When researching for the wedding we knew we wanted to do Mexico because we could get the most bang for our buck! I looked into Cabo but I know that most flights there have lay over and I wanted somewhere that had direct flights.
I think I mentioned this before but I turned to a Facebook mom group that I'm in and took a pool:
"Who did a destination wedding, kids friendly only and where?"
I was flooded with responses so I started looking up all the recommendations from the mama's and really fell in love with Now Jade. I messaged her and asked all one million questions I had and she answered everything for me. The best advice she gave me was where to have every event and what we really didn't need to do there. I showed Jer my top three choices and we both agreed on the resort, NOW Jade.
{my father-in-law who married us}
The ceremony over looking the ocean at the pergola. The cocktail reception at the mixed bar right next to it. Followed by the reception dinner on the balcony. Since I booked about 14 months in advance all of those locations I asked for were open and at the time we wanted. I wanted it to be the latest possible so the sun wasn't blinding us but still having great lighting for our photographer through out the day, into the night. The ceremony was at 4 pm, cocktail hour 5-6, reception 6-9, then we went to the bar for the after party.
There was a few different base packages you can choose from ranging in different price brackets and offering more or less than you need. At first I thought we would do the lowest one and then just add a couple things that we wanted. I will admit, I thought we could do it this way and save the most money. The other packages had all this "extra stuff" that I didn't think we needed. I ended up going with the middle package (Eternity) because you got a ton of options for less money than it would have been if we did things separately. See, an example of me trying to be cheap not working out in my favor!
ETERNITY PACKAGE PRICE: $2,799.00 + taxes
- Bouquet for bride
- Boutonniere for groom (gave to Jerek's dad who married us)
- 1 corsage & 1 boutonniere (gave to Tom, my moms boyfriend & helped w/all the sound)
- 1 floral center piece (used at ceremony table & transferred to cake table at dinner)
- Dedicated wedding coordinator
- Preparation of brides gown and grooms outfit
- Wedding cake for 25 guests
- Sparkling wine toast for 25 guests
- 20% off spa treatments
- Turn down service and bottle of wine
- Late check-out for bride and groom if needed
- Complimentary room upgrade (pay for cheaper room you'll be upgraded anyway!)
- Makeup & hair for bride
- 1 hour cocktail party with hors d'oeuvres for 25 guests
- Wedding reception dinner for 25 guests
- Gazebo decor-ceremonial table & chairs for 25 guests
- Swedish couples massage treatment
- Photo package (24 full color photographs) (didn't use, brought our own photographer)
- Breakfast in bed morning after ceremony with Mimosas
- Free 1 year anniversary nights at any resort (stay 5 nights, get 2 free, stay 4 nights, get 1 free)
I added some notes in bold above but here are some other things worth mentioning:
- My sister in law is a florist (MI Honeybee Flowers) and made the wedding party boutonnieres and flower crowns at home with faux flowers which we then brought with us. This saved us a TON of money if we had them made from real flowers there at the resort. You can read the whole post here, she's AMAZING!!! I gave the ones that came with the wedding package to Tom and Jerek's dad as they were important parts in the wedding day.
- I added on 3 bridesmaid bouquet's that were a smaller version of my bouquet. I didn't want Amy to make these and us lug them to Mexico-Cost: $295 for all three.
- We added a sound system for the ceremony for the music to be played and so everyone could hear Jerek's dad officiate and us say our vows- Cost: $150 for an hour
- The packaged covered food and drinks for up to 25 people. Since we had 25 adults and 5 kids, we added on the 5 kids- Cost: $295
- Cake also covered 25 people but since there was dessert as well as cake included in the dinner package already we figured not EVERYONE would eat cake AND a dessert so we didn't add on the extra 5 people for cake. Saved money that money and less waste on food!
