I got married at the Grand Palladium Riviera Maya in October of 2023. It seemed like a great solution to utilize an all-inclusive in Mexico, especially on account of how expensive weddings have become in the states. It was an 8 month long engagement and I contacted Palladium right away to secure my date. After that point, it gradually became a nightmare. The team was extremely unresponsive. I would spend weeks at a time calling or emailing and not receiving anything. Then finally when I would hear back, they often hadn’t even properly answered my questions or confirmed any information-they were just sending short thoughtless responses. They jerked me around many times, first telling me I could have one location. Then telling me that it was actually booked WEEKS LATER. Telling me I couldn’t book for the indoor location unless there was rain, pushing me to the beach location. I sent a very concerned email when I realized from watching another couple’s wedding video that the locations are not private at all. Random people will jog by at the beach right next to your arch, walk up to your wedding ceremony in the middle of it etc. and they then referred to it as “semi-private” when I sent them the video…Only then did they finally agree to allow me to use the indoor location, which was still not particularly private. They made the room bookings a literal nightmare for my travel agent and my guests. We had to fulfill a room block for our 50 guests, but guests began to panic after weeks of not getting response and they would book outside of the block and the resort refused to honor those, despite the fact that they were making so much money from us and those guests were confirmed to be there for OUR WEDDING only. They also allowed guests who booked directly with the hotel (outside of our “hotel block”) to use a simple card process, whereas they required everyone on the block to do an international WIRE TRANSFER, which was extremely difficult and people’s money being sent over was randomly lost in the transfer. That also contributed to the panic wherein guests booked themselves separately. I had several guests who told me that they called the resort directly mentioning they were on our block, and the EMPLOYEES of the resort instructed them to book directly with the resort then and there, disregarding our block. This resort was sabotaging us from the beginning, and I have to assume it was just a money-grab attempt. They also refuse to include someone on your block if they’re only coming for the weekend. Our wedding was on a Saturday evening, but they required guests to arrive on Thursday. So anyone who couldn’t take an extra day off to arrive early was also not counted on our hotel block… Ultimately, they refused to include the guests we proved were with our booking who booked separately, and about 2 days before we left for the wedding weekend, they unexpectedly called me saying if we didn’t pay an additional $3,000 USD for not “fulfilling” our booking within the next hour, they would cancel our entire wedding and all of our guests. I noticed that all other communication was done over email, then this was done over phone…I assume so there wouldn’t be a paper trail when I wrote my review, but we of course have the backing of Archer Travel (who our travel agent worked through) and our financial records show the true story.
On to the actual stay there. The resorts themselves are nice enough for the most part, we did love the wildlife living onsite. It didn’t take long after our arrival for many problems to surface. As the bride and groom, you’re promised some “extras” from the resort for booking the wedding package. We were supposed to receive an “upgraded” room and a special amenity as a gift. What we technically paid for was the same suite that the majority of our guests also booked. Yet, when I went in to quite a few other guest’s rooms over the weekend (my parents, my bridesmaids, several other friends, my siblings) it became clear that we had the worst room of anyone. Basic suite, some of the others had a jacuzzi tub in the room and ours did not, view of the back of a little utility building, no hot water in our bathroom. Our travel agent saw our room and immediately complained to the resort, but they did nothing. They claimed that they had no nicer rooms available to upgrade us to, forgetting that they tried to upsell MANY of our guests, including my own mother, upon arrival that same day to one of the many upgraded suites and bungalows on the resort site. I couldn’t believe they would force the bride and groom to stay in a room like that, especially with no hot water. Oh, and the “amenity” promised? They dropped an uncovered plate of plant-shaped chocolates (I love chocolate, but this looked like a fun dessert plate for a small child) at our door one of the nights.
