Iberostar Tucan Wedding (LOOOONG)

[dakota]

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.

[dakota]

I just posted a few very unprofessional pictures of the wedding in the multimedia section under my member gallery (Dakota), if anyone wants to have a look, I will try topost more as I get more from my friends.
Enjoy! Hope my review and pictures help some other brides out there, I know I was addicted to finding reviews and pictures before I left!
Dakota.

[Nerak936]

Dakota: What a wonderful and informative report you did!! Good job!! I'm sure it'll help out the many Tucan brides-to-be with their planning.

Just checked out your pics in the gallery....and they're great!! You looked so beautiful, and what a handsome hubby you caught!! Looked like the weather was perfect for your special day.

Thanks for sharing!! And best wishes for a long, happy life together!

[Shammy]

FABULOUS review, really! Sounds like most everything worked out well and thank you for taking the time to post it. A review with this much information is never too long BTW! It will be helpful for any other brides planning their weddings at the Tucan for sure!

Welcome home and congrats!

[spooksie]

Thank you so much for all the in depth info. It answered a lot of questions.
It was a joy to read and it has given me more of an insight for when we get married there in April. It must have took you a while to do but well worth the read! Congratulations!

[Totlpkg10]

Dakota,

Just when I had settled down and was getting accustomed to the long wait for May 14th, you go and get me all anxious again with your review. I loved it you were sooo detailed and thanks for sharing about the flowers being moved from the wedding ceremony to the reception...that is very cool. I was planning on trying to find some vases etc. for centerpieces and now it sounds as though that may not be necessary.
You looked truly radiant and I am thrilled to hear that you really enjoyed your day!

[usagi_sisa]

Hi Dakota -

Thanks again for the advice, both on and offline! We leave tomorrow night - actually, early Saturday morning....eek! New Years Day, have to be at the airport by 3am....to sleep or not to sleep??

We've had some last minute additions, and people who've decided to come down for the wedding and stay at other resorts, since, as usual the Tucan is fully booked.

So, we're up to 18 for dinner, plus 3 little anklebiters. Just getting everyone's meal selections. I think I'll give the beef a shot. The wedding is set for 4pm, cocktail party (probably in the jungle, but Mariela has also suggested the pool area) at 7pm and a later dinner at 8:30. My sisters have put together a slide show, and are hoping to play it - I've asked if they have any A/V capabilities, but am not holding my breath! Worse comes to worse, we can all crowd around a laptop!

Also, since we didn't have any formal invitations, we decided to put together a little "Wedding Agenda" booklet, with photos of Playa, the resort, suggested activities, and a schedule of events leading up to the big day. Since we need 4 witnessess, we've got 2 filled with the best man & maid of honour, we're hoping to have a family ping-pong tournament to decide the other 2 witnesses!

It's all happening so fast - but we're glad to have the big rocks nailed down - paperwork, dresses and just getting everyone there! I'll be sure to post my pics when I get back. Thanks so much for all your help!

Hasta manana!

usagi

[dakota]

Best wishes - and remember - have the time of your life!! Enjoy everything! If anything goes wrong, just let it go. Brush it off your back and remember the important things - you are getting married and you are surrounded by the most beautiful scenery in the world and you are there with friends and family. Nothing can possibly tarnish that.
Have the time of your life!! I'm jelous!! Post when you get back, I'd love to relive my experiences through you!
Regards,
Dakota.

[emmalaw45]

Hi everyone,

Dakota - Congratulations on your wedding! what a fantastic report! Thank you so much for all the helpful information. We get married on 6th April this year at the Tucan. I'm just so excited as it sounds so fabulous. I have printed out your wedding report or my folks to read as they are so excited too.

Thanks again.

Emma
x

[dakota]

I'm glad you found the report useful! Feel free to send me a private message if you have any questions at all - I'd be happy to help!

Have a wonderful time!
Dakota.

[McSteff]

Congrats on your marriage. A group of 4 of us just retuned yesterday from the Tucan. We did see 1 wedding on the beach on the 7th. We stayed to the side and applauded at the end of the ceremony along with other on lookers, it was a beautiful ceramony.
On the 8th, the 4 of us had reservations at the Steak House.
There was a wedding party there at the same time having their reception. We were seated next to their tables. They were finished with their meal when ours was served to us. While we were eating our meal, the whole group of about 20 -25 stood next to our table and around us to do the cake cutting ceremony. I really mean they were standing around us, right next to our chairs and table. We really felt crowded while trying to enjoy a relaxing meal which wasn't relaxing at all. It wasn't so much the fault of the wedding party as the set up of the cake location. I do feel that the wedding party could have been a little more in tune to our dinner and stood a bit more to the side and not on top of us. Other than that...we had a fabulous time at the Tucan and will be returning. As for weddings....It's a great place to get married.
Again....CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!!
P.S. The Steak House if absolutly GREAT!!!!1

[emmalaw45]

It's a shame you felt so overcrowded whilst trying to enjoy your meal but I'm guessing the cake cutting doesn't go on for much longer than 10 mins if that and it is only one night so surely it couldn't of been that bad for you.

Hopefully people won't feel like that when I am cutting my cake, after all you only get married once !

Hope you enjoyed the Tucan anyway - 10 weeks and 2 days until I fly out and it wont't come quick enough!!

Emma
x

[spooksie]

Exactly 3 months today until we fly out for our wedding at the Tucan. Actually 13 weeks.........yipee
Our meal is reserved for 6:30 pm after the wedding at the steakhouse and we can stay there until 8:15 pm. I was told that they will then set up for the hotel guests.
I hope this means we will have a private meal for the hour an half.
Yep you are right Emma, it is one special day and you should treasure the day.
I hope I don't get in anybodys way on my wedding day! I cannot wait and I am pleased that all good reviews are coming from the Tucan.

[emmalaw45]

Hiya,

We have the Steakhouse booked from 6.30pm too but I doubt it will be booked just for us until 8.00pm. I reckon that it is open to everyone and we just get a section to ourselves or something. Either way I don't mind as I am sure it will be lovely whatever way we have it.

Wahhoooo to all us Tucan Brides!

xxx

[McSteff]

Originally Posted by emmalaw45

It's a shame you felt so overcrowded whilst trying to enjoy your meal but I'm guessing the cake cutting doesn't go on for much longer than 10 mins if that and it is only one night so surely it couldn't of been that bad for you.

Hopefully people won't feel like that when I am cutting my cake, after all you only get married once !

Hope you enjoyed the Tucan anyway - 10 weeks and 2 days until I fly out and it wont't come quick enough!!

Emma
x

I really don't blame the newlyweds......the resturant was almost empty and they could have located us or the cake to a different area. The wedding cake was by a service area which I don't think was a really good photo op. I'm sorry, but we did feel like we were in the way of the wedding party and one of the guests did appolize for cramping us. You have to understand that we were there to enjoy ourselves also for a relaxing dinner. We are also paying guests. I hope you picked the steak house for your reception...it is the best resturant in the place. GOOD LUCK!!!! The time will fly by in no time. I know you willl have a great time.