Everything went so smoothly, I couldnt have asked for a more perfect day! I loved allll of our vendors!
Venue: (Ceremony and Reception) Ballroom at the Ben: A+ Nicole and Ott were amazing to work with! The ballroom is beautiful, and Ott made everything run so smoothly. There was a small mix up when we scheduled the rehearsal. We called a few months in advance to have it on the Thursday before at a certain time, and we were told to call when its closer to the wedding. So when we did, the day/time we wanted was booked. They did get us in an hour earlier than we wanted so we could keep it that day. No biggie.. and we didnt hear anything about the $100 charge for the rehearsal, until we scheduled it. That should have been told to us ahead of time. Again, No big deal. Other than that everything was perfect! Our guests absolutely loved the ballroom, and the food, and the whole setting.. it turned out beautifully!
Photographer: Jennifer Childress (and her second shooter Joey Bleiler) So far A+ We havent gotten our wedding pictures back yet, but She is great to work with. Fairly easy to get ahold of, or back to us in a timely manner. We love her attitude and quickness while shes working. She got all of the shots we wanted, and we were still able to join our cocktail hour. Our engagement photos came out great, so cant wait to see our wedding pics!
Band: Masquerade- A+ Masquerade did our ceremony music, coctail hour, and reception. LOVE THEM! Our guests are still raving about them. The only thing that went wrong was a small miscommunication. Besides that father daughter dance, my dad wanted to do a special dance to an Italian song, with me and step in for my grandfather who passed a few years ago. They thought that that replaced the father/daughter dance ..afterwards H told them and we did the father/daughter dance later in the night. Other than that, the band was phenominal! People were dancing all night and having a great time! They were very easy to get ahold of and responded quickly. Just awesome!
Florist: Mums the Word- A++Maria is Spectacular!! We went to her having absolutely no idea what we wanted, and she came up with everything. Well I lied-I knew we wanted half of our talbles centerpieces to be beta fish. We brought he the fish 2 days before and she took care of them for us! (dont worry they all went home with somebody
) Nothing but good things to say about her..I love this woman! Great to work with, easy to get along with, gets back to you quickly. Everything was delivered to where it needed to go on time, and everything was set up perfectly. HIGHLY reccommend her!!
Photobooth: GoFestive!- A++ Definitely one of the best decisions we made to get a photobooth. There was a line for it all night, and everybody went home with a copy of their pictures. We got a scrapbook ..everyone glued their pics in it and wrote a small message. Plus we got a dvd that has each picture that was taken. Very easy to book and work with. Definitely do it if it fits in yur budget. They were a hit!
Dress(es): Angel Bridal-B. I Loved my dress and she was great with ordering it in for me even though it was an older model. She even quoted me the exact date it came in. My girls that live in state got their BM dresses here too. She Matched the prices that Alfred Angelo was offering during their grand opening sale. What I didnt like is that she measured all of my girls and dresses were ordered and they all were 2 sizes too big! Im sure that she thought they were doing the alterations there too. My dress fit me Pretty much perfectly (I actually got measured in a different store and was between 2 sizes, and went for the smaller of the 2). All I needed were cups sewn in, and a bustle and she quoted me $350. We all took our dresses elsewhere for the alterations.
Alterations: Fashion Stitch-A+ Yeon did a fabulous job! (even though I didnt need much) It was perfect! And reasonably priced
. $125 for cups, bustle, a small hem towards the back on the bottom of the dress, steaming of the dress, veil, and puffy thing I work under the dress. Much better than the $350 I was quoted just for cups and a bustle at Angel Bridal. Definitely reccommend her!
Tuxes: Jos.A.Banks-C. They were great at first, and Im still glad that we went with them instead of Mens Warehouse! Theyhad a bigger selection, and they were less expensive for the GM. H got his for free. The problem was that everytime someone went to order their tux, H got a phone call from his GM saying that our information wasnt in the system.And every time, H had to explain to the salesperson that we are in the system and that they need to call the location that we originally went to. Apparently theres a glitch in their system and when they put in our name, the info on which tuxes we picked out for everyone didnt show up. H was getting very aggrivated with the calls and actually got in an argument with one of the sales guys on the phone over it, and ended up calling the customer service number and complaining. But on our wedding day everyone looked great, and the colors went well with the BM dresses.
Limo: An Affair to Remember-A+They were the least expensive we could find for the short amount of time we needed them for, and I wish I could remember our drivers name, because he was awesome! We did our pictures outside of the Philadelphia art museum and it was pretty hot outside. The nice limo driver came out of the limo about 15-20 minutes into our pics, and brought us bottles of water! He also let us open the moonroof after he dropped us off at the ballroom so we could get some of those cool hanging out the roof pictures! They were on time, and also easy to work with.
Travel Agent: Liberty Travel (deptford mall) A. Karen was great! We knew we wanted to go to Hawaii but werent sure which islands. Well since shes been there 18 times she told us all about them, and helped us in deciding which were best for us. She did mess up at one point..once our HM packet came in and she was going over it with us it seemed a little off from our mock itinerary. We were supposed to return home on the 17th, but somehow she had us coming home a day later with no place to stay the night before...She fixed it fast and we ended up getting a free extra night in HI out of it! Other than that she was great, we plan on using her again when we plan our 1 year anniversary trip to Italy!
Hair/Makeup: Karen Capcino-A++. LOVE HER and her 2 girls! Hair and makeup were perfect, and shes reasonably priced, easy to get ahold of, and everyones stayed allllll day long!! She came to us at about 8am and they were finished me, 7 bridesmaids, 1 flowergirl, and 2 moms in about 3 hours. AHHHHmazing
Highly recommend her!
Hotel: Philadelphia Downtown Mariott-A+. Our room block went great. We filled up more than we thought we would so they added an additional 10 rooms to our block for guests that hadn't booked yet.Very reasonably priced for a hotel in the city, and Fairly easy to negotiate some things with. Guests rooms were $129/night plus tax. My suite the night before and night of was suposed to be $250/night but they gave me the first night for $129 and the night of free because of the amount of people in our block. Easy to communicate with. I like that we had our own "web page" for our guests to book their room through, and we could go online and view who booked and for how many nights. Would definitely use them again!
Our cake was included...
We didnt have a videographer..
Let me know if Im missing anything!
All in all, if we were to do everything again, I think I would do it exactly the same!