Ceremony- St Joseph's Church Strongsville. Typical Catholic ceremony. The wedding coordinators at the church were
helpful.
Reception- Briarwood Golf Club. I would recommend Briarwood for others. However, they say the room fits 200. Nope, we had 155 and you could just easily
get through tables. We even had the
bridal party table on the dance floor and tore it down after dinner and space
was still just enough. Also, guests in
the southwest corner of the room complained of the heat and glare from the sun
setting. Food was catered by Bucci's and
it was delicious! Try there celery seed
dressing, garlic butter, and scalloped potatoes. Yum. The
scenery was very nice. We were even
allowed to take golf carts out on the greens to take some pictures. The outdoor bar and patio were a hit. The dance floor is a little on the small
size.
Bakery- Rudy's Streusel in Parma. What a cutie Eugenia is. I was a little concerned after our second
meeting with her. She didn't remember
meeting with us prior and tried to charge us another deposit. She ended up finding our paperwork and all
was well. We gave her the basics of what
we wanted with some ability to be creative.
And boy was our cake beautiful.
Simple and elegant, just how we wanted it. And it tasted great too, we had carrot cake
and a white cake with a chocolate fudge cream.
Looking forward to getting our one year anniversary cake next year!
Block of Hotel Rooms- Holiday Inn Independence. Don't reserve rooms here. The worst vendor we worked with. Very poor communication, even after multiple
complaints to their corporate office. We
had a lot of out of town guests and chose them based on cost of the room and
their transportation services. They
would not allow us to purchase additional shuttle rides. So thankful to the professionalism by CTS transportation
who we used to ensure our guests could party and not have to drive back to the
hotel. The hotel has a nice bar. We wanted to have some snacks for our guests
for after the reception. There kitchen
closed at 11, they refused to make up some cold snacks ahead of time, they
refused to let us have pizza ordered in and served at the bar and they refused
for us to even bring a bag of chips into the bar. They actually threaten to kick my husband out
of the hotel if he brought any outside food into the bar. We spent alot of money at the after party
too.
Dress- Dora's bridal.
I would highly recommend for a more personalized wedding dress shopping
experience. They are a smaller shop so
it was not intimidating at all. Each
time I went in, it was just me and no other brides. They actually picked my dress out. As I was heading back to the dressing room,
the sales women said she wanted me to try on a dress. It was nothing like any of the other dresses
I picked out and not really what I was looking for. I agreed.
I got the "feeling" before it was even up to my waist. They did a la carte alterations there. Expensive but well done. I ordered all of my accessories from
Etsy. I also always envisioned myself
having a bird cage veil. Family and
friends tried to talk me out of it. I
stuck with what I wanted and it was perfect.
I also got that from Etsy too.
Florist- $9.99 Roses and More. Amazing find.
She is retired and does some weddings out of her home. Such a sweetheart. She listened to what I wanted, told me when
things wouldn't work, gave me ideas based on my vision and really knows her
flowers. And she texts... which is such
a time saver. I actually got a text from
her the day prior to the wedding with an issue with our centerpieces. I had made tall wood candlesticks and a ball
of flowers was to go on top. The weight
of the flowers was too heavy to put on top on the candlestick. She fixed the broken candlestick and assured
me they would be perfect for the day of.
She just had to make some adjustments to how many flowers and the type
of flower in the centerpiece. And they were perfect for the day of. She even texted me the morning of with
pictures of the church arrangements and bouquets. And very reasonably priced. I would caution using white hydrangeas in bouquets,
they didn't hold up for the duration of the day. The roses and anemone did well though.
Limo- Mr A1 Limo. One
of the cheapest prices we got for a limo.
We had the Lincoln Navigator SUV limo.
