I know I'm not on here a whole lot, but I found plenty of help for my wedding on TK, so I hope that by writing down my vendor reviews, I can help someone else! We were married on July 10th at the Ram's Head Inn at 5 in the evening.
Ram's Head Inn: A+++++
Cannot say enough good things about the Ram's Head. When booking, we looked at about a dozen places north, south and west of us, and NO ONE included as much in their packages or were as nice as everyone at Ram's Head. Patti is great to work with, and the food is great. Every single guest raved about how great the food was, especially the scallops wrapped in bacon. ;-) Patti even arranged to get the table linens for us through Wildwood Linens, and at a better price than what we were going to rent them for online. Us girls had the bridal suite all day to get our hair done and we had a really beautiful snack table put together.
The cake was done by their in-house pastry chef and it was delicious! Chocolate and vanilla with cannoli cream filling and buttercream! They did a mini buffet with chocolate mousse and real whipped cream and fruit.
It rained most of the day and we had an outside ceremony planned. Well about an hour before the ceremony was scheduled to start, the rain stopped but we didn't think the garden would be okay for outdoors. We started taking pictures inside instead, but the clouds disappeared and at the very last minute, the staff moved everything outdoors for us. The guests told me they went down the inside aisle scraping up all the flower petals to put them back down again outside!
RHM Photography: A+++
Ryan is not well known on TK boards it seems, and I can't believe it because he does such beautiful work! He loves trying new things with his equipment and composition, he's very non-traditional so he gets all kinds of cool photojournalistic shots and he always gets really excited when he knows he captured something really great. He's very relaxed and great to work with, very flexible on "packages". We didn't want any prints, so we are able to put the money that would have gone towards them into our album. Most importantly to us, he included a DVD of all our pictures so we can print them ourselves - and got it to us within two weeks!
Varga Productions: A+++++ (based on our trailer only so far)
Art Varga is also great to work with. The photographer actually suggested him to us, which is great that they had worked together previously. NONE of our guests knew they were being recorded, they all thought Art and his assistant were additional photographers. Art put together a quick highlight video later that week to tease us with until he is done with the whole thing. Now we can't wait, and neither can our guests! I quote from them: "It's like a movie trailer! You guys look like rock stars!"
Check it out:
http://vargaproductions.com/blog/Ours should be the first one - Karla and Daniel's Wedding - but check out the others too!
Sounds to Go DJs: A++
We met with so many DJ's, many were suggestions were from here on TK, and just about all of them were nice and professional, but we just didn't "click" with any of them until we met Mike Jr. He co-owns STG with his father. He understood the exact vibe we were going for with our reception. Ceremony music was great, cocktail hour everyone was mingling and having fun, and all night the dance floor was packed!
County Seat Florist: A++
John is the owner and he did a wonderful job with the flowers. Just like all the other vendors we ended up using, he understood exactly what we wanted (and didn't assume we had been to 20 other florists just because we knew what a hydrangea is). He is very VERY well priced because he relies on word-of-mouth. We found out after we booked him that he did both of my cousins' weddings 7 & 10 years ago! We requested a sample centerpiece 2 months beforehand, and it came out perfect, we didn't need to change anything.
Wedding Belles: A
I had been all up and down the Garden State Parkway and all the shops I managed to find had all the same old dresses and salespeople uninterested in helping me. The people at Wedding Belles were very pleasant and helpful. The dress I finally found was more than I originally wanted to spend, but it's very well made and very different from the other dresses I looked at.
The only very small problem I had - and it was partially my fault - was that they offer a pressing right before the wedding. Well I forgot to call them in the week before the wedding and wanted to get it pressed the day before. I called them a few minutes after they were supposed to open to see if they could do it last minute, but nobody answered and I left a message. When I didn't hear from them in a half hour, DH came to get the dress & take it to a cleaner which is of course NOT the free pressing. Wedding Belles didn't get back to me until 2 hrs later. Even though they could have done the pressing, I had no idea they could, and I couldn't bank on
assuming for something like that.
I did not use Wedding Belles for alterations, but I tracked down a lady that did my friend's alterations for her wedding - Maria took a size 10 dress with long sleeves and all kinds of lace and sparkle, and made it fit my size 2 friend. Maria did a great job on my dress, but she's all the way in Ocean City and she kept rescheduling on me. Regardless, I doubt anyone can beat her prices!
Karen Capcino: A+
Karen and her assistant did a great job. I booked her solely on the reviews she gets on this board, and she definitely lived up to expectations! It was kind of a pain to get to her for the hair trial, because I'm less than a mile from the bay between Toms RIver and Atlantic City, and she's way over in PA, but it was a relief being able to have someone that I could count on. And kudos for her putting up with his crazy mother and his drama queen sister/my bridesmaid all day. LOL
Got all my paper for invites and table numbers etc., from Paper Presentation in Manhattan and designed and printed everything myself. You can also order online; their colors are very accurate.
Got salt water taffy from Shriver's in Ocean City as our favors - kind of a last minute decision, but apparently these people bag stuff for favors all day long and they had it done for us in about 10 minutes.
Country Inn & Suites, White Horse Pike, Galloway, NJ: A
I stayed here Friday by myself, Saturday with DH and Sunday night they upgraded us to the Honeymoon Suite for the same price as the regular room. The hot breakfast is edible but not great. The rooms are really beautiful with the BIGGEST shower I've ever seen because they all have jacuzzi tubs. They had very reasonable rates for summertime on the way to Atlantic City and were sparkling clean. Most of the other hotels on WHP are scummy and charge just as much as Country Inn.
Riviera Resort, Wildwood, NJ: A
We didn't take a "full" honeymoon, we just went down to Wildwood for four nights, which is about an hour drive for us and it's our favorite beach. Very relaxing because their jacuzzi rooms are detached from the others. Only a block from the boardwalk, right between the 2nd & 3rd piers. Sparkling clean, a great room for the price.
Hope this helps someone!!