Wedding day was awesome!
We had rain and even a bit of snow, I think. I hardly noticed. I was too busy partying!
Ceremony: Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church, in Plymouth. Loved it. The pastor that married us was also the pastor that baptized my son, so that was awesome. Beautiful and big sanctuary, nice lobby/lounge area for people mingling after the ceremony. I worked with 3 different coordinators which in my opinion was a bit of overkill, but they all communicated well and nothing was lost in translation. Day-of went smoothly! I even got free Easter flowers for the altar. It was almost dripping in color -- so beautiful. A
Reception: Plymouth Creek Center in Plymouth. Nice room for the reception. Bar area was great, easy layout for guests to manuever. It's pricey though. My first choice was actually Rush Creek Golf Course in MG but they were completely booked out for 2013 by the time I decided that's what I wanted. Angie the coordinator wasn't overly helpful but she wasn't bad either. She was actually on maternity leave when we got married so I did the "2 week walk through" with Susan, the manager. I really liked her a lot. She was so funny! She didn't know what she was doing but it all worked out just fine! Some brides really decorate the crap out of the lobby so it doesn't look quite to "community center" but I didn't at all. It didn't bother me! Loved the built-in stage for the DJ and nice big dance floor. Lots of room for people to wander and nice big area for our "kids corner" A
Photographer: Elisabeth Ann Photography. She was so nice and cute and little. Super reasonably priced! We went with the top package and also used her photobooth. That was a huge success and definitely the best price. Elise took our e-pics and that was nice. We got crapped on with weather and it was mostly my fault because we took them just a few months ago in the dead of winter. On the day of, she and her assistant were there. I barely noticed them around AT ALL. From what she's posted on her FB page so far -- lots of good candids. I wish I had taken the time to put together a shot-list because now looking back, I wish we had some specific family shots taken but oh well. My fault! My only blubber with her is that she tried sending out the epic CD to us two separate times but neither times it made it to us. I wanted to use epics for our slide show and other things. She did upload them to a website for me so we did have access, but it still would have been nice to have a CD. All in all, love the pictures that I've seen so far! I especially liked that neither she or her assistant got in the way. A
Caterer: Town and Country Caterers in Plymouth . The PCC has 3 preferred caterers and we went with TCC. We used their premium package, $35 per person. Duet entree, bottle of champage for b & g, all the skirting and linens and stuff. Definitely worth it. We had beef medallions in sherry sauce and chicken in chardonnay cream sauce. SOOOO good. Lots of rave reviews from our guests. Yum yum yum. Soo much food. Halfway through our planning, our original coordinator left and we got a new one. I definitely prefered Jenn (Jenna? I don't remember) the new one. She was awesome. So helpful and professional and nice. Food was good and hot, the servers were friendly, and everyone was served in a timely manner. We rented our votives and Jenna threw in a few extra for free which was SO nice of her. A+
Cake: Woullet's Bakery. We went to the Edina location for our tasting. Definitely tricky to find and park. Cute little shop, very busy. I wish there had been a private tasting room because it was weird with someone's butt basically in my face. We tasted a lot of cake and it was all SOO yummy. We chose "raspberry souffle" for our tiered cake and a couple of the sheet cakes, and had two sheets of chocolate cake with peanut butter filling. SOOO delicious. Everyone loved the cake. Our tiered cake turned out beautiful and I was definitely happy. With our WP, we were supposed to have some type of discount through this bakery. I even mentioned it to the lady a few times during the tasting. All she said was "you can get a groom's cake for free." I tried asking more but she didn't give me more information. So, we did NOT get our grooms cake at all because I didn't feel comfortable bringing it up again. Anyways, cake was excellent and beautiful, service was a little janky for me. A-
Wedding Planner: Simply Elegant Bridal Consulting. LOVE Ashley so so much. She is always so happy and although I felt that maybe she was a little absent during the planning part, she was absolutely amazing on the day-of. She did do all of the 2-week vendor calling ahead of time which was nice. At this point, I really really didn't want to do ANTHING anymore.
I didn't worry about a single solitary thing all day. The panel of my dress was left at the salon. Ashley sent her assistant to the salon to hunt down the panel. Things like THAT made her absolutely invaluable to me. She took care of everything on the day of. At the end of the night, she packed up EVERYTHING and put it all in my mom's car. No one had to lift a finger. She also has a LOT of vendor hook-ups. I got so many discounts because of that. I was able to afford vendors I otherwise couldn't have. Ashley was able to really pull it all together for me. She totally understood my vision and definitely got all of our vendors on board with it.
A+++++++
Rentals/Flowers: Festivities, in Medina. Samantha was awesome. She is so cute and even though she really really upselled me in our initial meeting, she was so friendly about taking stuff off the quote. In the end, all we rented was vases for floral and a wishing tree. (LOVED that! We got so many awesome tags, people wrote quotes, advice, just funny stuff!)
It was actually Samantha's idea to have a wishing tree and I'm glad we went with it! We did purchase fresh floral, though. The flowers were spectacular. A+
DJ: Adagio -- OMG. I basically fell in love with Jay at our initial consultation. He was so friendly and helpful and not at all pushy. He really discussed everything.
We used their "online planner" and based on what we put it, a DJ was selected for us. We got Tommy. I think I love him even more! Even on the voicemail he left -- I knew he was great. Tommy was so go-with-the-flow, has a great voice and was NOT too "shouty." He had an assistant as well. Assistant kind of screwed up during the toasts. He couldn't figure out how to turn off the music and actually even turned it up louder, but no biggie! Didn't phase me at all.
Tommy totally knew what was keeping our guests out on the floor and it was packed all the way up to the end. A++++++
Alterations: JenMar Creations. A sister team that works out of their basement. Sounds sketchy, but they do beautiful work. SUPER reasonably priced, especially with Ashley's vendor discount. They had to basically cut apart my dress (won my dress through a FB contest that Simply Elegant and Posh put together) and sew it all back together to fit me. They are so friendly and made me feel really good about the body I have. I felt beautiful in the dress after they fixed it for me. The dress was originally like 2-3 sizes too small and I cried. But JenMar was totally able to fix it and turn it into the dress of my dreams. We hired them on as our "Personal Assistants" for the day-of and they were great. They brought their steamer thing and steamed out everyone's dresses. They helped me go to the bathroom and taught my BM's how to help me too. Mary even unscrewed the cap off my water bottle everytime she gave it to me. That's how much of a princess I was that day!
A++++++++
Invitations: Carlson Craft. We ordered Carlson Craft products through one of the SEBC girls. Beautiul stationary, turned out great. Price was a little steep but we definitely stayed in budget. Was nice! A
I think those are the only major vendors I had!