Hi all!! Just got married on 2/22, and put together a review of my vendors for all of the Cleveland Brides-to-be out there. Hope this is helpful & feel free to ask questions!!
Reception Venue: Springvale Ballroom – Definitely lived up
to their near perfect reputation. Sarah,
the Event Coordinator, was so easy to work with, patient, flexible, and made
sure everything was perfect on my wedding day.
We met about 3 weeks before the date and went over everything, and you
could just tell she is very organized; I never worried about anything going
wrong on Springvale’s end. Beautiful
venue and a great value, I highly recommend.
Photographer: CLG Photography – Our wedding photos turned
out great; we couldn’t be happier. Chris
and Laura are great at discretely capturing awesome candid shots, I would say
that is definitely their greatest strength.
We used them because we were impressed with their work at by BFF’s
wedding about 2 years ago. We also used
them for engagement photos, which we actually were not crazy about – but it
isn’t totally their fault bc I just am really bad at “posing” for a photo, aka
there were lots of awkward photos. Like
I said, candid shots are their strength.
Alterations: Miranda’s Vintage Bridal – One of my favorite
vendors. Miranda has a really good eye
for details; she noticed and was able to point things out that I didn’t even pick
up on. She is very experienced and got
my dress fitting perfectly to every curve of my body. Her boutique in Tremont is adorable, and so
is she; I just couldn’t see any normal, sane person every having issues with
her!!
Cake (cupcakes): Sweets by Maggie – Our guests are still
talking about the cupcakes Maggie provided for our venue. I am definitely a “cake person” and have
tried out almost every cupcake shop in northeast Ohio; Sweets by Maggie is the
best. Her prices are low for the
quality; many places that are not as good are more expensive. Just to throw out some recommendations, my
groom & I chose a variety of our favorite flavors for our day: red velvet,
buckeye, salted caramel, cookie dough, and classic vanilla. Yum!!!
Hotel block: Courtyard Marriott by the Airport (North
Olmsted) – Multiple complaints here; would not recommend. They were telling some of our guests that
rooms were completely booked, but when they would call back at later times and
get different people, suddenly rooms were available? This happened to multiple guests and caused
some to book elsewhere and miss out on the shuttle service. On that note, after meeting the quota for a
free shuttle service and reviewing the timing/details TWICE with Marriott
staff, I got a phone call the week of my wedding from a different staff member
saying that we did not meet the quota for free shuttle service but could pay
for it if we choose. This was
straightened out after I argued/complained, but the week of my wedding it would
have been very nice not to deal with that.
We also found out from family members that they did not place welcome
bags in all of our guests rooms, which is totally frustrating because of the
time and money we wasted putting those together for our guests. So mad at this place!!!
DJ: Jerry Bruno Productions (Tommy Dwyer) – Both Jerry Bruno
and Tommy Dwyer were very personable, organized, and made us feel very
comfortable trusting them to handle the music for our day. I did have a slight complaint; which was that
the dancing kind of got help up between 9:00-10:00 because Tommy was playing
Motown instead up top 40 (we requested to keep the Motown minimal) and our
friends wanted to dance. Finally my
husband asked him (at 10:00) to stop the motown and play some current music;
which Tommy immediately did. I would use
them again, just wish we would have said something sooner.
Limo: All Occasions Limo – Limo driver was friendly,
courteous, there when he needed to be and got us everywhere on time, for by far
the lowest price we were able to find in Northeast Ohio. We used an entertainment book coupon to get
an awesome deal. Recommend!
Photoooth: Prelude Photography photobooth – Correspondence
was sort of slow with these people and since we had gotten a nearly
to-good-to-be-true deal on the photobooth, we were somewhat nervous that they
wouldn’t show up or just that something would happen. Not the case!
They were there on time and our friends had so much fun with the
photobooth. It wasn’t a totally “real”
photoboth – we noticed the operator was discretely snapping the photos from the
outside via some kind of remote rather than the booth automatically taking the
photos, but I don’t think many people noticed and it was just as fun either
way. The operator was friendly, polite,
outgoing, and kept the party going.
Flowers: Swank Floral Creations – Shannon Swank, the owner,
works out of her home, and therefore is able to offer very competitive
pricing. Floral arrangements turned out
beautiful, for hundreds of dollars less than my second lowest quote. Shannon personally dropped off the flowers to
my church for the ceremony, helped the groomsmen pin on their boutonnieres, and
made sure all the bridesmaids knew how to hold our bouquets. Only complaint was that correspondence was a
little slow, which was because my e-mails were going to her spam. As a side note: I first fell in love with
Molly Taylor florists out of Hudson, but they are so busy it was clear that I
was not an important client to them. I had
to wait weeks before they could fit me into their schedule for a consultation,
wait a few more weeks for the (astronomical) quote, then the pro was that I
never even had to tell them I wasn’t using them because they never bothered to
follow up J.
Favors: 2 Bubbis Cookies – Provided decorative cookies that
actually tasted good, too! Lots of those
really pretty cookies you get at weddings and events are hard and just not
enjoyable to eat, but these cookies are soft and flavorful. Here is a link to their website since they
are kind of small and unheard of: http://www.2bubbiescookies.com
Tuxes: Tuxedo Junction:
I have a feeling working with a bunch of dudes can be a challenge, but
these people handled it well. Let me
tell you, I had to nag my groom to nag his groomsmen for MONTHS before those
guys went in and got measured. One of
them even waited until the week before our wedding. The staff their kindly called me after the
groom wasn’t responding to their calls, good move, to let me know I needed to
go bridezilla on that groomsman J. They were very nice about it though, got all
the tuxes in on time, and were totally patient with us when we switched things
up three times after our original booking.
One of our groomsman’s pants didn’t fit when he tried them on 2 days
before our wedding, and they made sure to get him a new pair for our day. Prices were very reasonable.