Destination Wedding

We are doing destination wedding at the Royalton Negril in Jamaica. It is an all inclusive resort. However, they have different packages. If you choose to do a private reception they will charge you for food and drinks, as they need to pull staff from the resort to provide service to your wedding only. I found this to be pretty standard amongst all resorts. Royalton does have an option for a semi-private meal (reception), where food and drinks are included. They have resorts in Mexico and throughout the Caribbean.

We are going to use an H10 resort in Mexico for our destination wedding mid-sized packages for the weddings are $2,000 - $3,500. They have cheaper option as well as more expensive ones. They include most of everything, except photography and a few other costs I can't remember off the top of my head.

I love the Ocean Coral & Turquesa resort they have in the H10 network. If you're planning a civil ceremony in a foreign country make sure you look up their residency laws and know what is needed. For Mexico it is staying in the country at least 3 days before the ceremony, a blood test, and having documents sent in (in Spanish so you need to have those translated). Every non-US island/country has different rules you have to follow for a civil ceremony to be valid in the US. We are going with a symbolic one and signing the marriage license before we leave the country to save us from some of that headache.

If you Google all-inclusive resorts in XXX country you will have many pop up. 3 stars and 4 stars are more reasonably priced with a lot of the same amenities offered as a 5 star resort. Ours happens to be at a 4 star on cheapcaribbean and guests are looking at around $1200/person for a week stay with flights included. But prices do depend on what time of year you go (high season vs non peak times).
Hope this helps!

My friend did her wedding at Rivera maya in Mexico. It was beautiful. About 75-100 people I believe.

The hotel is Barcelo maya grand resort. They had a day of coordinator that was excellent.

I have no idea on cost, but we recently attended a DW in Isla Mujeres, Mexico and it was amazing! You can go around the whole island in a golf cart and there's TONS of fun restaurants and bars (as in you can actually leave the resort and feel safe). We stayed at Privilege Aluxes, but the wedding was at Playa Lancheros (I think that's the name).

The planner they had wasn't associated with a certain resort, just a wedding planner on the island. She set up their welcome/rehearsal dinner and a golf cart scavenger hunt for our whole group too.