The night before the wedding we had a small welcome party close to the beach, the location was difficult to find and none of the hotel employees were guiding guests so the majority of them missed half of the party. During my party the night before my wedding, the wedding planner was texting me that the spa was overbooked, so rather than bumping random guests they wanted to bump my bridal party and myself….My wedding was at 6 PM and they told me they would do one of my bridesmaids ALONE at 8 AM, and then spread the rest throughout the day until 5 PM…when we were supposed to have the bridal suite from 10-2:30, at which point my photographer would already be there taking photos of us. I had shared and confirmed that timeline with the wedding coordinator at least 2 months in advance, and then the night before my wedding she texts me to completely disrupt everything? It completely ruined my night going back and forth with her and telling her the resort needed to fix their mistake. I hadn’t even wanted to use their spa in the first place but was essentially forced to because they will charge you thousands in outside vendor fees if you bring in your own hair and makeup, on top of what you have to pay the stylist/MUA. At the end of the night, she said they would figure it out after I spent literal hours arguing with her and crying (I have it all on text still). The next morning, we wake up and my party nervously makes our way to the bridal suite early. They begin pulling them out of the bridal suite to get their hair and makeup done in the salon…which didn’t make sense to me and felt very misleading because I had seen the pictures of the bridal suite and there are makeup/hair chairs with mirrors etc inside. We had wanted this to be private and enjoy a somewhat peaceful morning together before the madness started. It became clear, based on who was in the salon aside from my wedding party, that the salon was “overbooked” by people who had made bookings in the last few weeks (some of my guests and in laws). So essentially, this resort bumped the BRIDE AND BRIDAL PARTY and ruined our makeup/hair timeline for the day to try to squeeze some extra money out of our guests. We were clearly last priority. They were so pressed for time from doing random attendees hair and makeup that they did my bridal hair and makeup in 30 minutes to rush right as my photographer was arriving. My hair and makeup looked nothing like what I wanted, I still cringe and feel sad looking at my photos. I had put hand tied extensions in a week prior to my wedding, and the stylist left my hair to where the tracks were visible in the photos and to all my guests. I had wanted loose beach waves with a boho braid around my crown. Instead, I got curls with a small quick braid that exposed a bunch of beads from my extensions. The makeup looked nothing like what I requested either, and they didn’t even do my eyebrows. This was fairly consistent for everyone who went to the salon unfortunately. If you ignore the rest of my review and decide to still book with them….leave the day of your wedding to get ready offsite with your own stylist/MUA and then come back to the resort. I’m sure mine would have turned out better if they hadn’t overbooked out of greed and had prioritized me as the bride, but I still don’t think they would have been able to give me exactly what I was looking for. It was a really bad, and stressful day for me as a bride, just dealing with the incompetence and poor service from the resort. A worker at the salon even went as far as to tell me that the guests who were in the salon when we were supposed to be getting serviced had booked long before we did, but the “guests” in question were my in-laws who asked me for the salon information like 2 weeks prior to the wedding so they could book services…and as I mentioned, I had confirmed to the wedding coordinator that we would be taking the bridal suite and confirmed our services MONTHS in advance.
For the wedding itself, things went the closest to “smoothly” as they did for the entire ordeal. The ceremony room was ready on time, harpist in place etc. The wedding coordinator made me and my parents enter from the side instead of the back, where all the guests were staring at me for several minutes before I entered…not really the grand entrance you’re anticipating as the bride. I wasn’t very happy about that but my dissent in the moment was ignored. Things weren’t done as I had requested at the reception site, but truthfully if little things like napkins folded wrong or tables in the wrong place had been the worst of it-I would have been happy. I try to not sweat the small details. We opted for the buffet style rather than plated because I was trying to be courteous about offering additional options to people with chosen dietary restrictions who were attending the wedding…I advise against this. The buffet line looked like a high school cafeteria and the food was not nicely presented. It was honestly a bit embarrassing for a formal event. If I had any idea that’s how the dinner presentation was going to be, I would have done the plated meal and told the 4 guests with restrictions to suck it up. I don’t really know where the wedding coordinator was throughout our wedding, but it wasn’t running the event. The cake was wheeled out on a tall little table (big no no for cake cutting photos) before we arrived at the reception, and just sat. The only reason we ended up cutting the cake was because my photographer pulled me aside at one point later in the night (right before she was set to leave) and asked if we were going to do it. We ran over for a rushed cake cutting photo…..and then our cake was never cut and served by the staff….It just sat there for the rest of the night. We weren’t kept on a timeline by any means and it was definitely not the experience I was expecting, especially considering this resort made like $50k+ USD on us for everything over the course of the long weekend.
If I could do things differently, I would have gone to a different resort. I recognize that they do many weddings per week (or even day) at this resort, but this was a once in a lifetime event for me and I felt like a bridal barbie on a conveyer belt. They did not care about my experience. They did not care that I was in tears the entire weekend. They shook us down in a very dirty way for additional money at the end and threatened to cancel our entire wedding….It was overall just an awful experience. I feel crummy when I leave a bad review, but I really wish I had seen an honest review like this before I booked my wedding, as I feel it would have saved me from a ruined once in a lifetime experience.