If you’ve been searching for the best resorts to have a destination wedding in Cancun, look no further! We’ve teamed up with Vacationeeze Travel, to give you an overview of their top 5 picks for all-inclusive resorts in Cancun. Vacationeeze is a third-generation family travel agency that has been planning trips since 1978. All of the destination wedding resorts on their list are 4-5 star, family friendly, all-inclusive, and they are all resorts that the Vacationeeze team has been traveling to and sending clients for years.
Disclaimer: The information in this post is for general guidance only. Given the changing nature of laws, rules, and regulations, there may be inaccuracies in the information contained in this content as time passes. We are not responsible for any inaccurate or omitted information or for the results obtained from the use of this information.
Hard Rock
The first resort is right in the center of Cancun and only about 15-20 minutes from the airport. If you’re looking for an active vibe, the Hard Rock resort is perfect for families and people who like activities. And it is a great venue for a destination wedding. If you like music, you’ll find different kinds of music everywhere you go in the Hard Rock Cancun. If you’re into memorabilia, you’ll be glad to know that you can spend a week just walking around looking at all the memorabilia.
The resort has about 400-500 rooms, and with 6-7 restaurants and another 5 bars, you won’t go hungry or thirsty at this resort. There are plenty of activities to find day and night.
One of the coolest things about this resort is that if you want to learn how to play a guitar, you can borrow one of their 20 fender guitars, take it to your room and they have an interactive app that you can download to learn how to play the guitar. If you want to learn how to DJ, they have scratch classes and a lot of other cool things related to music.
The resort sits on an amazing stretch of beach, so if you’re looking for turquoise water and white sand, that’s what you’ll get at the Hard Rock.
All the rooms have a very cool bathtub, right in the room! Not in the bathroom, but in the middle of the room! So, you can hit up the mini-bar, relax in your hot tub and stare out at the ocean.
One thing that Hard Rock offers, which you won’t find at any other Cancun resort, is that they provide what they call “limitless resort credits”. What can you do with these “credits” you ask? Let’s say you want to go to the spa for a $200 massage – you don’t have to pay $200. Instead, you use your “resort credits” and they will charge you a tax and service fee of approximately 25%, but that’s all you pay. You can also use your credits for other activities such as swimming with the dolphins or if you want to go on tours.
The Hard Rock Cancun is a great location for a destination wedding. They have a lot of amazing venues including a pool deck, rooftop, garden, and beach location. Hard Rock also offers free ceremonies and private events. You will earn credits depending on your number of guests, and you can use those credits for your reception, cocktail hour, open bar and things like that. But if you have 25-30 guest rooms booked, you can likely get a free welcome party, reception with open bar, and the setup for your ceremony.
Beach Palace Hotel
Now, if you go a little further down the beach, but still almost at the center of Cancun you’ll find the Beach Palace Hotel. It only has about 250 rooms so it’s considered more of a boutique hotel.
The nice thing is that all rooms either have an oceanfront or lagoon view, so no matter where you are, you’re either going to have a sunset or a sunrise view over the water. All rooms have balconies, room service, and hot tubs in the room — so again you can sit in your hot tub, have a cup of coffee and a croissant for breakfast and just watch the sunrise. Or you can sit in your balcony and have room service bring you cocktails, chicken wings or maybe even tacos in the evening.
The resort has many bars and there are 3 or 4 bottles of alcohol in every room. You are not going to go hungry here! Bocelli is an Italian restaurant with great food and there’s an Asian restaurant with some really good sushi. There are 5 restaurants and four bars total.
There are activities at the Beach Palace hotel all day and all night and they have an app you can download to keep up. They usually have a different show every night as well as a teen club and a kids club. They have a gigantic pool down by the beach and there’s usually some music down and sometimes they play movies at night. There are also 2 additional swimming pools at the top of the hotel and some bars. It’s really nice, because it tends to be quiet up there.
Beach Palace is a great place for a destination wedding. Why? Well, there are two main reasons other than the amazing staff and service. First of all, the venues. You have a beautiful beach venue right in the center of Cancun. They have some pool deck venues that are very nice and some terrace venues that overlook the pool and ocean. But two of our favorite venues are up on the roof. It’s the same area where you can swim during the day, but you can privatize it and have a ceremony and reception up there. That means it will be 100% private and the views are amazing because as you spin around, what you’ll see is the ocean on one side and the lagoon on the other. If you have 25-30 rooms, you can typically negotiate a free ceremony, cocktails or receptions.
Hyatt Ziva Cancun
Now as we head north in Cancun, you hit The Hyatt Ziva. This is definitely a 5-star resort. It’s one of the nicest all-inclusive resorts for a Destination Wedding in Cancun. It’s one of the most expensive, but definitely well worth the money.
What’s really unusual about this hotel is that they have two different beaches and about 5 swimming pools. So, you can find a different vibe no matter where you go within the hotel. They have about 15 restaurants and bars at the Hyatt Ziva. If you’re into beer, they are the only all-inclusive resort in Cancun with a microbrewery. They have a candy shop with about 30 different varieties of candy, cakes, brownies, cupcakes, donuts, churros, crepes. There are probably about 15 different types of ice creams! And then right next to that, is the coffee shop. If you need to work, there’s plenty of activity there so you can have some coffee, cupcakes and access to Wi-Fi.
This hotel has many different types of rooms. The most unique are the dolphin view rooms where you can sit in your balcony and see the dolphins 10 feet from you, swimming around all day and all night. It’s the only hotel in downtown Cancun that has that really unique experience for the kids. The hotel is great for families but they also have an adults-only tower with a VIP club and a private adults-only pool on the rooftop. And they have a restaurant there as well.
