to us and it was absolutely perfect.
Following the brief ceremony we had a champagne toast and more hugs and kisses than I could ever count.
Yes, there were on-lookers in bikinis and speedo’s during the ceremony, but to be completely honest, I only know this from some of the pictures and video, during the ceremony I was so wrapped up in everything that I didn’t notice at all. As well, Mariela and her assistant were very good at clearing most of the people away from the area for the ceremony.

Champagne on the beach with mariachi music playing from the speakers – it was fantastic. We did pictures of the wedding party, family and bride and groom immediately following champage. It was so much fun!!!

COCKTAIL RECEPTION
We had a cocktail reception planned to take place in the jungle from 5:15-6:15 with a mariachi band. In comparison to all the other costs, this was the most expensive event of the entire wedding – but worth it!! The mariachi band was unbelievably fantastic and fun. The food was good (appetizers), and drinks of course were great. It was QUITE costly in comparison to everything else, but quite cheap to compare to doing something like that at home. To us, it was worth it. Gave us some time to mill around and socialize with everyone after the ceremony and before the formal dinner. It was a lot of fun.

DINNER RECEPTION
We chose the steakhouse (la Marimba) for the dinner/reception because we wanted the open air environment and we just liked this restaurant from what we read in previous reviews. It was a GREAT choice. I did have to negotiate a bit prior to departing in order to get the entire restaurant reserved for JUST us for the entire evening (6:30-10:30). Because we had less that 75 people we couldn’t just have it for the evening, but because we were 52, Mariela allowed us to have the whole restaurant for the entire evening as long as it counted as one dinner reservation at an a-la-carte restaurant for each of the guests. This was fine with me, I don’t think any of the guests minded, in fact, most of them didn’t even realize that they had one less reservation. The table set up was fantastic, the flowers were great (we upgraded the flowers at the ceremony, and then they took the flowers from the ceremony and used them as centerpieces at dinner – it was great). In fact, I upgraded flowers anywhere and everywhere we could – they were really cheap and really beautiful.
We had dinner, which was served, including appetizers and main course. We had ordered a DJ for the evening to have a microphone for speeches and play music for the dance afterwards (we burned our own CD’s for the dance as we didn’t know what to expect the DJ to have in terms of music for dancing). This was my one of 2 disappointments of the entire wedding – the DJ was REALLY cheap ($50 for 2 hours), which surprised me, but really, the DJ was nothing more than a getoblaster with 1 speaker. It was loud enough for the speeches, but pretty pathetic for dancing, but really not a catastrophic thing, we got over it pretty quickly. Just meant that dancing didn’t really catch on, most people just mingled and drank – if the music was louder, people probably would have danced more.
The wedding cake was AMAZING!!!! It was beautiful (we ordered fresh flowers as decoration of course), and it was sooooo tasty. We went with the strawberry vanilla cake – basically it was like strawberry shortcake and soooooo yummy!!

AFTER 10:30pm
We headed over to the disco. Lots of dancing and fun, not much more needs to be said.

All in all we had a FANTASTIC day!!

VIDEO:
2 days after the wedding our video was ready at the photoshop. We ordered the video not really expecting the most quality video in the world, but just so we had a video of the day. We brought our own personal DVD player, so we were able to take the DVD back to our room and watch it. This was the 2nd disappointment of the wedding (there were only 2, and neither of them are major as you can see). The video was pretty terrible. The editing was just soooo choppy and bad. We took the video back to the photoshop and told them how we felt and they said they would re-do it. So, we picked up another one a few days later and it wasn’t much better. All I can say is for $300US, don’t expect much for the video. I’m still glad we did it, even for the money, because I’m happy to have the video, but the quality is just pretty bad.

REST OF THE TRIP
The rest of the trip was totally delightful and wonderful and relaxing and fun. I can’t give any reviews about the a la carte restaurants because, if you can believe it, we didn’t eat at any for the entire 2 weeks except the steakhouse. We were pretty content with the buffet and we weren’t keen on having a reservation at a specific time – this isn’t the way we like to vacation in Mexico. We also ate dinner in town quite a few evenings. We liked venturing into town during the evening for a bit and you could find pretty cheap restaurants to stop and eat at.

If you have any other questions about anything at all, please feel free to ask. I spent a lot of time researching a lot of things, so I know a lot about it all. Thank you to this board for all the great information I got and used in my research prior to my wonderful wedding – what a dream come true. Honestly.
And now, we’re planning our next trip to the area next year – probably the Iberostar Tucan again - it’s the most amazing place – and all our 52 guests agreed!!

Please ask or private message me with any questions at all, I'm happy to help!
Dakota.

[ruthless]

oh my god!  thank you, thank you for this review!  I'm a nervous bride to be and am planning my wedding at the tucan/quetzal for june 2006.  your post made me feel so much better.  can i beg some information from you?  how far in advance before the wedding did the hotel sell out?  in other words, i'm wondering when i need to tell my people that they have to get with the program and make their bookings.  did the resort give you any grief about how many of your guests had to stay at the resort in order for the wedding to take place?  i just went through this with the Riu Palace (a nightmare!  ) 

[dakota]

Sorry for the delay with this reply...Busy start to my new career in Real Estate.
The hotel definitely DID sell out prior to our wedding and left some guests having to stay at other resorts.  I think the resort booked up in July (our wedding was in November), so quite a bit in advance.  My recommendation would be to push people to get their act together sooner rather than later.  It takes some pushing definitely, a lot of people are a lot more lazy about doing stuff like this and figure they'll do it when they get to it.  A lot of people don't realize how popular the area, and especially this resort is.  They'll regret it if they wait too long and can't stay at the resort - I know our guests staying at other resorts were all pretty jelous of us at our resort - there just aren't any resorts that compare!!

