Married on Anna Maria Beach on 5.11.12 - We did a lot of stuff ourselves, but did have a few vendors. Here are the reviews.
Photographer: Jonathan Hare Photography A+++++++++++++++++++++++++
This guy is just plain amazing! He is so laid back and so fun to be around. He seemed to really have a good time at the wedding and was really friendly with everyone! His pictures are breathtaking, and his prices are reasonable. He is very creative with this pictures which is why I chose him in the first place. It's also awesome to find such a great photographer that doesn't have snooty attitude. He gives you full rights to the pictures and takes a TON of pictures! Seriously...you won't be disappointed with this photographer. I will definitely be hiring him again for prego/baby pics.
Officiant: Katherine DeMarco with Made for Each Other Weddings A+++++++++++
This officiant is awesome! She is very nice and will make a VERY personable and unique ceremony for you. She has a lot of cool and different options/ideas for making a ceremony heartfelt and unique. Her ceremony is fully customizable...no "pick from three different versions" stuff. She also gives you a very cute and pretty book that has your full "love story" and ceremony in it. My only suggestion here (nothing bad on her part) is that if you are going to get married on the beach - make sure you get a REALLY good mic. The mic we rented picked up a lot of wind noise. Mrs. DeMarco did a nice job trying to block the wind, but it was pretty much impossible. So just make sure you have a good mic for your officiant if you are going for a beach wedding (don't think there won't be wind because there is ALWAYS wind on the beach).
Hair: Michele Galletto (She operates out of Skin Deep Spatique in St. Pete) A+
Michele did a great job with all our hair. My curls lasted all night! My only complaint was that a piece of my hair fell out (bangs) later in the evening. She was having trouble with this piece from the very beginning and it was pretty evident that it wasn't going to make it the whole night. Not sure if she could have done anything different with it to make it stay...but it did get a little annoying later on. I had to have a friend stick another bobby pin in to hold it. All the other girl's hair was awesome though and their's all stayed perfectly.
Cake & Flowers: Publix Sarasota (Manatee Ave) A/B
Cake and cupcakes were good (nothing spectacular...nothing horrible either). The "coral" color I gave them to match did not match at all, but I didn't care that much. On wedding day...the last thing you care about is the exact match of your cupcake icing. To keep cost down I ordered just a plain round cake with plain ivory icing and had them put some candy sea shells (I bought from nuts.com) on top. The one thing I was really annoyed with was that the cake/cupcake stand I rented from them had a broken tier, so I couldn't put the round cake on top like I had envisioned. I had to set the cake flat on the table next to the cupcake stand which looked kind of weird.
Flowers were from the same Publix. My boquet was "ok" again...nothing spectacular but not horrible either. I was annoyed that the lillies in the bridesmaid boquets were not opened. All of them were still budded. Those lillies were expensive...so to not have most of them open really kind of sucked.
Words of advice for DIY'ers..... If you are going to be on the beach make sure you either have really good mic and speaker set up or hire someone to do all that (my music cut in and out on the walk down the isle and the wind on the officiant's mic was really annoying). Also, try to hire a DJ if you can. The whole DIY ipod thing is a hassle and doesn't work out as great as you think it's going to. At least not for me...plus the DJ is the one who sets a flow to your wedding (ie, dinner, father daughter dance, toasts, announcements of cake cutting, bla bla bla). Our wedding ended up not having much of a flow to it at all and many people didn't dance.
DIY alcohol/bar - good idea...we just didn't do it very well. We should have set up better before the wedding. We ended up not having ice out by the bar for drinks, and cups were stashed under the table and never brought out so people thought they had to use their bigger dinner cup for everything. Also we only had room for one table to be out in view and we chose that to be the cake table...we should have had the bar out there. Everyone will crowd around the bar so you want to have it out in the open and good space around it.
Any questions or more info on vendors just ask.
