Sorry for the delay in getting these up, I thought it might get too long and then once I was done reviewing the photographer I was in such a bad mood!
Venue/Catering: Nazareth Hall, A+
Excellent! Kevin and Brooke were so helpful and they really made everything easy. We were married in the chapel and had our reception in the Cadet West ballroom. Nazareth Hall is so beautiful!
The food was great, portions were very good size, and all my guests commented on how good the meal was. It was very nice that they include the vegetarian and childs meal options.
They will give you options as far as the bar prices go. So you can purchase liquor by the bottle from them if you want to have a couple different options without buying the whole bar. The only thing that bothered me about the bar is that they wouldn't give me the soft bar price for the kids that didn't get the kids meal but were still under 21, so the teenagers...
Bakery: Wixey's, A-
So, the only bite of cake I got at the wedding was the one my husband fed me during the cake cutting. I was just so busy chatting with our guests! But we had a three tier: banana, chocolate, and champagne. When we did our taste test, it was yummy... and my husband said it was good at the wedding too. They were very nice during our planning meeting, and the cost wasn't as bad as I had expected. My only complaint is that I asked for polkadots and stripes in my wedding colors, but they only did the single color. Obviously not a huge deal, but did bug me a little since all there is to picking out a cake is the flavors and decoration.
Dress and Alterations: David's Bridal , A-
I always see negative comments on David's, but I had a good experience with them. As far as dress shopping, I went twice. My first trip was on a Saturday and I had a consultant named Deb. She was nice, but they book appointments on top of eachother so she was helping two other girls at the same time. I tried on 5 dresses and it took 2 hours... So a lot of time was spent waiting around. And she didn't really make any suggestions, which made it difficult. I understand that Saturdays are busy, but with appointments they shouldn't book one person with so many customers at once.
My second trip was better on a weekday... I had Deb again because they keep track of who helped you the first time. She made some suggestions this time, but I ended up purchasing a dress I tried on at my first shopping trip, anyways.
I went to their alterations for a price estimate to shop around, but they came in around $100 less than I expected so I just went with them. On top of the lower price, they do promise to replace the dress if they screw anything up. I worked with Margarete, who I think runs the alteration department. She was really sweet and at my final fitting told me not to hesitate if I wanted to bring the dress back on my wedding day for pressing or any other problems. We did end up going back the morning of my wedding with my MOH to fix a button on her dress -- we were in and out in a few minutes, free of charge.
Ceremony and Reception Music: Tonight's Entertainment A
We sort of went with Rusty on accident. My cousin was getting married a month before us and one of my aunts was gifting each of us our DJ for the party. We had decided we would try to go with the same DJ to get a better deal. My cousin heard about Rusty and told me that he was who they wanted. Rusty invited us to one of his events to see his equipment and his work. We liked him, so we hired him.
At my cousin's wedding, we realized that they hadn't gone with Rusty anyways...
But that's OK. Rusty tried really hard to keep the guests on the dance floor. We expected him to have some trouble since most of our guests were old. But he did a good job, he didn't screw up any names or song choices, nothing inappropiate either.
One thing I really liked about the service was that he provided a comprehensive worksheet packet to get all the answers to questions I never would've thought of. I told him which songs I wanted played during the key ceremony times, and he used that as an example of what I wanted for music while the guests were being seated and leaving the chapel. I also gave a couple examples of the dinner music I wanted and he filled the time in perfectly.
If he didn't have the song I wanted, he found it and downloaded it
Like this arrangement of The Bridal March:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIyXWm_cw2ELOVE IT!
Flowers: Pollynn Flowers A+
Lynn is adorable! She's so bubbly and fun. I was going simple on the flowers, and she suggested some extras that really made my bouquet pop! And I don't think the price can be beat. She was so sweet on the wedding day too, she came up and said goodbye and got a little teary-eyed.
Overall, it was a great day. There were of course a few problems but really can't get hung up on the small stuff. There's so much that goes into planning these things, you're bound to forget something and something is going to go wrong. But even with my bridesmaid trouble (and ensuing screaming match between said bridesmaid - my sister in law-- and my groom), my hubby forgetting the escort cards, toasting flutes, ceremony programs, etc (they all got to the venue just in time!), down to my grandmother getting lost, missing the ceremony, and weeping histerically as we exited the chapel as newlyweds... I'd say it was a pretty good day. LOL
Of course, the honeymoon didn't last long. The next day, Sunday, I got on a plane to move across the country for work on Monday while my hubby hit the road in our car with the cats in the back seat. But we were really happy to see eachother three days later :-)
Let me know if you have any questions about any of these vendors!