Mexican Wedding: The Reception

After a tropical rainstorm washed away the original plan to have our friends’ wedding dinner on the beach of the Mexican resort we were at, we found ourselves in a private room attached to one of the resort’s restaurants.

While the room was certainly no beach it did the job for dinner, which was quite tasty, particularly the dessert.

Then it was time to dance and this is when the evening started hitting a few snags. The bride and groom asked for some of the dinning tables to be moved so that we could have a dance floor. They were told this wasn’t possible since some of the tables were secured to the floor. This was very much a lie since we’d all seen this room (it has glass walls) without any tables in it. But whatever, we just danced around the tables.

We also ran into issues with drinks. In the original plan, the dinner was to have its own bar. This idea was no longer practical once we were moved indoors but it also shouldn’t have been an issue since the restaurant had a bar. But despite that fact, it was still hard to get a drink.

At 10:30 pm we were kicked out of the room (something we knew would happen) but thankfully we were able to continue the celebrations over in the bride and groom’s suite, which had been upgraded to the much bigger and better presidential because of the broken beach bed incident. So at least that incident had one silver lining.

Both the bride and groom acknowledged that things didn’t go quite as planned but in the end they were happy with how things had turned out. And from a guest’s perspective I think everyone had a good time.

Below are a few more destination wedding tips and in a future entry, I plan to run over the pros and cons of a destination wedding. While I think this was the ideal type of wedding for my friends, I definitely don’t think a destination wedding is for everyone, myself included.

• Overpack and bring extras of such key items as foundation or nail polish since you may not be able to specific brands/colours at your destination
• Create a wedding day itinerary (including a rain plan) and pass it around to guests so that people know where they should be when. If you’re at a big resort, include a map since there might be multiple gazebos, beach ceremony sites, etc.
• Resort photographers can be expensive so be prepared to arrange your post-ceremony time so that you can cram in all the key moments you want photographed. This might mean doing the first dance between courses or fake cutting the cake
• Don’t be afraid to speak up if you don’t like how something seems to be shaping up, for example, maybe your ceremony location isn’t quite in the spot you pictured it being. Resorts are well aware that an unhappy bride is a complaining bride and they are usually willing to work with you to get you want you want (within reason of course)
• Also don’t be afraid to ask about upgrades or freebies. Because of the public nature of many destination weddings, it can be in the resort’s best interest to say, “surprise” you with a saxophone player who just happens to also be audible by other, impressed guests
• And finally, while you might be at the resort with your family and friends, you don’t need to spend every waking moment with them. Make sure to crave off some private time for you and your other half