My wedding was Oct. 6th. It was fantastic! Here's some pictures guests took at the wedding:
Ceremony
Ceremony Site - T-Plex/Piquette Plant in Detroit. Ceremony is included with the reception –See Reception Site Review.
Officiant - My uncle, he was fantastic. He didn’t even cry until the very end ;-)
Ceremony Music - DJ is covering it. See DJ review.
Reception
Reception Site - T-plex/Piquette Plant. $2400 for 200 guests
I had heard a ton of horror stories about the T-Plex before my wedding, so naturally I was stressing out. We didn’t run into many problems, however. The biggest complaint I have, is when we first picked the venue, Pat (the event coordinator) told us about doing our grand entrance in a Model T. That sold us on the place. Then, a couple weeks before the wedding, we were told we could no longer do that. Of course, we didn’t have any of it in writing, so there was no fighting it.
Pat also tried to tell us TWO DAYS BEFORE THE WEDDING, when we asked for more chairs, that they would only accommodate 160 people. We had 200 people coming, and had a signed contract that states that. Pat tried to argue that ‘the board said’ blah blah blah, so my mother threatened to go talk to the board. That shut Pat up quickly.
My only other complaint is that during our rehearsal the Friday before, we were told we could stay until about 6/6:30. 6 o’clock rolled around, and we were wrapping things up, and Pat came stomping in telling everyone to go home. She gave me attitude when I asked for just a couple more minutes to finish the last things.
Other than that, we had an amazing time. People are still talking about how that was the coolest venue they have been to. Everything looked perfect, and went smoothly the day of. The workers there are extremely helpful. We had to move all 200 chairs from the ceremony space to the reception space, and they all pitched in and got the job done quickly without us even asking for help.
Caterer - Veronica's Catering, $2000 for 200 guests
Food was DELICIOUS. I couldn’t help but be nervous, because when we kept trying to go over menu items and details, she didn’t want to talk until the week before the event. That’s just how she runs. Everything turned out perfect, everyone loved the food. She made WAY MORE than enough, and even threw in extra desserts for free. Best priced caterer around, and you get way more than your money’s worth.
Chair Covers/Linens - Linentablecloth.com, $700 for 200 chair covers, 29 table cloths, 26 runners, 200 chair sashes, and a few other miscellaneous things.
Looked great. Arrived on time. Linentablecloth was sold out of black chair covers when we went to place our final order (we ordered half a few months back, and waited to order the rest until we had our final count) so we ended up ordering the rest of the chair covers from smartyhadaparty.com. The quality of smarty’s was wayyy lower than linentablecloth. You could visibly see the difference in fabric between the two. It all worked though. But I definitely recommend linentablecloth.
Bakery – Walmart- $125 for a 3 tier, white cake with white frosting and a purple frosting ribbon around each tier. We added purple roses to it as a decoration.
DJ - CC King Entertainment, $75/hr. He's SO much fun! And super great for the budget!
Tony is by far my favorite vendor we worked with. He wanted to make sure everything was perfect, even more so than I did. He was the life of the party. So many people were talking about how great he was. He knew how to read the crowd, he kept people on the dance floor and having fun. And he’s probably one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met. We weren’t going to have him at our rehearsal, since we didn’t want to hog his Friday night, and didn’t feel like paying the extra money. The week before the wedding, he called me to let me know he’d be at the rehearsal, free of charge, because he wanted everything perfect. It was perfect. He was amazing. I can’t say enough good things.
Favors - Photobooth, Qwikpicz, $695 See Photobooth Review
Lighting - I'll be hanging lights and lanterns up, I probably spent $200 on all of those.
Other
Limo - Party Bus Detroit, $600 for 3.5 hours and includes gratuity, tax, fuel, red carpet at every stop, ice, cups, champagne, bottled water, decorations, and they write our name on the vehicle.
