I got married 11-12-11 in the Woodlands area:
The Woodlands Waterway Marriott, A++ :
Our experience with them was awesome. It ended up costing less than I originally thought, and I definitely feel like we got a great bang for our buck. We had our reception in their restaurant due to our small wedding size (85 people). We were actually really excited when they offered it to us because we got the whole restaurant, complete with a beautiful rotunda with a sky blue ceiling and chandelier that we danced in, 2 private dining rooms attached with double doors opening up into the main room (we used for photo booth and bar area), a walk-out patio with beautiful blue lights wrapped around the trees overlooking the waterway, and floor-to-ceiling windows in the main area that overlook the lights and waterway. It is a package deal that includes food, 4-hour open bar, champagne toast for everyone, the cake, linens of your choice from Elegant Beginnings (which were beautiful), and good-sized floral centerpieces for each table (also gorgeous). The food was amazing! Everyone was telling us it delicious and even though my wedding dress was pretty tight, I couldn't help but eat all of the food put in front of me, lol. Our coordinator that was also included with the package was more than great. She made everything happen and when we walked into the reception, it was exactly what we had talked about and more. Price for all described was $9,000. The price for the ballroom would be the same, just depends on your meal choices and wedding size.
Divisi Strings, Amp'd String Quartet, A+ :
This was our splurge. We didn't like the sound of organ music in the church and started looking around for other options. Divisi Strings' Amp'd String Quartet was an awesome choice because they played traditional music at the church for the ceremony, and then headed over to the Marriott for cocktail hour and played modern music (Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Usher, The Verve, and a mix of modern love and pop songs). They sounded amazing and were absolutely perfect in their execution of the songs for the ceremony. From what I heard of the cocktail hour music, they sounded equally as amazing. It was EXTREMELY easy to deal with them through email and the phone. They were always very helpful and professional. Cost for about 2 hours of music $1050.
Premium Sound, A+ :
Wendy was really great to work with. Very upbeat and had lots of suggestions. She is also a wedding coordinator, so her working with the wedding coordinator from the Marriott= awesome coordination of the events of the night. It was great that she could do all the MC'ing, and her husband, Ferdy, the DJ, could stay behind the table and just keep putting out awesome music. We all (from ages 4-70) had a great time. They played great music, period. Exactly what we discussed over the phone meetings. Price for 5 hours was $750. They also have uplights for $25 each and lighting for $75-100 depending on the package.
Kiss the Cook Cakes, B :
The buttercream cake with buttercream icing is their speciality and it tasted delicious. And our wedding cake looked really nice, very good considering my inspiration was a fondant cake and they did their best with buttercream icing. It looked beautiful. But, we had scanned and sent them a pic due to their request, of a "C" that they were going to put on top of the cake (matched the "C" on the cocktail napkins we ordered off theknot.com), and they didn't even use it. That was kind of a waste of time on my part scanning the napkin, sending it, and checking to see if they got it. Not to mention they had a picture printed out of it in our folder every time I went to go pay. Not a big deal though. The groom's cake though, um, was not so great. It tasted pretty good when you peeled the fondant away, but it looked like a big black pile of poop on the table next to our cake. Our guests could not figure out what it was. It was supposed to be a camera lens, but you couldn't really see any of the detailing and the edges were not smooth so it looked lumpy all over. I understand that a camera lens might not be easy, but this is a lady that made a stadium cake with a bunch of "people" in it, so we kind of expected something a little closer to the picture we sent. Also, we were quoted $250 for the groom's cake by one lady, and then when I talked with the actual cake baker, she sent me an email saying it would be $450. Luckily, she quickly realized that someone had already given us a quote and honored that price, but I kind of wonder if that's why the cake looked like it was made in a hurry. And one more thing I want to mention- during our initial meeting, my H and I were very frustrated by their attitude about some of our choices. When I told the lady that I didn't want flowers on the cake, she kept asking me if I was sure and proceeded to tell me that she would have to make a specific note on our contract because the baker likes flowers and sometimes finds some around the reception and puts them on the cake. That made me a little uncomfortable. I really am not a bridezilla, I just didn't want flowers on this particular cake and I don't think that should be too much to ask. Then, when my H was describing what he wanted for his cake, he told her it had to be black. We both understood that that may be a turn-off to some wedding guests, even though it would be fondant and they could peel it away, but this was kind of a gift from me to him for letting me make most of the color/design choices for the wedding. Not to mention, that this would be an extra cake because the wedding cake was more than enough to feed all of our guests. But she repeatedly asked us if it could be silver or some other color and pretty much said that they didn't want to make the cake the way we wanted. I thought she was being a little dramatic. We finally convinced her that we wanted black and that no other color would look right, and guess what, lots of people ate and enjoyed the groom's cake. They just seemed like they only wanted to make cakes a certain way and honestly, you're paying for what you want, that's why you pay a pretty penny for it, so it was kind of frustrating to meet so much resistance to 2 simple requests. At the end of the day though, the wedding cake tasted yummy and looked great, and the groom's cake tasted good.
CM Floral Designs A-
Shelly was great to meet with. She had lots of suggestions for flowers and they ended up looking beautiful. The centerpieces weren't quite as colorful as I had shown her in my pictures, but they still looked awesome. She even met with me a 2nd time after I had some second thoughts about some of my choices and did not make a big deal about it, which I appreciated. My only complaint is actually my bouquet- it's nothing that I was mad about, but just a little upsetting. When she showed me her standard bridal bouquet size and held it up against me, I immediately knew I needed like half that size, it was huge and I am really pretty small. I told her exactly that and she proceeded to keep saying that she would make it smaller. In the contract though, she wrote, "slightly smaller" and I probably should have said something else. The wedding day, my bouquet was truly only slightly smaller than the sample she had shown me and it was still really large. I think it also weighed about 10 pounds. I had also asked for 2 short ribbon tails on my bouquet and had shown her a picture, but my bouquet had like 4-6 ribbon tails which looked kind of bizarre and I've never even seen before. I didn't have time to try and cut them off, etc. so I just wrapped them around the stem and held it, which was also kind of a pain for pictures. With all that said, it was still a gorgeous bouquet and so were all the other flowers.
Brickhouse Bridal, A:
I had a pretty good experience with them. I had a really good consultant who actually was the one to pick out my dress. It was the 2nd dress I tried on. She pulled it out for me once I tried on a dress I thought I would love and ended up hating it. They also let me take lots of pics of me in it, which not all salons do. Everything else went pretty well. It was the right size and color, etc. Not much more else to say I guess.
Bridesmaids Dresses, A++:
Please, order your bridesmaid dresses from Pearl's Place. They were awesome to deal with and cheap, and the dresses were perfect and from the designer but $60 less. What else can I say.
Let me know if you guys have any questions!