Sorry it took so long for me to get these out, but figured better late then never!
Some are extremely long sorry, I am the kind of person that has to tell the whole story if I start telling it! HAHA!
I worked really hard to get good vendors for good prices and one of my favorite ways of doing this was through other knotties reviews!
Good Luck girls!
Hair: Lindsey Sullivan – Lindsey was great. At my trial she did two different styles for me so I could decide which I liked better and she even made a flower out of toilet paper since my hair flower hadn’t arrived yet so we could see how it would look and figure out placement. She was great the day of too. All my bridesmaids loved their hair and I loved mine. She arrived on time and had everyone done on schedule! She had great prices too!
Make up: Taryn Hart – I needed a make-up artist last minute and really needed someone willing to travel to me (Port Gamble) and someone who did airbrushing. Taryn was great, very nice and listened to what I wanted. She also did my mom (MOH) and sister’s (BM) make-up as well. Personally it was a little expensive for what I would have liked to pay, but the price was not too much more than other MUA I was looking at and was lower priced than many. I was very happy with how my make up turned out and how it looked in our pictures!
Officiant: Rev. Ray Van Winkle – He was great! Had a great sense of humor which lightened my very nervous mood! Everyone felt more relaxed with him around. He gave us so many examples of the different parts of the ceremony and then allowed us to create the ceremony so it was exactly what we wanted. He seemed very experienced and helped our wedding party get smoothly down the aisle and back and stand where they needed to. He also had great suggestions!
DJ: Gen X Pro – I was sooo excited to work with them because I have heard so many good things about them. They were so nice and great at our meetings and were helpful whenever we had questions. They were good priced and provided us with a great template for our ceremony and reception. They were still wonderful DJs at the wedding but there were a couple things that made me disappointed. First, they showed up to our wedding, which was at a venue they work at often, and expected us to have our ceremony on the area of the lawn where people usually have it, however we had it set up differently so they had to set up their speakers different and were angry that it wasn’t how they normally do it. In my opinion, just because they are used to doing it one way doesn’t mean they should expect everyone to do their wedding that way. It seemed they were angry because they were inconvenienced which added stress for my aunt who was organizing everything while I got ready. They did do a good job of trying to keep everything on schedule and running as smoothly as possible. They also provided us with CDs of all the music they used for our wedding which I thought was nice. Overall I still thought they were good DJs however a little disappointed, maybe just because I was expecting so much.
Venue: Port Gamble Vista Pavilion – The venue and the people we worked with were so great! I cannot say enough good things about it! They were so nice! They made a special weekday discount for us which they now offer on their website. The venue was so beautiful and perfect! They have a nice lawn for our ceremony overlooking the water, a nice event tent on a patio which we used for our cocktail hour and then a gorgeous new building for the reception. It was our absolutely perfect wedding venue! Plus the town of Port Gamble is just so cute and unique and has so many good photo opportunities. The venue let us in the day prior to decorate since they had no events that day, even though it stated in our contract that we only had the venue that day. They provide a conference room just down the street for you to get ready in, however we had rented a guest house a block away so we had the guys get ready there. We visited several time in the year before the wedding to look around and get decorating ideas, and the coordinators were always so nice and willing to work with us! I really cannot say how great it was!
Cake: Kathy’s Creative Cakes – I believe Kathy is fairly new in her business, but has a lot of experience with making cakes. So she was a little flaky in getting back to me and getting us a contract especially through e-mail. She also gave my phone number out to another bride without my permission which I thought was a little unprofessional. However we tasted many cakes and hers were by far the best! She met with us for our tasting pretty last minute and still made the cutest mini cakes in exactly the flavors we had asked her for. She also brought extra filling and frostings so that we could try different combinations if we didn’t like the ones she had. She also got the cake there on time and set it up with the fresh flowers beautifully. The cake came out beautifully. She also gave us a military discount and discussed many cake size options to come up with what would best accommodate our needs. Overall she got the job done right and our cake was beautiful and tasted great!
Flowers: Irene from sub base Bangor florist – We got so many compliments on the flowers however I was a little disappointed. I really wanted very full bouquets and center pieces and they weren’t very full. Even though when we went over flowers I kept asking to add more and she kept saying it would be too much. She also added extra flowers to my bridesmaids bouquets than I asked for, so my bridesmaids had more flowers than me which I was a little disappointed in because I clearly asked for mine to be the same but bigger with stephanotis added. She also had called and said the stephanotis she received were bad and so she had to use fake ones and that she didn’t get one of the flowers I asked for so she just got something similar. I was a little disappointed that there were so many mistakes and she didn’t do anything to compensate. However the flowers did look beautiful anyways and we got sooo many compliments on them.
