I just had my wedding on 6/18 and wanted to post this for other Anchorage brides!
caterer: Masters Catering
We had a great experience with Masters. $25 per person got each person: 3 pork ribs, a chicken breast, dinner roll, veggie skewer, watermelon slice, potato salad, baked beans, water or soda, napkins plates and silverwear. Plus they had 2 staff busing tables and gave us to go boxes for the left over food. The owner is very laid back and easy to work with. Everyone loved the barbeque!
rentals: Over The Top Tents
Their prices were cheaper than the place in the valley, no delivery fee, and they were easy to get ahold of on the phone to update changes to the order. The tables and chairs weren't spectacular, but for rentals they were decent enough. The hex peaked tent looked very neat when set up. The tent got set up a few days early so we had time to decorate it which was nice too.
invitations: The Chocolate Lily
This is a woman in Wasilla/Palmer who does the invitations completely custom. She was great to work with and has a graphic design degree so she knows a lot about the best fonts/colors/sizes to use. We got 100% positive comments on the invitations and save the dates. We went all out and spent probably $6 on each save the date and $10 on each invitation, but The Chocolate Lily can do very simple designs as well for less price.
dress: Arctic Rose
I first went shopping at Arctic Rose in Wasilla for my dress. The lady was very nice and we tried on tons of dresses, but we were only allowed to take 2 pictures, plus there was only 1 person working so by the time we were done there were 2 other brides waiting to be helped. Most of the dresses here are under $600, but I couldn't find anything I liked because they have a smaller selection.
dress: Anderson's
I have heard horror stories about Anderson's, but went there anyway after not having luck at Arctic Rose. The help was great and we got to go through the dresses ourselves and pick out as many as we wanted and take as many pictures as we wanted. The older lady named Erica really knows her stuff. The dresses here seemed higher quality and more unique. They have a large selection of ivory and blush colored dresses too. The best part was their seamstress, she knows exactly what she is doing and the alterations were quick and cheap. The only downside is that I ordered my dress in November and it didn't arrive until mid-May. They got me right in though and I was able to do 4 fittings with alterations on each all within 3 weeks time.
florist: Uptown Blossoms
The only flowers I bought was the bridal boquet. I spent $200 because I wanted very unique flowers in it rather than the typical roses and lilies. It was beautiful and worth the price, but was also very heavy and probably larger than it needed to be. It could have been half the size and still great. Also when I ordered it I showed them pictures of more draping styled boquets but still got something that was pretty standard in shape. My suggestion would be to make sure the person who takes the order is the same person who designs the boquet.