Our day was perfect! So few things went wrong it was amazing. The weather was gorgeous, everything just turned out beautifully!! Our vendors were wonderful and I always found everyone's reviews so helpful so here they are:Hair/Makeup- Natures Envy Day Spa-- A+++The girls at Natures Envy were wonderful! Mine and my girls hair looked great! And everyone there was so friendly and welcoming. Rachael did my color and highlights a few weeks ago then Danielle did my hair and makeup the day of I plan on going back in a couple weeks so Rachael can chop my hair! Both girls were wonderful and I believe my bridesmaids liked their stylists as well.Photographer- Cindy Palmbos-- A++++Cindy and her sister Michelle were our photographers for the day. They started at the hair salon with us at about noon and stayed with us until about 8 pm. They were fantastic! So friendly and so easy to work with. We felt completely comfortable with them. We have not seen all of our pictures, but she just posted a preview today and I LOVE them!!
http://cindypalmbos.blogspot.com/ Caterer- Adeline Leigh-- A+++++++We really can't say enough good things about Adeline Leigh. They were fantastic from start to finish! Anne was always super quick to email me back, the prices were very reasonable, the food was delish and the staff with us at our reception were wonderful! The only thing I was a little disappointed about was that our fruit display didn't really look like what I was expecting, there wasn't a huge variety of fruit. But that is a tiny nit-picky thing and besides that they were fabulous! Highly recommended.Cake- Cascade Confections-- A++++I am lactose intolerant so I wanted to make sure my cake was dairy free. Sandy was awesome to work with. Our cake was beautiful and tasted great! We had a 2 layer dairy free cake, and then some sheet cakes (non dairy free). Everything was great! Oh and about a month ago my hubby got me a bday cake from there that was wonderful as well. I'm pretty sure he's keeping their business card :)Reception hall- Grand Haven Cmty Center-- CThe location itself was beautiful, everyone loved it. However, my main complaint with them is, the day before our wedding we were in there decorating and the lady in charge came up to my hubby and said we never paid our security deposit and we need to write her a check now. Now that pissed me off, because if we never wrote the check, granted that is our fault- but WHY wait until then to say something? He had called several times to make sure we were all set. They said that day there was a mistake in the paper work that is why they never said anything. Still, that caused some unnecessary stress on an already stressful day. As a whole the main lady we worked with was just not all that friendly. DJ- Phil Mullett- APhil was recommended to us by a co-worker. He was the DJ at her daughters wedding. Overall Phil was a great DJ. He was very friendly, and had good choices for music and had everything flowing along well. My father thought he rushed stuff a bit too quickly, but I'm glad he did as most of our guests were from out of town and I knew they'd only want to stay through the main stuff (cake cutting, dance, etc). Our only complaint is that towards the end of our reception when he was playing hip hop music, he played one song (Get Low) that was not the edited version. The non edited version is very profane and not at all appropriate for a reception in my opinion. Granted, our grandmothers were gone at this time, but we still had quite a few young children runnig around. Unfortunately I did not know this until I watched some of a video tape during our honeymoon. Other than that one song- Phil was great.Flowers- I do! Designs, Kate Terpstra-- A++++My flowers were beautiful! The only flowers we had were my bouquet, 3 bridesmaids bouquets, some corsages, and some rose petals. We hit a snag when the people at the beach said we could not toss rose petals. So, Kate strung the petals on fishing line and lined them up along the sides of the aisles. Our flowergirls didn't have anything to carry or toss, but I ended up having 2 extra corsages, so I took the pins out and gave them each one. Seemed to keep them happy. My bouquet was my absolute favorite!! It's starting to die now, but it was gorgeous! It was pink and orange daisies, freesia, orange mokara orchids, pink cymidium orchids and bear grass. It was gorgeous!! We were supposed to have spider daisies, but apparently they came in brown, so thankfully Kate swapped them for regular daisies that were beautiful.Day of Coordinator--A+/Pre-planning--C Kate Terpstra-Kate, our florist, also does some planning. Her package she said includes pre planning and day of coordination. For the pre-planning, I honestly don't think it was very much help at all. We ended up booking her as a coordinator because during a meeting she said she'd be able to help with everything we didn't have, she had all these ideas and said she'd be able to help us with so much. In the end, everyone I didn't have during that meeting- I ended up finding myself because she couldn't find anyone. The main one was an officiant. She had told me she had so many people in mind, then as the weeks went by kept saying she hadn't found anyone and it would be easier if it hadn't waited so long. I did research and found someone, thankfully. Another complaint I have is that she kept losing emails. She would tell me she was going to send me something, then when she didn't and I emailed her back she said she was having problems with her email and wasn't getting emails, or wasn't able to send emails. I think that happened two or three times. That was frustrating. Also with our beach location, she was talking to the people in charge and told us we couldn't have chairs. Then about a month ago we were at the same beach and saw a wedding with almost 70 chairs. We were then told by the workers that you could have them up, just try to limit how long they are up for.However, for Day of Coordiator- Kate was awesome! She came to the beach, gave us our flowers and started sweeping up our area on the beach, she set up chairs then went to the reception site. I had given her a list of things to do and everything was taken care of when we got there. Granted, I did talk to my sister and she said there were a few candles that were not lit that she ran around and lit before I got there. But, everything was taken care of. Everything was set up. So we are happy with that.Officiant- Dan Kreuger Ottawa County Clerk--A++++Ottawa County Clerks have never done weddings before, but Scott and I met with Dan and he agreed that he would marry us. He later told us that he does not plan to do weddings again. (I don't think that is a reflection on our wedding...) With that being said, Dan was awesome! He made us feel very comfortable and we could tell he genuinely cared about us and wanted our marriage to work. Our conversations with him really made us think about the commitment we were making. He really wanted to make sure we knew what we were getting into and we were serious about making it a lifetime commitment. I am so happy we found Dan, he really added to our day.Favors- Grand Rapids Popcorn Company-- A+++We gave our guests individual bags of the Monster Munch popcorn. As far as we know everyone loved it. We do know we bought 120 bags, had about 80 guests and came home with 10 bags. So, they went somewhere
One tip is make sure you order their individual bags in bulk. You can get 40 bags for $43.20, or buy 1 bag for $2.50. We knew we were going to have more than 80 guests, so we wanted more than just 2 boxes. It was cheaper to just get a 3rd box of 40 than to get individual bags.Other- Grand Haven Visitors Bureau-- They have this service where if you are having a wedding in Grand Haven and you give them an excel list of your guests and their address, they will mail a visitors guide to them. We loved this idea because 90% of our guests were from out of town. I don't know how many of our guests checked out the guide, or stayed in town long enough to really check out Grand Haven, but I love that were were able to offer it to them.-Bauble Patch-- We got a brochure from their business at a bridal show. They do something pretty cool there, although we weren't able to take advantage of it this time, we might go back in the future. If you have jewlery that you don't wear anymore and a ring that you want to have re-designed to make it look fresher, they can use the old stuff to make new jewelery. Don't know if that makes sense, but it's pretty cool. We already had our wedding bands, my dad made rings for us years ago and we just decided to use those, but we did have them engrave them for us and they resized my ering so it would fit better with the band.I think that is all. If you have any questions or want anyone's info let me know. I hope this helps and good luck eveyrone with your planning!