I am a pseudo lurker on this board and had a wonderful wedding, but I wanted to leave a review of all of our vendors. Many were great and I got their names from this boards! Some, despite getting wonderful recommendations, fell very short and while manybe not the norm I wanted to let future brides know about our experiences.
Blossom’s Florist- A+
Carol was amazing! She worked with my budget allowing me to get 16 boutineers, 6 bridesmaid bouquets, 8 corsages, and my bouquet for under $600! Everything was very beautiful and she was very professional.
Servatii Cakes- A+
Two things I loved about Servatii's- basically unlimited free tastings and no charge for additional flavors. I can not say enough about the professionalism of the staff, their willingness to work with you for your vision, and how yummy the cake is! And they were more reasonable than any other baker we interviewed! Total win with this vendor.
Lori Schur- A+++++
Amazing seamstress and far, far too generous. This woman does wonderful alteration and is such a pleasure to work with! I can not say enough good things about her J
Aveda’s Institute- D-
Do not go to Aveda. I can not even begin to describe how upset I am with this vendor. I confirmed once in person, twice over the phone, AND online. I told them I had a strict timeline and we needed to be out no later than 1:30 to make it to the church on time. The day of they lost the appointments for EVERYONE of my bridesmaids for make up. We did not leave the salon till 2:40 pm. I barely made it in time to get into my dress for photos and there was no time to decorate the church so my mother had to do everything. The hair did not even hold for 2 hours! The makeup they used was of low quality and most of the technicians had no clue what they were doing! While my hair and makeup went well, I can not believe the mess of the bridesmaids situation and it definitely ruined the wedding experience for my mom (who was so rushed decorating my herself she didn't get to spend any time with me before the wedding).
I should have known when I initially booked and they mixed my information up with another bride it was a foreshadow of things to come.
Jared’s- A
They were not at all pushy and really respected our price range. I am very picky and they never made me feel like a bother when looking through the entire inventory, never made a rude comment about the multiple trips we made. We’re definitely a Jared’s couple now from the wonderful treatment. The only thing I wish is that their prices were lower for non-Jared merchandize (I had to have my engagement ring resized).
DJ Cincy Braden Hasselbeck- B-
This vendor I have a bit of a hard time giving a review for so I’ll base it on two parts. I was extremely disappointed in the planning stages with him. We had to provide the songs for him to play (as in purchase them ourselves, edit them ourselves). He also would blow off our phone calls and emails and it took him three months to get him to respond to meeting to discuss music. I repeatedly told him I just wanted the vibe to be that of a party and my biggest fear was to not having people dancing. Well at the reception, many people wouldn’t dance and I don’t think we ever had more than 15% of the guests on the dance floor. However, this may be due more to our guests than him so I’m not sure if I can really count this as a negative. Many guests gave us feedback that they really wish there were more slow songs and felt there were too many fast songs. Due to some unexpected circumstance my groom was not in the room for much of the reception, so I don’t know if this played into it at all. Also many of our must play songs were played back to back immediately at the start of dancing, so we didn’t get to dance due to saying hi to everyone. We also got the comment a lot that his microphone was too low and people could not hear. I even brought this up with him, asked him to make some announcements again since people couldn’t hear the first time, but people still could not hear him the second time. I would say for $500-700 he would be a great DJ, but I really feel we did not get what we paid for. It wasn’t horrible, but I feel like if he would not have brushed us off so much in the planning stage that the reception would have gone better. However, he was very flexible about meeting us where ever and time wise once we could get a hold of him. And when we asked for special songs to be replayed at the reception due to people missing them, he was very happy to accommodate us.I will post a review about our photographer once we finish sorting things out and receive our photos. Hopefully this helps!