I hope you ladies will find this review helpful as that was what I loved the most about this forum. The vendor reviews really helped me plan our big day!
Venue / Caterer / Cake: A+. Four Seasons was great! Few minor miscommunications before and during but they handled every issue promptly and with great service. Their food was AWESOME! Everyone had nothing but great things to say! Meredith and Caleigh were a good team and made everything pretty stress free for me. Even though we only had a display cake (we served our guests desserts), they still cut it and served it for us because I mentioned that my husband loves rice crispy treats and the display cake was made out of rice crispy treats. Such a nice surprise!
Florist: A+. Verbena Floral. God, the flower couldn’t have been more perfect! Its always so hard to convey what you envision in your head but they totally got it. The centerpieces were beautiful. Loved the bouquets and the boutonnieres…everything! LuAnn and her team were amazing from the get go, the ONLY florist that came right at my budget and NEVER tried to dictate how big my bouquet should be. And their little shop over by Kerbey Lane is super cute.
Transportation: F-. Austin Trolley Company (of Carey Limousine). If I could give them a lower score than F-, I would. They were AWFUL!!!! DO NOT USE THEM! They started out great. Easy to get my reservation set up and easy to get a hold of. Comes 2 weeks before, I had my husband call them to confirm and move the pick up time up 30mins. They never called him back. I called a week before and got to talk to them and moved the time up. I called again 3 days before just to re-confirm everything. No problems, all set they said. The day of? They didn’t show up until 3pm with wrong shuttle (I ordered a trolley) and that’s after Caleigh at Four Seasons called them and negotiated with them. Reason? Apparently I told them that I need them to come pick up at 4:30pm. I told them 1:30pm pick up and 4:30pm drop off. They just heard the 4:30pm part. When I called on Monday after the wedding to talk to them, they kept saying I said 4:30pm pick up. After about 10min of “NO, I never said that, if you have recording of the call, play it and it’ll show that you heard wrong”. They offered to refund my money. It has been a week and I have yet to see that refund (and I have since called 2 times…). They recently changed up their business partnerships so that might have something to do with the drastically different before and after experience. That is no excuse though. My suggestion? DO NOT USE THEM!! Trolley might be a beautiful idea but so not worth the headache and the stress on your big day.
Photographer: A+. Sweet Caroline. After interviewing like 20 photographers, we picked Caroline and it wouldn’t have worked out more perfect. The way she framed her shots is so unique and you can just feel the emotion coming off her photos. She is super easy to get a hold of, great photographer, and totally reasonable pricing. Her assistant Sam was fantastic too. Both of them worked their little tails off the day of and I am so appreciative of them. Couldn’t have better photographers than those two. If you are interested in seeing what the pictures look like, our wedding preview pics are up on her blog. (she put it up the Monday after the wedding…talk about speedy! Totally picked me up out of my post wedding depression). http://sweetcarolinephoto.com/2011/03/28/four-seasons-wedding-rita-chris
Photo Booth: A+. boothBooth. I also went through several vendors before settling on boothBooth. Their pictures were the best quality (I had the vendors mail me sample strips…highly recommend!! Some pictures were terrible in actual print. Totally different from the website’s pictures). The price was reasonable. Ted even brought props which our friends and families totally loved! People loved the props so much that most ended up out on the dance floor. Ted was also very fast in getting us the CD of all the pictures. Fantastic service and great addition to the wedding.
Ceremony Musician: A+. Oliver and Thomas with Hill Country Strings. If you want a flamenco guitarist to play your ceremony and cocktail hour, Oliver is your guy! Great guitarist! He even learned 3 songs for our walk down the aisle J. Thomas was the one we worked with on booking and he was very easy to deal with and get a hold of.
DJ: A+. Tim with Austin Party Machine. Tim was great. He played all the songs we asked for and kept the dance floor going. Very responsive with emails and at the end of the night surprised us with CDs of all the songs that were on our play list.
Hair/Makeup: A+. KAG. They did a fantastic job on everyone’s hair, my mom’s make up and my whole look. Everyone looked great! Kelly was my hair/makeup person and she was awesome. Too many times I have gotten my hair done up and at the end of the night, my scalp totally hurts from too many hair pins. Not so with them! My hair stayed up through dancing and at the end of the night, only a handful of pins. I only needed to lightly powder my face right before the ceremony (after 5.5hrs and of that 3.5hrs out and about taking pictures in the hot sun). Reasonable pricing and great salon set up!
The “other” Guest Hotel: A+. Radisson. Super convenient for our guests to get to the Four Seasons. They gave us the best rate out of the hotels around Downtown (I called every one of them…) Ashley was super easy to work with. Prompt and professional!
Rehearsal dinner: B+. Z’Tejas. Great food. I am giving them a B+ because the lady we worked with on the menu and pricing was terrible. Never followed up and whenever she emails back, it was never what we talked about. She said the AV equipment for the slideshow set up was $100 and totally misquoted us (unfortunately, I don’t have on email to dispute with them). Didn’t call me at all to reconfirm anything and I finally called two days before. Come to find out, she was let go (with good reason). The lady that we ended up working with two days before was fantastic which is why they aren’t a total fail J. If it would have been her the whole time, it would be A+ as well.
Overall, everything went off perfectly and everyone at the wedding had a blast. Couldn’t have asked for better! J