Our itinerary included three pick-ups and drop offs. The first one was a pick up at my parent’s house to get me and the bridesmaids. That was fine. They were on time. We got to the venue on time. They were then supposed to go pick up the guys at the hotel, bring them back, and do another trip to the hotel to pick up our guests staying there. Well, they were 45 minutes late picking up the guys (IT WAS ONLY 5 MILES AWAY), so the guys had to stay and wait to leave with the guests because there wasn’t enough time for two trips. We ended up not getting any pictures before the ceremony, except for our ‘first touch’ which was rushed. We never found out why the bus was so late, and at this point I don’t care. I just didn’t like being inconvenienced at the time.
Florist - Purchased 4 silk rose corsages, 1 silk rose cascading bouquet, 1 silk rose toss bouquet, 10 silk rose boutonnieres, 2 silk rose kissing balls, 1 silk rose garland, 10 silk rose stems, 3 one dz silk rose bouquets, 1 two dz silk rose bouquet all for $237.67 fromwww.thebridesbouquet.com. SERIOUSLY recommend this site. The flowers look unbelievable. My sister asked me why I purchased my flowers 6 months in advance... I actually had to tell her they were silk flowers, and were not real.
Photography
Photographer - Kreativ Imaging, $300 for 8 hours of coverage, unlimited pictures, unlimited locations... I found a groupon :-)
I ended up firing them. AWFUL communication skills. I found out later that I would not even be getting Kristofer as my photographer, I was getting his assistant Nicole. He was unable to show me a portfolio of Nicole’s work. I wanted to talk to Nicole directly, and Kristofer kept trying to set up meetings at random places in Detroit. I kept having to tell him that I live 2 hours away, and would not be able to attended a week day meeting… so he told me to just send him my timeline, and he’ll give it to Nicole. FINALLY, months later, I was able to get Nicole’s email address out of him because I kept stressing that I actually wanted to have a conversation with my PHOTOGRAPHER. When he gave me her email, he mentioned that her computer was in for repair, so she probably wouldn’t be able to respond. All of this was incredibly fishy to me. She never responded to my emails (I sent six over a 2 month span). Then I found out that printing rights were not part of the package I got. I would only get a proof CD that had low res pictures with their logo. It’s an extra $500 for the high res pictures and printing rights. Now, I’m a very laid back bride. I literally did not give a crap about much throughout this whole process. But that was the last straw with this company. I ended up emailing Kristofer and told him that Nicole shouldn’t show up and waste my time.
I had a close friend photograph our wedding instead. She does great work, and when I told her all of the problems, she offered to step in for free. I’m still waiting on her pictures.
Photobooth - Qwikpicz, $695 for their wedding package. 6hrs, unlimited reprints, memory book, personalized logos, DVD.
Tons of fun. Easy communication. The booth is advertised as able to fit 10 people in it, but we had trouble getting more than 6. Not a big deal.
Beauty / Attire
Rings – Ering $4000 at JB Robinsons. Wedding Band $1000 at JB Robinsons. His band $550 at JB Robinsons.
Wedding dress - Becker's Bridal, Private Label by G, $1060
Loved my dress. Worth every penny. Becker’s was such a great experience.
Alterations – My best friend’s mother hemmed my dress, and all of the bridesmaid’s dresses.
Tuxes - Mens Wearhouse, $155 each. No issues.
Bridesmaid Dresses - Becker's Bridal, Morilee style 230, $145. Looked great!
Hair - Bridesmaids Beautiful, $60 each. They travel to you!
I was somewhat disappointed in my hair. I blame it on myself for not getting a trial, but since I live out of town, it was hard for me to make it into the salon for the trial. Pieces were falling all night, and I just didn’t LOVE the outcome.
Makeup - Bridesmaid Beautiful, $60 for airbrush.
My makeup was good. I also was somewhat disappointed, but again, blame it on not getting a trial done. The airbrush was great, I just wasn’t crazy about my eye makeup.