When planning my wedding I found the vendor reviews very helpful, so here ya go! Our wedding day was absolutely the best day of my life! Feel free to ask me any questions about our vendors.
Via Vecchia- A+
It was pretty much love at first sight with us and this venue. We went to a wine tasting and stayed and talked to Michael for about 2 hours at our initial meeting. I knew after that meeting that this was the venue for us. Throughout the entire process Paulo and Michael were wonderful to work with. They even honored my somewhat high maintenance request to let us take down all of the paper lanterns they have hanging all of the time. We had so many compliments on what a cool place it was and it looked absolutely beautiful for our December wedding. It was also just very nice to be working with people that we genuinely liked.
Catering by Scott- A
Overall we had a good experience working with Catering by Scott. Everyone loved our food for both our rehearsal dinner and our wedding. Scott was great at guiding us to help put together the menus for both of our events. We had a cheesecake bar for dessert and it was amazing. We also had a slider bar for later in the evening that everyone loved. Scott’s staff was unbelievable. They were all so nice and accommodating. The only thing I didn’t like was that Scott likes to plan the entire event and I had hired a DOC to help with the timeline and other things. They had differing opinions on a few things which ultimately ended up creating stress for me. I wish he would have just let us handle the timeline, would have made my life easier in the weeks leading up to the wedding. Everything ended up great though, which is all we cared about. Tip- if you go are working with Catering by Scott, you may not want to hire a day of coordinator as he likes to run the show. And this would be totally fine, he definitely knows what he is talking about.
Petals and Leaves- A+
We absolutely loved working with Dee and Petals and Leaves. The flowers for our wedding were beautiful. Dee picked up on my vision for the day very quickly and gave us a lot of great ideas. I love flowers so this decision was important to me. I was sold on them when Dee told me she is very picky about her roses J. Our ceremony decorations were amazing and the centerpieces for the reception were perfect. My only complaint would be my bouquet. I was expecting my roses to be more open and they were pretty tight. Minor detail, but I loved my bridemaid’s bouquets and wished the roses in mine looked like theirs .
Kaitlin Kroeger Photography – A
Kaitlin did both our wedding and engagement photos. In full disclosure photography is one area we actually wanted to try to save some money, so we were looking for a less expensive photographer. Overall, we were happy with the job that Kaitlin did. She was pleasant to work with and has a great eye. We did wish she would have been a little more detail oriented. There are a few pics where the picture would be so much better if my dress was straightened out, or a hair was fixed, or if it were centered better. We did however end up with a ton of beautiful pictures , and we got what we wanted, some GREAT pictures to frame. We paid her $700 which was for a full day of shooting plus and second photographer and the rights to the photographs. I would definitely recommend her for any of you looking to hire someone talented, but don’t want to blow the budget on photography. Someday soon she could get big around here and you know what that means... prices go up!
Every Event Elegant (Heather Hanselmann)-Day of Coordinator – A
Heather did a great job helping us keep organized for our wedding. I am not very good at being organized so I really wanted a day of coordinator to help me with some of the details. Heather really helped keep me on task and helped me figure out things such as the shot list for the photographer which, had I not hired her I wouldn’t have had any idea what I was doing. She was very helpful in the weeks leading up to the wedding especially with confirming different details with the vendors. Only negative would be that she has a pretty strong personality that sometimes rubbed some people the wrong way. I would recommend her if you are a bride that needs help organizing and planning your day.
State of Face (Joy Macke) - A
Joy did a great job. Everyone loved their makeup, including me…and I hardly ever like my makeup when I get it done.
Paragon Music (Symphony String Quartet) A+
They were wonderful to work with. Great at responding quickly to any questions we had. Also, did an amazing job playing during our ceremony. We received many compliments. The String Quartet played both holiday music and standard wedding music, it was amazing.
Elegant Bride (my dress) A+
I loved working with Wafa and Elegant Bride. Wafa knows what looks good on a bride and gives excellent opinions without being too overly pushy. Elegant Bride had a great variety of dresses to choose from and had some of the most unique selections of any of the bridal salons I went to, ( and I went almost all of them in Columbus). Dress came in on time and was absolutely perfect.
Girls in White Dresses (bridesmaid dresses and veil and sash) A+
GIWD were wonderful to work with. The bridemaids all loved their dresses. Courtney took a lot of time working with the girls on their measurements doing the best she could to make sure the right sizes were ordered. I had a few girls that had just had babies and one pregnant bridesmaid, so figuring out ordering sizes for them was a little more difficult, but Courtney was extremely helpful.
Big Rock Little Rooster (earrings/headband) – B
Everything came in on time and looked great. I went there because they carry Haute bridal accessories which I love. I gave them a B because I went there during a trunk show and they had a 10% discount and when it was decided that I need to pay for rush shipping to make sure everything came in on time, she said well I can just waive the rush shipping charge instead giving you the 10% off. I ran the calculations in my head and the 10% off still saved me an additional $20. Not much in the grand scheme of things, and ultimately I paid for the shipping and just took the 10% off. Just found it a little weird. May have been just an accident though.
Zip Alterations (Cindy Moore) - A++
I loved working with Cindy. She was so very nice and made my dress fit perfectly. She also did the alterations for a few of my bridemaids and they all loved her as well.
AGinc Videography- A
So far so good, though we are waiting to get our final video yet, so I can’t really write a full review. He made a video preview that I posted on the CBus Knotties page that was awesome! Also, the best priced videographer that I found. Very talented and is on the way up, book him now before he gets too expensive!
Harlan’s of Dublin (invites, programs, table #’s, ect) A
Cami does an amazing job coming up with custom invites. I really enjoyed working with her and would use her again. The only reason she doesn’t get a plus is that there were a few misspellings on a few of the things she did for us. In full disclosure she sent me a final copy to approve everything before she prints, and I did approve and missed a few things. I guess I didn’t read closely enough as I assumed spell check would have caught most things. Not really her fault since I did approve, but I still think the mistakes could have been avoided.
Bexley Beat – A+
Easy to work with and the price was unbeatable. Our driver was very friendly. Just an overall good experience.
Bliss Honeymoons – A+
We had a great experience working with Laura at Bliss. We gave her a few ideas of what locations we were considering and she sent us slide shows with pictures and prices of several resorts. We had a relatively short engagement (8 months) so I was stressed out with wedding planning and decided we needed a travel agent, and I am so glad we went with Bliss. She did all of the research for us and all we had to do was make the decisions. Our trip to Maui was amazing. Our hotel was great and all of our flights into and out of the island worked out perfectly. It was a huge weight off to not be the one dealing with timing of flights, rental cars, etc. .
Doubletree Suites Downtown – A+
We had a great experience with Doubletree. We guaranteed 20 room nights and got a free bi-level suite for both Friday and Saturday night, along with a bottle of champagne and free parking for our car. Ellen Irish (sales director) was great to work with. She added rooms for us without any problem and was always quick to respond to any questions. One of the main reasons we chose the Doubletree was because all of their rooms are suites, and what a great decision it turned out to be. All of our guests loved the huge rooms. We had tons of people tell us that we made a great hotel choice. Bonus: We went to dinner with my family on the Thursday night before the wedding at the hotel restaurant. When talking to the waitress we told her that we would be at the hotel all weekend for our wedding, after telling her this she gave our whole table a complimentary round of cocktails (7 of us). A very nice unexpected touch.