- We paid to have the resort set up the table arrangements and place cards that I brought with us. This saved us the hassle of delegating a family member to do this and miss out on the cocktail hour-Cost: $40
- We added a sound system for the 3 hour dinner reception so music was always playing and so everyone could hear the speeches-Cost $450
We flew Delta out of Cleveland so we paid about $80 to park the car there for a week. It cost about a tank and a half of gas to and from the airport to home. It was MUCH cheaper to drive and fly out of Cleveland than it was to fly out of Detroit direct. The three hour drive home at 1 am wasn't the best thing we did but I NEEDED to sleep in our own bed so I shoved a Red Bull in Jerek's face and begged him to drive! He thanked me the next morning when we woke up and didn't have to drive in the snow storm that happened while we slept!
Since we were flying during Spring Break we knew we probably weren't going to find any good deals. Our main concern was we really wanted direct flights and to get in as early as possible on that Friday and leave as late as possible that Saturday. We arrived at 10am Friday and then took a shuttle bus from the airport to the resort. The bus to and from the airport to the resort was about $40/person round trip and it was included in our resort fee's. Very secure and safe and no need to mess with taxi's in Mexico. Also no need to lug car seats as we weren't leaving the resort driving around. The resort was about 15-20 min from the airport.
The total cost of flights, parking and gas was about $2,900.
The last cost for the trip was the actual resort stay. This included your room, drinks and food (all inclusive so we ate and drank our hearts out!) Kids 3 and under were free so Sky fell into that category! Trace was $420 total for the week.
The total for us 4 to stay, eat and drink all we wanted was $2400. If you want to get real dirty for the per day price, it was $0 for Skylor the entire trip, $60/day for Tracen and $141/day for me and $141/day for Jerek. That means for $342 a day all our meals, booze and hotel stay were included in that price. If you're just looking at it as a vacation, we thought that was a great deal during Spring Break!
The total cost of all four of us to eat, sleep and drink was $2,400.
If we are talking about just the actual wedding costs, we pretty much kept it under the $10,000 budget.However when figuring in the other costs from the pre-ception and other odds and ends we were over but in my opinion we got SOOO much for our money!
MEXICO WEDDING TOTAL: $9,779
PRE-CEPTION TOTAL: $3,700
FLOWERS (FAUX) TOTAL: $79
RANDOM COTS: about $500 (clothes, tips, invites, etc)
If you want to get an idea of what everything costs for the pre-ception party, wedding, travel and figuring in some random spending here and there (that I didn't keep crazy track of) we spent about $14,000.
Our goal was to try and keep it at $10,000 but having it during Spring Break probably hiked up the flight tickets the most. This also doubled as a honeymoon and family vacation for the four of us! To us this was more than just a one day wedding extravaganza! I feel like we will really remember our time spent there for an entire week.
I know when I film weddings the couple always says how the day goes by so fast that they don't remember it. For us I felt while the day did go by fast that I had a whole week of memories to look back on! This is also why I vlogged the whole time we were there, to capture and preserve this incredible time with our family and friends!
We also paid for about 98% of the entire wedding festivities ourselves. I mentioned before my mom paid for my wedding dress, let us use their property for the pre-ception for free and bought and crafted many things for the pre-ception. She was HUGE help especially when I was so over wedding planning!
To save money I got tons of quotes and looked for deals with everything that we did or purchased. I tried to make sure that we weren't spending too much on pointless things. With a destination wedding we also only had to put minimum deposits down on a lot of big things. So we could pay as we go which helped out SO much! We saved our entire tax return from the year before for the wedding. Dipped into our savings and our personal money with everything that we did. The best thing is we aren't in wedding debt. We didn't get loans or leave our selves with some huge credit card bill after. In fact we put anything we could on our travel credit card that incurred points and then we paid it off! We actually EARNED money while paying for our wedding in cash!
I know that this was A LOT but this is what I was looking for when I was wedding planning! If you have any other questions about the resort or what we spent please feel free to comment below or message me! I hope that if you are thinking about a destination wedding you do it! It was THE best decision we could have ever made! While I bitched and moaned all the time, I would do it 100 times over!
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