Photographer: Jenny GG – Jenny was great. She was so nice and really tried to do everything I asked for. Our pictures are gorgeous, we got so many of them and she was very reasonably priced. Everyone in our family loved jenny she was so easy to get along with. We had wonderful e-pictures and wedding pictures both. We have gotten so many compliments. I love that she gives you all the photos on a disk and so many of them. She really told the story of our big day and was right there whenever we wanted to get pictures with friends of family who weren’t in our formal portraits. She figured out good times to steal us away on her own and stole us away for sunset pictures and pictures on the lawn which were beautiful. Her assistant Jen Wade is also great and we received some great pictures from her as well! Can’t say enough good things about Jenny!
Videographer: Lineaurbankingsart – Patrick was fantastic. He seemed pretty nervous and shy when we met with him but he was great. I wanted a video of our wedding but it was one of the things I considered least important. With Patrick we received a great video with tons of footage, that was edited, good quality, and we got a great price for it. He was a really nice guy and even stood behind me when I was leaning off the picnic table when we were taking pictures, because he was going to catch me if I fell. I thought that was sweet. When we got the video he had spelled my DH’s name wrong and when we informed him he sent us all new copies right away, which I thought was very nice. I would definitely recommend him!
Bridesmaid dresses: Netbride.com- My girls and I went to several stores and they tried on hundreds of dresses until we found one we liked in our color! Once we found the dress I wrote down the style, designer, and color and went on netbride.com where I found the dresses for a much cheaper price. This website does a wonderful job of explaining why they can sell designer dresses for a cheaper price. They are a store that only does online sells so they don’t have to pay employees commission for selling them to people. There are a few other things but they are authorized sellers, so you are getting the actual designer dress, not a look alike. They were helpful when I had questions, personable (they sent me a hand written thank you card for my order), they gave many receipts and updates and the dresses were to me before the date they were supposed to. A couple things: they say to get the extra length if your over a certain height and 2 of my girls were an inch or two over that height and the dresses were still too long for them without the added length but it probably varies by designer. I would just have your girls try the dress on and look at swatches of the colors/fabric from the designer before placing your order because of course color varies by your computer screen! I would so recommend this! A wonderful way to find your girls a great deal for a great dress!
Wedding dress/viel: Benitas – Found my perfect dress here (found it online first), also found the perfect veil to go with it. They were very nice in helping me find and try on dresses however I didn’t really like that they dress you. Kind of awkward in my opinion. I found a beautiful dress from Maggie sotterros 2010 line and was waiting for it. The store said they would call me when it got in since I kept checking back but they had told me a date it would definitely be in by and it was weeks after that when they finally got it in. (Other stores already had the dress and for a cheaper price but I really wanted to get it close to me so I could have the alterations done there and wouldn’t have to go far for fittings.) I was so excited to finally get it in but when they called to tell me they got it in they said I had a few hours to come try it on and then they were taking it to Seattle for a wedding expo that night and they couldn’t guarantee it would return. I was furious. I had waited so long and they knew me by name because I checked back so many times and I was working and couldn’t make it in those few hours that they gave me. It ended up coming back and I went in, tried it on and bought it the day it came back. Then alterations came around, when I bought the dress she told me they could hem it, well when I went for my first fitting she said they couldn’t hem it without ruining the beading. So I had to order a crinoline underskirt to make it go out enough to keep it from dragging so much. That was an extra $80. They also told me they could only do one style of bustle which was just a two point bustle which really didn’t work with my dress. I was so angry because when I got it we talked about doing it a different way, and she wouldn’t even try doing it that way. She told us we could go somewhere else, but the only reason I bought the dress there was because I wanted to get the dress altered there. The owner came back to see what was wrong and she asked the seamstress if we could try it our way and right away she tried it and said yes she could do it. We made my appointment for my final fitting 2 months away, for 10 days before the wedding. She assured me that if anything needed to be done they would do it that day. Then when I came in for my final fitting and to pick up my dress it was too tight in a certain place because it was supposed to be fitting there and with the layers of the crinoline it made it too tight so it made the dress bunch up at my hips. The dress was too long without the crinoline but when I wasn’t wearing it, it fit perfectly. Finally they decided they would sew in the layers of tulle to the dress so that it wouldn’t be in the fitting spot but lower. To do this they charged another $30. They said I would have to wait until what was like 3 days before the wedding and I was in tears, worried something else would go wrong. She did let me pick out a free purse for my trouble when I came in the last time, after spending almost $2,000 at their store. I would not recommend this store. It was so stressful and the way the seamstress treated me after spending so much money there, made me really angry.