Hi Ladies!
I'm coming up on my one year anniversary soon (I was married in June of last year) and wanted to share some reviews of some of my vendors with all of you who are in the midst of your planning.
Catering - We used Seaside Market and they were PHENOMENAL. They did a nice buffett set-up and had very personable staff and bartenders. They also allowed us to purchase all our own alcohol and bring it in, which allowed us to have our favorites and save a bit of money. The only downside to this was one of the staff members was a bit rude to me. See, my mom and I bought all the alcohol and we messed up and only brought red wine over to the venue (it SO wasn't a big deal). I didn't realize it until I went and asked for a glass of white wine and one of the staff members said "Um, no, your mom totally screwed up and didn't bring white." Not exactly something a bride wants to hear on her wedding day... But other than that, they were great to work with and the food was tasty!
Venue - We were married at Quail Botanical Gardens in Encinitas (which I think is now just called the San Diego Botanical Gardens) and I could not have asked for a better venue. From parts of the garden you can see the Pacific coastline. We had a seated dinner for 150 people on the gazebo lawn and did our ceremony in the walled garden. The event manager, Carla, has a limited office schedule, but she's very good about telling you it up front so you know exactly when you'll be able to contact her and/or when she'll be responding to e-mails.
Photographer - Anthony Brillo Photography. Amazing pictures, and so much fun to work with. If you visit his site
http://www.anthonybrillo.com and click on "Weddings" you can actually see a couple of my wedding pics
My bridesmaids and I are the small photo for "Weddings" and then my DH and I are the large background picture in the Wedding section!
Cupcakes - We actually drove up to Newport Beach in order to get Sprinkles cupcakes. Say what you will, I did tastings at over ten San Diego bakeries and could not find a single one that were as tasty AND able to personalized AND had the variety of flavors AND were huge in size (most people split one) AND were only $3.75 a piece. We did four different flavors and each was decorated with a small sugar decal on top. One flavor had wedding rings, one had out new last initial, and two had two different flower designs. It's over a year later and I still get compliments from guests about the cupcakes.
Guest Book - Shutterfly photo book. My only warning is don't try to put too many pages in. They say it can go up to 98...it can't. They start to fall apart. Our guest book was about 30 pages and that was a perfect size.
Hair/Make-Up/Flowers/Day-of-Coordination/Decor was all done by family & close friends. A few of them are actually working on starting a special event company, so if and when they do, you can always contact me and I can refer them once they have an official business license.
If you have any questions, you can always find me on The Nest on the SD board.
Congrats and Happy Planning to you all!