Hi everyone. I spent some time before my June 12 wedding lurking on this board, and just wanted to share some vendor reviews/recommendations. We had an amazing wedding and these people helped make it happen:
Venue (Ceremony and Reception)
The HESS Club (Galleria Area)
The coordinator, Debra, at the HESS was awesome. We didn't have a wedding planner, so she was there every step of the way with vendor recommendations, reassurances, and advice. On the day of, she was there before we arrived and stayed until after we left. She took care of everything, so I didn't have to worry about anything on my wedding day. We had the entire building to ourselves (i.e. no double booking). The HESS has a full wait-staff, so there was never a shortage of servers or food or drinks. They have a very talented chef and the food got rave reviews from our guests. For our exit after the reception, Debra arranged to have the guests hold sparklers, which made for a beautiful exit.
DJ
Showcase Entertainment – Christian
Christian was a great DJ/master of ceremony. He listened to what we wanted and made sure everything went smoothly during the reception. He read the room perfectly and played music that everyone enjoyed and had a great time dancing to.
Cake
Carrie Made the Cake
We found Carrie on a recommendation from a friend, and it was maybe the best recommendation ever! We had a three layer square cake, with layers of lemon and tres leches. The cake itself tasted great; it was moist and flavorful. We had a fairly elaborate cake design; it was based on a building in a town in the Czech Republic (where my husband and I met) that had very detailed baroque scrafitto designs. We brought a picture to Carrie and she did an amazing job of interpreting it into a cake. She did the designs in buttercream (which we wanted, even though every other baker we saw said we would have to do more-expensive fondant) and created a really elegant, beautiful cake that was exactly what we wanted.
Flowers
The Senter-Piece
Finding a florist was maybe the hardest part of the planning for us. Everything we looked at was double or triple our budget and no one seemed willing to work with us on price. Not so with Donna Senter. She listened to what we wanted (calla lilies) and found ways to give us the look that we were going for without blowing the budget. We got tons of compliments, especially on the aisle flowers – cylinder vases with submerged calla lilies and floating candles at the top.
I would strongly recommend all of these vendors to anyone planning a Houston area wedding. They were all incredible people to work with and offered great value for money.