Holding your wedding at a private luxury villa on the Mexican coast is a really direct route to romance and elegance! At Mexico Event Design, we specialize in this type of event and maintain a long list of the best and most exclusive private villas on both coasts of Mexico, and expansive historic haciendas in between!
While the experience of staying in a private villa can’t be beat (see Top Ten Advantages of Weddings at Private Villas), and it compares really well with all-inclusive luxury resorts, the actual nitty-gritty process of booking your group into a villa can require a couple more steps. This is mainly because you’re relying on friends and family to help you pay for this rather large expense, and so it’s very important to have an in-depth lesson on the subtleties of this type of vacation rental before you commit to it. In this article, we break that process down for you to give you a really clear idea of what to expect—the good, the bad, and the gorgeous!
- FINANCIAL RISK. Booking a group at a villa is similar to booking a group of rooms at a commercial hotel. You, the group leader or organizer, must assume the financial risk of guaranteeing a fixed quantity of money to the villa owner in advance, and you have to make sure that the members of your group will keep their commitment to you, pay for their portion of the total, and actually show up and stay there. The majority of villa rentals are for large families, so this isn’t normally much of an issue. For weddings and other major events, however, your guests may not be family members. So you may need to first pay a deposit and then ask them for a reimbursement for their portion—either before or after the actual event. With all of today’s forms of electronic payments, this part isn’t particularly difficult, but in some cases it may make some people (like you!) feel uncomfortable, so please take this issue into consideration as you contemplate this venue option for your destination wedding.
- GUEST EXPERIENCE CAN VARY. No two villas are the same—on purpose! However, this means that there will differences in the experiences of your guests depending on the bedroom in which they stay in the house—the view, the bathroom, distance to the living room, etc. You will be in charge of assigning all the rooms to the most appropriate people in your group. We as your wedding planners can assist in this process, but it is very important that you be in charge because you know your people and we don’t. It’s better to do this before everyone arrives, to avoid confusion and moving around, and it’s important to take into consideration any of your or your guests’ mobility issues, because not all bedrooms in all villas are handicap-accessible.
- DEPOSITS. You will need to pay a (normally 50%) deposit of the total villa-rental price for all your nights in order to hold the booking and reserve your chosen dates. This could be in the thousands of dollars, so do please be financially prepared so that, once you make the decision to use a private villa for your destination wedding, you can book your favorite as soon as possible in order to assure its availability on your chosen wedding dates.
- REFUNDS. Your deposit may or may not be refundable—it depends on the cancellation policy of each individual villa owner. Click here for the guidelines that VRBO (Villa Rental by Owner website) uses. Because large villas are more expensive and generally more difficult to rent, they also generally have stricter cancellation policies. Please make sure that you and your group guests are comfortable with your chosen villa’s cancellation policy before signing the contract and paying the deposit.
- BALANCE DUE IN ADVANCE. You’ll be required to pay the balance of your villa rental approximately typically 30-60 days before arrival, and typically after that, no refunds are given. Again, these details will be listed in your rental contract.
- SECURITY DEPOSIT. You will be expected to pay a refundable security/damage deposit. These typically run between $500 and $1000 US dollars, and are usually refunded between 7-10 business days following check-out, once the owner and her/his staff have had a chance to thoroughly inspect the property for any damage caused or missing items.
- PRIVATE PROPERTY. Not all private villas allow events. Some owners have had bad experiences with group events in the past, or simply don’t have enough space in order to permit outside guests onto their property. Others have strict rules about who can enter their doors because of privacy reasons. Thus, typically, out of the thousands of vacation rental homes and condos currently on the market, only a very small percentage are actually suitable rentals for events such as destination weddings. It is therefore very important to fully inform your guests and advise them that their (inappropriate) behavior can have more consequences on private property in someone’s home than at a commercial hotel or resort.
- EVENT FEE. Many villa owners will charge a separate event fee to help defray the wear-and-tear costs on their property as a result of large numbers of wedding guests. This fee typically ranges between $500 and $1500 US dollars, up to a full night’s rental, depending on the size of the group and the scope and ornateness of the wedding decorations. This fee is generally much higher for beachfront properties, exactly because of the demand for sand by brides!
- TAXES. In Mexico, plan to add 16% value-added tax onto your total rental cost, just like you would have to for a hotel stay. Here, however, it’s especially important to remember to pass along this cost to your guests when you’re determining their portion of the total.
- GRATUITIES. At the end of your stay, almost all owners request a gratuity be paid to their staff for their hard work taking care of you. They tend to recommend/request 10-15% of the entire stay. We will add that it’s important to pay that amount directly to the house manager, in order to make sure that the owner doesn’t take a portion for him/herself. (yes, it has occasionally been known to happen!) Better yet is to collect the money, divide it appropriately, and then personally give each staff person’s tip to them! They’re not accustomed to this and so the smile on their faces after they’ve taken such good care of you is worth a lot!
Please send us your comments from your own experiences at staying in private luxury villas for events! And please let us know should you have any further questions after reading this list, and for more details related to renting villas for destination weddings! Next in this series is How Much Private Luxury Villas Really Cost.
