These are from my 10/17/09 wedding. I was waiting to get my photographs back before I wrote them all.
Venue – GREEN OAKS CHAPEL – Arlington, Texas A The space is beautiful and I liked that we told them what we wanted and they took care of it. They also supplied a lot of things like dinner ware, glasses, goblets, napkins, linens, etc so I didn’t have to rent all of those items. I took all of my stuff on the Thursday before and everything was set up perfectly on Saturday for the wedding. The only complaint I have is that I waited for over an hour for someone to show up on Thursday so that I could drop off the alcohol. It took me getting Justin to pull property records to get the owners home number to get a hold of someone. The owner came right up though and she did apologize that no one had written down the appointment in the book. There are two owners, Carol and Teri. Teri is SUPER sweet and is extremely creative. Carol is also nice but she is a bit more pushy and blunt so I prefer to deal with Teri when I need something. All in all it was a great choice and I was happy with them.
Caterer – CRO CATERING – Dallas, Texas A+ Dawn was so nice to work with and communicated very quickly with me. Everything was done via phone/email. She worked out a menu that fit into our budget and the food was AMAZING! People are still complementing the lasagna. Everything was set up beautifully and in plenty of time. The staff served everything (even though it was buffet style) for portion control and it worked out wonderfully! I also had a coupon for $250 off from the bridal show so I got out pretty nicely on a full out dinner. I highly recommend CRO!
Cake – CANDY HAVEN – Denton, Texas B The cake was there on time and decorated the way I had asked for. The flavor was not as good as I remember Candy Haven cakes to be but it was still good. My biggest complaints are
1. Every time my mom called to make a payment on the cake, they would tell her the balance was the full price. She would argue with them and they would pull the file and after 30 minutes, they would find where she had made a previous payment. This happened 3 times! It was somewhat of a headache.
2. The biggest complaint was that they told us we needed 7 yards of rhinestones for the cake trimming. My mom pushed back and said she thought that seemed like way too much and even measured the “fake” cake they had there to get dimensions but they insisted on 7 yards. We paid $14.95 a yard for the rhinestones and they only used about 1.5 yards!!! Now we have all this rhinestone trimming left over that we paid a lot for.
Dress – LEWISVILLE BRIDAL – Lewisville, Texas A+++ I LOVE LOVE LOVE my dress! I originally found it at Terry Costa but Lewisville Bridal gave me a much better price (about 300 less) so I ordered it from them. The dress came in early and was perfect. I highly recommend Lewisville Bridal!!
MOB Dress – MOCKING BIRD BRIDAL – Dallas, Texas F The dress was beautiful (Jasmine Couture collection) but that was where the good stopped. They measured my mom to be three different sizes in the top, bottom, and waist. The largest size put her in the “plus size range” so she was charged the extra fee for the larger size. The dress was about 2 weeks late even though she paid for super rush delivery (another $60) and when she picked it up it pretty much fell off of her. Becky Fowler worked with it and took it up about 4 dress sizes and it still was a bit big on the top. Apparently Mockingbird is known for having people order things too big so that their alterations people will make more money and they get kickbacks from the alterations people. I felt like they really took advantage of my mom and I would NOT recommend them!
Tuxedo Rental – AL’S FORMAL WEAR – Dallas/Houston/Abilene B+ A lot of things went wrong with the tux’s including some shirts being way too small, some jackets being way too big, pants not being hemmed right, etc. It took a lot of running around and switching but they got it all right in the end. I would use them again because at least they made sure to get us what we needed when things were wrong.
Bridesmaid Dresses – DENTON BRIDAL COMPANY – C Denton Bridal had a great selection and great prices. The problem was with their customer service (or lack of). We were told the dresses would be in by September 17th. The last one finally arrived on October 14th (3 days before the wedding). I would call and was told I had to speak with Anthony but that he wasn’t there….then I’d get a call back about 2 or 3 days later and he would say he didn’t know, he knew that Levkof had shipped the dress on a certain date but they weren’t sure where it was or why it wasn’t here yet, etc. I felt like he wanted to help but didn’t have the means to do so. I think they need to extend their “promise dates” by a few weeks so that Brides aren’t getting their dresses 2-4 weeks late! I appreciate that Anthony kept apologizing so that is why I gave them a C instead of an F.
Alterations – BECKY FOWLER- Irving, Texas A+++++++++++++++++++++++ Becky is the most wonderful lady in the whole world. She treats you like a princess and makes you feel so beautiful. She did amazing work on my dress taking in the corset and replacing the hand beaded lace where you could not even tell anything had been done. She did all the work on my bridesmaid’s dresses and turned my mom’s dress from a nightmare to something beautiful. She also worked on Brayden’s dress at the absolute very last minute (day before wedding) since we didn’t get it in until so late. She is the only person I’ll ever use for my alterations going forward!