If you want to have a destination wedding, the planning team at Hyatt Ziva is amazing. They will customize almost anything you want. Vacationeeze has never had The Hyatt Ziva say no to a request. You can have a bonfire, rooftop events, theme parties, etc. There are multiple destination wedding venues to choose from. They have pool decks with fire rings/fire pits, beach front venues on one of their two beaches, and two or three different rooftop venues with amazing views of the ocean so they’re 100% private. Their menus are very creative with many options to choose from. There is also a free ceremony option at the Hyatt Ziva.
Dreams Playa Mujeres
The next destination wedding resort on the list is not actually in Cancun. It is about 10-15 minutes from the Hyatt, just outside of Cancun in an area called Playa Mujeres. Dreams Playa Mujeres is only about 3 years old and it is just a great hotel. The staff is wonderful to work with and will really go out of their way to take care of you as a guest. They are part of AM Resorts so they don’t have wrist bands, which means there are really not much limitations to their all-inclusive. No matter which room category you’re in, you have access to pretty much everything at the hotel.
Now let’s talk a little bit about the rooms because they are very nice! Every room has 24-hour room service, slippers and robes, and a mini-bar. Most rooms are going to be ocean-view. One of the options they have here is the “Preferred Club”. It costs maybe 10-15% more than a regular room. One cool amenity of the Preferred Club is that while everyone else is waiting to be checked in at the front desk, they will take you down to the VIP private lounge of the Preferred Club and check you in there. As part of the Preferred club, you’ll have even more upgraded alcohol, food all day long, and 2-3 concierges that are always there to take care of you. As a Preferred Club member, you’ll also have access to a private area on the beach, a private pool with a lazy river, 2-bedroom villas along the lazy river, and one additional restaurant.
Dreams Playa Mujeres has about 15 restaurants and bars. There is one restaurant that’s open 24 hours a day in case you don’t want room service in the middle of the night. The resort has bars and pools all over the place, a club, a piano bar, and some great kids and teen clubs. Dreams is the only resort in Playa Mujeres that has a swimming with the dolphins program, so even if you’re not swimming with the dolphins, you can still see them all day long. There are activities for everyone at Dreams.
Adults staying at Dreams have access to Secrets, which is the adults-only resort right next door and owned by the same company. That means you have access to about another 10 -15 restaurants, bars and clubs that are adults-only, at no additional charge.
Vacationeeze has worked with the destination wedding team at Dreams even before they moved to Dreams Playa Mujeres, and they are amazing to work with. They have 2-3 different beach venues, a couple of rooftop venues, terraces overlooking the pool, gardens in the middle of the resort, and the island in the middle of the lazy river. One of the nicest and most unique destination wedding venues is the Governor’s suite, which has its own pool and its own rooftop. Even if you’re not staying there for the whole week, you can take it for a day or two. And one of the really cool things they’ll do is put a Lucite covering over the pool so you can either have your ceremony on top of the water or turn it into a dancefloor over the water for your reception.
Zoetry Villa Rolandi
If you ever dreamt of staying in your own private villa for your destination wedding, Zoetry Villa Rlandi is for you. It is on Isla Mujeres, so you have to take a boat from Cancun maybe 20 mins out to sea and they will take you on their own private yacht over to the island and then you go to their own private dock at the resort.
Zoetry has only 36 rooms, so as you get off the boat, they’re going to hand you some champagne, take your luggage, and walk you into the resort. Within an hour or two of being there, everyone is going to know your name.
The rooms are very large – at least 600 square feet and all ocean front. And every room has a jacuzzi on the terrace or balcony. The nice thing about this resort is that because there are only 36 rooms, the level of service is just impeccable. They give you free laundry, free calls to the US, and upgraded alcohol.
They have 2 restaurants and they are so good that people from outside the resort will come to the restaurant and pay to eat there. Even though the resort only has 36 rooms, it has 2 swimming pools and a nice private beach with watersports area. When you’re sitting around the resort, there’s really no reason to get up because there is staff everywhere to take care of your needs. They’ll bring you full menus and will service you no matter where you are so it’s very relaxing.
If you’re into good service, this is the place for you. If you’re looking for a party spot, this is not the place for you. But one of the benefits of staying here is that because it’s an AM Resort, Zoetry staff can arrange for you to go to Secrets or another AM Resort property in the mainland so you can enjoy the restaurants, clubs or bars there.
One of the fun things to do here is take some bikes from the resort and ride around the island. The town of Isla Mujeres is very unique and fun. They have taco stands, Mexican vendors and it truly feels like a Mexican beach town. If you don’t want to take bikes, the resort can arrange for you to take golf carts around for an afternoon or a day.
If you want to host a destination wedding with a unique experience, Zoetry is a great place. You can do a buy-out where you block out all 36 rooms and take over the resort. Or if you have a small wedding party of 2 – 15 people, they will do an amazing job for you. The planner will customize everything. The food is top notch, the menus they’ll provide are very exciting, and for a small resort, they have some very nice venues. You can have a beach wedding with torches –just watch out for the tide but it’s very romantic and private. There’s also a deck by the pools where you can host your wedding. If you want, they can privatize the restaurant for your ceremony or your event. Zoetry provides a very unique destination wedding experience that is hard to find in Cancun.
Hopefully this has given you some good insight into Vacationeeze’s favorite resorts. As you know, there are probably 50 – 100 resorts in the Cancun area. These are their top 5 picks for a destination wedding. If you have any questions about the resorts on this list or any other destination wedding resort in Cancun, click here to send Vacationeeze a message.
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