No, the resort didn't give us any grief about how many guests have to stay at the resort in order for the wedding to take place.  From what I understand, even if it's just the bride and groom, they'll put together an unforgetable wedding!

I'm sorry to hear about your struggles with the Riu Palace.  I have to tell you that the Riu Palace was one of the other resorts I looked into for our wedding.  My personal feeling, having now seen the place, is that it doesn't compare to the Tucan.  Sure, it's magnificent and beautiful, but it's more of a Las Vegas type resort, and you're not staying in Vegas, so why would you want that?  I don't know, I know there are a lot of people that have had weddings there and stayed there and loved it, but for us, we wanted something that embrassed more of the Mexican experience.  We wanted to enjoy the natural scenery and atmosphere.  From what I saw, that was lacking at the Riu.

Defenitely trust that Mariela (the wedding coordinator at the Tucan) will take care of your EVERY want.  I'm so sad that it's all over, I wish I could do it again!!  I know we'll certainly be back to the Tucan - we try to take one tropical trip per year (although this year with the wedding, we'll probably have to skip one year before we can save up again), but I know we'll probably frequent the Tucan.  I'm scared of trying any new resort or area now.  We've tried a few and none of them compare.

If you have anymore questions, feel free to ask, I love to ramble about my wonderful wedding!!  If you would like to see some pictures, let me know your e-mail address and I can send you the link.

Best wishes!
Dakota.

[ruthless]

Dakota,  I can now sigh with relief. Seriously. I'm so happy to hear that ultimately, you were happy with the Tucan over the Riu Palace.  They were not nice at all!   Mariela put all my post-Riu fears to rest (their policies and pricing are so transparant in comparison to the complicated formulas and conditions dictated by the Riu).  How was/is the disco?  did you rent it out or were you able to persuade the d.j. to play your music? (we're trying to avoid corny music at all cost!)  I would love, LOVE to see your pix.  when possible would you send them to routheles@msn.com?  Thanks.

and congrats with the new career!

ruthless   

[dakota]

Ruthless,
Mariela really is a tremendous individual - she was so fantastic with everything for us - you won't regret a thing with her looking after things.  As far as the disco goes, we didn't rent it out, in fact, becuase we had so many people with us, we were able to have the whole restaurant to ourselves and we paid for a DJ there, so we had dancing and stuff by ourselves in the restaurant until 10:30pm.  Then we moved over to the disco and hung out there for a while, we really didn't request the DJ to play anything or not play anything, but I'm sure if you sweet talk him, he'll help out.  My husband and I actually left the disco pretty early that night - we were back in our room by about midnight, so I can't really tell you too much, we were only there for an hour.

We were, however, at the disco on 2 other occasions throughout our stay.  One time we were there we all commented on how great the music was that was being played and we had a great night.  The other time, the music was nowhere near as good.  I think it depends on the evening and who's the DJ.  Will send you a link to our pictures right away!

Best of luck!
Dakota.

[Katia451]

hi dakota  -

like everyone else, your review has helped me out alot.  my fiance and i our both in out late 20s as well and are thinking about honeymooning at Tucan.  do you think that it is a good location?  although we're not looking for a spring-break type of place, we're worried that it might be too sleepy for us.   (you had 50 people with you, so maybe this will make a difference : ) )

also, how long does it take to get into playa del carmen?

thanks a bunch!
katia

[Mofi]

I think you will like it alot although you might find it that there are lots of families and you might not want that on your honeymoon because depending when you go there could be lots of kids. However if you do choose this hotel and you find it "sleepy" as you put it its only about a 5-10 min taxi ride into town and maybe 30-45 min walk.

[Katia451]

thanks, Mofi.  I think we're going to go for it - the fact that it is so close to town (not to mention how awesome it looks and the great reviews its getting) makes me think that we'll be getting the best of both worlds.   I can't wait!

[nikki06]

Hi!
I'm thinking about getting married at the Tucan...would you mind sending me a link to your pics?
Thanks in advance!
Nikki

[kelsey]

Hi Dakota!
Congratulations on your wedding!  Thank you so much for this review!  My fiance and I got engaged on top of El Castillo in Chichen Itza in November, 2004 and really wanted to return to the Riviera Maya for our wedding.

We were planning a wedding at the Moon Palace, but it was so expensive for all of our guests (like $500 more per guest) and far from everything.  So we are changing to the Iberostar Tucan and would like to get some feedback from you.  My fiance has stayed here before and loved it!  And after looking at lots of different places, your review convinced us that this was the place.

We are planning for November 2005, and will be booking the date this week.  Were there alot of dates / times to choose from or were they already full?  I am also wondering about the selection of sites (we really want the beach), options and prices. 

We will have around 30 people with us, so I don't know if we will be lucky enough to have the restaurant to ourselves.  It sounds like you had a wonderful time at dinner with all of that privacy.  I am anxious to talk to Mariela about the details!  We will have to rely on a photographer on-site, so I hope they have options as well.

Would you mind at all sending a link to your photos?  We are so excited that we want to make this perfect for ourselves & guests.  Right down to the gift baskets we give them in their rooms when they arrive.  I may have lots more questions, so I hope you don't mind.

Thanks a bunch!
Kelsey   

[Kelly26]

Hello,
Just wondering if you could send pictures of your wedding. Your review has been so helpful and I appreciate your posting.  We have booked our date for Dec 2006 and are really excited. Any other tips would be helpful. My e-mail is kruszkalr26@hotmail.com. Thanks

[pxychk]

WOW! You just calmed me down! Looking to plan a May 2006 wedding...frantic about finding a place & voila! I find this place & it is beautiful!!!
If you have any pics, it would be greatly appreciated....