Flowers – HAUTE FLORAL – Kristen Wolchik in Allen, Texas B Kristen is a very sweet person and I think she has some great talent. She and I worked out my flowers over email so that could be part of the problem. While my flowers were pretty, they weren’t exactly what I wanted. I had said I wanted all white Dutch tulips and white roses in my bouquet along with some diamond jewels. My bouquet had some other type of tulip in it that was very brown around the edges. I also counted 3 jewels in my bouquet so you couldn’t really even see them. The bridesmaid’s bouquets were supposed to be red with a few white tulip accents and jewels. Instead they were red with a few little white flowers and one or two jewels in each bouquet. I also did not think the mothers corsages were that pretty…they were just two red flowers with some greenery when I wanted red and white flowers with jewels. I think it was probably just a miscommunication and my lack of knowledge on flower types could also have caused some issues. I just don’t think we got what we paid for when it came to the flowers. I have seen some of Kristen’s other work though and it was beautiful so maybe this was just a fluke??
DJ – SOUNDS SPECTACULAR – Robert Williams in Arlington, Texas A++++++ Robert was very nice and did a GREAT job! He kept everyone dancing and informed as to what was going on through the night. He even coordinated the music to the slideshow we had at the reception. He gave us a great price since we only had a 3 hour reception instead of 4. He called back immediately or emailed when I sent him messages. He followed our song list exactly….he was great!!!
Photography – AVERY BLISS STUDIOS – Allen, Texas A Annette Taylor is the photographer that runs this studio and she has a great talent! My bridals were FABULOUS!!! They looked like something out of a magazine. My wedding pictures are great too. They aren’t as good as the bridals but I’m sure that’s because Bridals are staged so you have the perfect lighting and weddings are not. We also ran very short on time so we didn’t get a lot of the shots I had hoped for but that wasn’t her fault. The only negative thing I have to say is that I felt like she sort of stressed me out on the wedding day. She kept coming to me asking how much longer until we were ready and telling me that we were losing daylight so we needed to hurry. I couldn’t help that and I was having trouble getting everyone rounded up. I felt like she should have gone to my mom or MIL or MOH instead of coming to me over and over. Other than that, she was great and brought a whole team. I highly recommend Avery Bliss, especially for Bridals!
Rings – ROBBINS BROTHERS (A++) and ZALES (F)– Robbins Brothers has been great. I highly recommend them. They are professional and very helpful. Zales on the other hand was HORRIBLE! First, they forgot to place the special order so after 4 weeks, I called them and they spent 30 minutes searching for the order. Finally they found it but since they used a generic SKU, they didn’t know what to order! I had to go back up there and do the whole thing again. We also purchased the extended warranty plan and were told we could bring the ring in to have it re-dipped and polished any time we wanted while we waited. A few weeks ago, we took FI’s ring in to have it done because it got very scratched on the HM. Now, they have no jewelers in the store so they have to send your ring off to have it serviced and it takes 3-4 weeks to get it back! I was not happy! I would not use Zales again for anything!
Veils by Leslie – Online – A+++++ My veil was custom made and was only $65!!! I had it in less than 2 weeks and it was perfect. This was one of the easiest things I purchased for the wedding!
Music – ARIA STRINGS – A+++++++++++++++++++++ Aria was so wonderful! The music was amazing (I could hear it while I was getting dressed) and everyone was so professional! They were very easy to deal with, were right on time, and were so nice! I highly recommend them!!
Limo – ATEX LIMO – A++++++++++++ Tony was great! He gave me an amazing deal for our 1 way transfer to the airport, was on time, and was very professional! I highly recommend using them for stress free transportation!
Honeymoon CARNIVAL CRUSE LINES – A++++ We loved our cruise. WE went out of Puerto Rico and spent 7 days in the southern Caribbean. We visited 7 islands in 7 days so it was amazing. Everyone was so nice and the penthouse suite they upgraded us to was AMAZING!
AMERICAN AIRLINES A++++++ American got us to Miami and then on to Puerto Rico 26 minutes EARLY (that never happens)! They checked our bags for free and were very nice!
Hilton Caribe – San Juan A+++++ We stayed a couple extra days in Puerto Rico after the cruise and we stayed at the Hilton Carribe San Juan. It was very nice. It was a resort on the beach with swim up bars, shopping, etc. I wish we would have had more time to stay there! If we ever get to go back to San Juan, we’ll be sure to stay at the Caribbe!