Piazza in the Village-C+
The space is beautiful, there’s no denying that. However,I feel like the service leading up to the wedding and their “rules” leave something to be desired. A few examples of the problems I had pre-wedding:
Never received a “pre-lim final invoice” despite having asked 4 times. Then getting scolded because I didn’t pay two weeks prior When I complained that there was no way I could have paid because I could have had no idea what the total was going to have been,the next day they denied my request to come in and take pictures at 1 vs coming in at 1:30. This was 9 days prior to my wedding and we initially had the conversation a month prior. When I questioned about why it was denied just now, I was told that it could be approved but it would be $50 and there would be people coming in and out.
I emailed them a few days prior asking them to check their music database for songs I wanted. She told me that if they couldn’t find the song they would have to find a comparable song. She said if they have to buy them from ITunes they need to know 2 weeks prior. She never once tried to contact me about it. Also, that’s when I found out you don’t get to pick your pre-ceremony music they have a “house mix”. They wouldn’t even let me bring a CD.They actually had what I was walking down the aisle to in their “house mix”, which annoyed me a little.
On the wedding day, the owner and even my planner was extremely rude to the Mcgowans about our”5-minute rule”. I’m sure the Mcgowans got some great pictures but I think it really put a damper on it for us...and since none of those pictures made the blog, I’m assuming that it showed that they put a damper on it.
For our cocktail hour we were supposed to have 2 gallons of champagne fruit punch and 2 gallons of regular fruit punch. Our cocktail hour started at 3:30, by 4:10 we were actually taking our pictures in front of the chapel with our guests watching because either the punch ran out or they stopped serving. We chose 4 gallons when we were planning on full attendance (120) and this was their suggestion for cocktail hour so I don’t understand how it “ran out” when we only had about 70-80 people show. The food at the reception was great, everyone is talking about how good it was. There was a little drama at the reception and my planner got an undeserved earful, and she took it like a champ.
Branching Out Events (Floral)- C
When I first contacted them it took a few days for them to get back with me, but after that they seemed to be easy to reach. When I met with Debby I felt like I clicked more with her than I did the other florist I visited with. Since, February or March though, Debby has been increasingly harder to get a hold of. I actually have not spoken with Debby since March, I was passed on to Amanda and she has been my only contact with Branching Out since. I was still confident that everything would be fine and that Debby would be delivering my flowers the day of the wedding.
On the wedding day, she did not come deliver my flowers. She sent Amanda. My bridesmaids bouquets were all blue hydrangea. Debby stressed to me in our consult that a Hydrangea was a flower that would need to be in water when we were not taking pictures. When the flowers were delivered they were not delivered in vases. Just wrapped in plastic and set on the counter. Two of them had huge leaves in them (Chelsea mentioned it first, and recommended we pull them out).My bouquet had some brown spots but overall it was great and exactly what I wanted.
The corsages were not okay. My Mom’s was floppy and flowers were falling out by the reception. They were supposed to contain “white flowers from the wedding palette”. There were pink roses on the corsages. Pink was NO WHERE even close to my colors. We also didn’t use any kind of roses anywhere.
Some of our Bouts were wilted before the end of the ceremony, but definitely before we went into the reception.
The Cake flowers were supposed to be “lots of blue hydrangea”. There was close to no blue hydrangea on my cake. There were however more of those pink roses they put in corsages and white orchids and also another type of green flower.
Amanda also told the Mcgowan’s that she “was going to leave an arrangement on the sweetheart table, because we never discussed an arrangement for that table.” Even though we actually did.
I also had to toss a bridesmaids bouquet for my bouquet toss because they didn’t leave me a toss bouquet.
I am pretty disappointed, I picked them because they had been featured in a lot of magazines and I feel like my flowers were thrown together and an after thought. I will be emailing them soon and asking for some kind of compensation back since they didn’t follow the proposal.
UPDATE: I emailed Debby with my concerns, she states that there were no pink flowers delivered to me on my wedding day. Also, that if I’m upset about the cake flowers I need to contact the cake person. She also states that she has an “impeccable reputation and never received any complaints”.
I have attached a picture. You decide what color the flowers are.
Melodies and Memories-AAA+++
I have heard nothing but great things about Melody. Everyone loved her. There was some drama after dinner, Melody did her best to entertain everyone but with a reception that was so small everyone knew what was going on. I came in, went to the bathroom where my BMs were reapplying my make up. Melody came in the bathroom and brought us all shots of tequila.
