Vendor Reviews 12/03/10

Hi Austin Knotties, my wedding was a couple weeks ago and I just wanted to share my vendor reviews with you all. Thanks for all your help over the last year. I hope everyone is having fun planning!

Venue: Heritage Oaks Clubhouse - A

            This place is really pretty and a great value. I was on a pretty tight budget so it was important to me to find a place that would allow me to use any catering company I wanted and provide my own alcohol. The coordinator for the venue - Patricia runs her own side company that does everything from basic floral to rental items and even some catering. I found her to be disorganized (she forgot who I was several times and what we had talked about) so I decided to handle everything on my own but I did use her to arrange for security since we were serving alcohol. The biggest drawback about this place is that it can be difficult to find because it is located in a residential neighborhood which can throw some guest off and also because google maps and some GPS systems send you to the wrong location. Overall I would say if you are just looking for a nice place to have the reception this place is good but I would recommend you have your own planner or coordinator.

            I ordered all my flowers online. I got 250 hot pink roses and 150 hot pink carnations for about $270. They were delivered to my house two days before the wedding and my MOH cut the stems and put them in water in less than an hour. The day of the wedding we made all the bouquets and used the rest for centerpieces.  They were very sturdy flowers and looked great. The roses are sold in bunches of 125 and the boxes are supposed to be the same variety of rose but when I received them they were noticeably different. One was very hot pink like I had wanted and the other was a light color that got darker at the edges of the flower. I just used the solid hot pink ones for the bouquets and the rest for the centerpieces so it didn’t really bother me too much and I would definitely order flowers from them again because the price is so reasonable.

 

Alcohol: Specs in the Arbor Walk - A

            I bought all the alcohol two days before the wedding. We served beer, wine and a choice of rum, vodka and whiskey. I talked to Francois, the wine manager and gave him my budget, number of guests and what I wanted to serve and he got us everything we needed and came within $15 of my budget. I was very pleased – I did run out of white wine and had 4 bottles of red left over, but that was my fault b/c I told him to go heavy on the red side.

Bartender: Joe the Bartender - A
          Our venue required all alcohol be served by a TABC bartender so I found Joe through Craigslist. He arrived early (even though he got lost on the way) and was dressed very nicely. He was reasonable priced and I have no complaints.

            I first heard of Liz from reading the Austin boards. I called many companies to get a quote and Liz was so helpful on the phone from that first phone call. She helped me turn my ideas into a menu and told me flat out what would fit into my budget and what wouldn’t.  After a few emails we scheduled a tasting. The food was delish and the tasting was fun, we turned it into a dinner party – she came to the house and cooked and we invited 4 friends over. The cost of the tasting was credited to us when we booked her services. Liz grabbed us a plate and brought it over as soon as she saw us at the reception to make sure we got a chance to eat something. Everyone I talked to said the food was great. 

            The photobooth was awesome! I decided to get this when Max Photography had a groupon to get the booth for ½ price and everyone loved it. I spoke with Justin and he returned all my emails very quickly, they arrived on time and set up before the guests arrived and that time wasn’t included in my 3 hour time block. I emailed them a logo I wanted on the bottom of the strip and the booth prints two copies of each strip – we had guests leave us a copy and write us a note and this served as the guestbook. It is so cute, I’m so glad we went ahead and booked this.

 

Dance Lessons: Go Dance - A

            We had lessons with Bridgett at Go Dance, on their Wedding Express program which was for 6 private lessons. We gave her our song which she helped edit to 3 minutes since it was about 5 to begin with and taught us how to dance to it. We didn’t do anything extravagant, but she taught us the basics to begin with then helped add in spins, and other steps to dress it up and then in the last few lessons we had an intro and ending all planned out. I was super stressed about dancing in front of everyone, but this helped me feel calm about it and made us look good!

Invites and other stationery: Vistaprint  - B      

            I went with Vistaprint after hearing about them on the budget board. I will say they are inexpensive and for the most part I was happy with what I received.  One piece of advice if you do order anything from them make sure you check over your order very carefully when you receive it. I glanced at my invitations and when I sat down to actually mail them 3 weeks later I was halfway through stuffing my envelopes when the ink on the invitations was off. I called them to replace the half that was unusable and they said that wouldn’t be a problem and shipped them to me on 3 day shipping. When I received the replacements there were maybe 10 invitations that were usable, the rest were worse than the ones I had called to complain about. I called them again and this time they didn’t want to reprint them because they said they couldn’t guaranty the print quality would be ok, so they wanted to give me a refund. That’s great and all but I still needed 45 invitations to mail out and it was now a week past the date I wanted to mail them. I begged them to please reprint the original order one more time in hopes that at least half would be ok to use. I got them 4 days later and the whole order was fine. Everything else I ordered from them turned out fine.

Photography: Sweetie Pie Smiles (Juanita Rodgers) - A
This is a photographer that I've known for a while who started out doing mainly children's photography but in the past year has branched into Wedding photography as well. I haven't seen the pro pics from our wedding yet, but the engagement pictures were great. She's really easy to work with and her prices are pretty reasonable. If you want to check out our engagement pics they can be seen here: http://sweetiepiesmiles.smugmug.com/People/Terek-Richelle-Engagement/13258965_FAVSo#963056314_rwCs6