Vendor review from my 7/3/13 wedding! PIP

I fell in love with my Sareh Nouri gown ("rose garden") as soon as I saw it. I wasn't originally planning on purchasing a dress at the time that I went into Exquisite Bride but made an appointment anyway to go look. The store was clean and modern- all the gowns displayed in the front room were gorgeous...and expensive. The lady that greeted us (I was with my Mom) helped me search for gowns as well and she was extremely friendly. I did notice that she never asked for my budget though, just brought me around and started pulling gowns that I liked. Long story short, I had to have the rose garden and we purchased it even though it was about 16 months before the wedding.

My first fitting was not until May 2013, a few months before the wedding. I live in Florida so I flew to NJ for this fitting. To my horror, the dress would not close. It wasn't even tight- there was at least a 6-7 inch gap in the back where the zipper would not come together. It turns out, the dress came in the wrong size...2 sizes SMALLER than what was ordered!!!! All the paperwork was correct, the gown was just made the wrong size. It ended up taking 5 fittings to get the dress correct. It looked gorgeous on my wedding day but there were many nights I laid awake in disbelief that a custom gown could go so wrong. My seamstress was extremely sweet and helped keep me a bit sane when I wanted to cry. I would never trade my dress for anything else but was for sure disappointed in the careless mistakes that were made.

We had an amazing experience with the Stone House from start to finish. They were flexible, gave us an amazing tasting, worked on customizing our menu and were flawless the day of. We got to eat thanks to the bridal attendant bringing us literally everything offered at cocktail hour immediately after our ceremony. For dinner we gave guests the choice of a filet, porcini encrusted chilean seabass or a vegetarian option and we had people coming up to us all night telling us they normally do not even like fish but thought it was delicious! We worked with Carissa and she was excellent.

I want to preface this review by saying that I am NOT a cake person. For my birthday I prefer brownies or anything else over cake and Samantha somehow found a way to get me to actually enjoy our cake! It was relatively simple in flavor (vanilla with a fresh raspberry and buttercream filling) but she offers almost every flavor/combo you can dream of. She worked with me on sketching out my ideas- I wasn't sure what I wanted at first so I kind of daydreamed out loud while she sketched. The end result was exactly what I had pictured/wanted. The fact that it was delicious was just icing on the cake...pun intended

Amazing!! Every single song they played had people on the dance floor and sounded just as good as the original recording artist! They learned and played "The Luckiest" by Ben Folds for our first dance and had everyone crying. They were upbeat and energetic the entire night and the band leader (Bob) did an amazing job as MC. My dad has his own band and Faze 4 was nice enough to let them use their instruments to play a song to us. No ones names were botched (phew- one of my nightmares!) and they played a bit past midnight since people were still dancing. A++++

I used Angela and Ann Marie for hair and makeup. They came to our hotel to do everything there for us. We started at 10AM which I thought was super early since my wedding wasn't until 6PM but that was what they requested. It was 5 girls total- myself, my Mom and 3 sisters and we were finished around 1PM. I had extensions put in and curled in a simple volumized half up. It looked amazing at first but by the time I got married almost all the curls were gone which was kind of sad. Makeup also looked great at first but I was super shiny and kind of yucky by the end of the night. It's my own fault for forgetting to pack extra powder for myself. During my trial she said I could purchase the lipstick she used the day of for touch ups but on my wedding day did not bring an extra.My mom and my sisters looked super gorgeous and glamorous though and when I get my pictures back if I look all sweaty it's because I was having a good time!

I know this portion will not be helpful to NJ brides but I have to say that Dan and Vicki from Starfish are incredible. They did our engagement pictures and we loved them so much we flew them to NJ to shoot our wedding for us. Not to mention that even with hotel and airfare they were STILL less expensive than many NJ photographers we enquired about! They were calm and super friendly and made us feel like it was just another 2 friends hanging out with us. They shoot photojournalistic style and we cannot wait to see what they captured at our wedding!

This was the only we used that we were completely dissatisfied with. They were super disorganized (the day before my wedding told me the bridal suite was booked by someone else even though I had booked it months in advance. It wasn't, just clerical error). 8 of the rooms that our friends/family had booked had broken air conditioning. It was close to 90 degrees that day and all they could say was sorry! The bridal suites couch had a massive hole in it as well as the air conditioning unit leaking like crazy and creating a giant soaked spot on the rug. We were told bar was open until 2AM but they closed at 1AM instead and made everyone take their drinks into the lobby. Room keys stopped working and had to be re-set after the wedding. Basically everything was a mess. I felt so terrible that my guests wasted their money to stay in a hotel that ended up being such a dump.

Absolute dream flowers. Anything I could imagine, they could do! When we first designed our centerpieces (we had 3 different ones) they priced out at more than we wanted to spend. They were able to re-work everything and still do basically the exact same thing for our budget. Everything was set up beautifully and in more than enough time. When I saw my chuppah I almost cried because it was so much more beautiful than anything I thought it would be. They are AMAZING and can take any room and completely transform it. HIGHLY recommended!!!

I think that's about it! All in all, it was better than anything I could have dreamed of. I am so happy to be married to my best friend and cannot wait to get photos and video back to re-live the day. I hope this was helpful and congrats to all future brides!!