She got us through all of our formalities and was really having a hard time getting our people going. I think there was still a cloud over the whole reception following the drama. THEN just in time- Melody called my Dad to the floor. (Backstory: When I was picking the father/daughter dance song, my dad was in the car and said...”How about Red Solo Cup? Can we dance to that?”) So, My dad did the “jump on it” moves, rode the pony, robot and pretty much just copied what I did through the whole song. It was great! It was great timing and it really turned the whole thing around.
McGowan Images-AAA+++
They are seriously the best money I spent in this whole process. Not only were my engagement pictures amazing, but she made me feel better about the tight schedule the Piazza gave us and even had to make a few adjustments on the fly...since the boys weren’t ready..they were too busy playing x-box. Silly Boys.
Chelsea tried so hard to run interference for me and she took quite a few verbal snaps that were undeserved between that and the Piazza being so rude to them they stayed in great spirits. So much so that I’m getting just as much compliments about them as I am Mel. They work so good together and they seriously saved my reception.
However Chelsea did a lot more than take pictures. She helped get get my veil in place, got the clasp on the dress closed and even bustled my dress. Honestly, I can’t say enough good things about them. I am so grateful to have gotten to work with them.
Wylie Video-Will rate once I get the video back.
Becky Fowler-A
She’s affordable and she does great work. She took my dress in and bustled it for $125. She did some alterations on one of my BMs dresses for $15. She’s great. I also bought my veil and headpiece from her and it all looked and felt great!
I really can’t say anything else about Becky that anyone else doesn’t say in a regular “who would you recommend for alterations” thread
The Paper Kutt (Invites)- C
When I first met with Gayle she was very nice and showed me tons of samples. I waited for a while to order since we were buying our house and everything. I wanted to make sure that I had the right address on all of the envelopes. Once I placed my deposit, she had a sample sent to me. This sample had typos (including mis-spelling the street name of the venue). I informed her of these by email. After a few days I had not received a response from her so I followed up to make sure that she had received them. She said she had, and that she had sent me another sample through email. Once I told her I hadn’t received it, she sent it over to me and I ok’d it to print. This was on a saturday. I asked her if I could pick them up on the coming Saturday evening or Sunday morning so that I could have them for when my BMs were supposed to come help me put them together. She said that would be fine.
Friday, I emailed her to see when I could come get them the next day. She then informed me that the pockets had not been received yet, they should be in that day but “you never know with UPS”. Then on Monday, the package didn’t come. They didn’t actually end up coming in until Tuesday and then she had to email me to remember which cards were supposed to be printed on which colors. I don’t understand why at the very least she didn’t have everything else printed if all she was waiting on was the pockets. But, the invites were so pretty.
Oh...AND I STILL am getting chain emails from her about politics and crap.
Ruth Robbins (Cake)- A
We got Red Velvet and White velvet cake in my cake. For Fi’s cake she took a pretty crummy drawing of what I knew he wanted (Rangers ballpark) and made it awesome. I am still hearing compliments on how great the cake was!
I did just learn however that she was VERY late for set up.
Paper Planet- A
I used them for my place cards. They were really great and got them done in a quick turnaround (about a week) without a single mess-up.
Al’s Formal Wear-A
They all looked good, they all fit. They were pleasant to work with.
Alfred Angelo (bridesmaids dresses)- A-
I didn’t have any problems with them, I thought they were nice. However some of my BMs mentioned that once they found out they weren’t having them alter the dresses that they were kind of rude to them.
David’s Bridal (Bridal gown)- A-
They were good during the sales process, however when I went to pick my dress up they were pretty unhelpful (I ended up putting it on and off myself.) Then they kept calling me non-stop about BM dresses.
ETA:
AnnaLisa Allred &team (hair MUA)-A
Anna is my usual hair lady and she just recently teamed up with another person who does make-up to make a "wedding team". They were 30 minutes late due to 360 being shut down to one lane. But they got us all done up and out the door only 5-10 minutes late.
Gaylord Texan-A (night of and transportation)
I called a few days before the wedding and asked them if I could have them come pick me up from my reception and bring me back. They told me for weddings it was 75/hr with a 4 hr min & a 12% driver charge. I decided there was no way I was paying that, we'd just drive our own car. But when I got to the hotel I just called down and asked how much it would be for a pick up to X address. $33.00. DONE!
They were on time and the car was nice, and the driver was very friendly.