Everything was great. We took
lunch and a cooler of beer on board and had a great time. The limo driver called the day prior to
introduce himself. I did let him know
our plan was to not have a receiving line at church. We wanted to walk through the line of people
with bubbles, hop in the limo and drive to the other side of the building to
get out for pictures. We only had 30
minutes after the ceremony for pictures at the church. He let person after person come say hi to us
in the limo (despite the lets go look from me multiple times). We ended up only having 15 minutes for
pictures at the church. No other issues
though.
DJ- DJ Kyro. Amazing.
He did a great job of reading the crowd and playing music for a wide
variety of ages. The dance floor was
packed all night. Our first dance was a
song we pulled from a you tube video. He
was able to format it and improve the audio on it. He also blended a few songs for us such as
the father daughter dance when we went from a nice Celine Dion song to some
Watermelon Crawl!
Photographer- Alevtina Photography. Also amazing.
They are a husband wife team. She
is the main photographer. Sweetest
people ever. And good at what they
do. I haven't seen the proofs yet, just
a few on her camera but they were beautiful.
She was with me from the salon to probably 9:30PM that night at the
reception. She took close to 6000
pictures total that day. I created a
photography pintrest board. She looked
at them and recreated all of the pictures I wanted. She gave us recommendations on locations in case
of rain. She took us out for some sunset
pictures. We were tired of all the
smiling by 5PM. But I know it will be
worth it when we see the pictures.
Hair and Makeup- Cory's Salon and Spa Middleburg Hts. Wendy was awesome to work with. We did trials for both hair and makeup. I told her the things that were most
important to me. She gave me suggestions
to make both even better. Would highly
recommend her. My only concern with
Cory's was that they had 3 wedding parties that morning in their smaller sized salon. My girls and the girls in another wedding
party were all getting hair and makeup.
There were only 2 makeup chairs.
There were also two photographers running all over the place. It was a little too chaotic. We also got out late do to airbrush machine
issues. That left us only 15 minutes to
get dressed before we had to leave for the church. The complimentary mimosas were a nice touch
though.
Photography location- Botanical Gardens. I always dreamed of having my pictures
there. We were given a 1 hour slot. I specifically asked about being 15 min early
or late and if that was okay, and it was okay.
We were 15 min late and boy were they cranky about it. They were only going to give us 45 min for
pictures and followed us around the park like we were children. It made me anxious and probably my only
Bridezilla type moments through this whole wedding and wedding planning process. The rep from the gardens did apologize to me
at the end and gave us an extra 15 min.
I hope the pictures there are worth the stress.
Travel Agent-
Landfall travels. We worked with
Becky who took the stress away from planning our Hawaii honeymoon. It was a perfect trip (minus the emergency
landing due to electrical problems in a plane on the way there and the girl
detoxing in the seat next to me on the way home. LOL). Do
make sure the airlines know you are honeymooners. We got upgraded seats on one flight along
with a bottle of wine. Free cocktails on
a connecting flight. The only bad part
of using a travel agent is that we lost our hotel reward points even though we
specifically gave her the account numbers before booking.
Just some suggestions to help make the day less
stressful. A day of coordinator is a
must in my book. I didn't think I needed
one until a friend's wedding and she (the bride) was lighting candles as guests
were arriving to the reception. She was
a lifesaver. We could not get in to the
hall the day prior to decorate for the reception. Table linens didn't even arrive until 3PM and
the reception was at 5PM. She set the
whole room up for us. She made sure our
parents knew where they had to be during the reception so they didn't miss the
first dance or cake cutting.
I heard lots of
brides say the day goes so fast and they miss so much. If I could change one thing about my day, it
would be to knock down the guest list. I
felt like there were guests at the reception that I barely talked to or said
just a quick hello. I would have
preferred a more intimate wedding with the ability to spend more time with
everyone.
Last piece of advice... start pinning! My wedding was planned mostly through
pintrest. I recommend staying off 2
months prior to the wedding. Or you will
be like me and 2 weeks prior working on getting pictures of parents and
grandparents cutting their wedding cakes to go around our cake table. LOL. Way
to close to the big day to be adding any extra projects!
Happy planning!