Vendor Reviews:
Ceremony - Surf & Sand Motel: A+
The staff at Surf & Sand went above and beyond to make our ceremony beautiful! We had all the hotel rooms filled with guests for the wedding, and they went out of their way to help anyone and everyone. The grounds were absolutely beautiful, and they made sure everything went off smoothly! (also a great place just to stay for a weekend/week - beautiful location!).
Reception - Skippy’s Pier 1: A
(same owners, different staff)
Again, staff were exceptionally accommodating, and Sandy made sure everything ran smoothly and efficiently. The food was delicious, and we have not had any complaints. The only reason they did not get an A+ was that some of the tables had slower service, so the last few tables were just getting their food when the first tables had finished eating. Luckily they were mostly tables that didn’t care, and it appeared that the slower service was because they were cooking the food to order rather than preparing it all at once and leaving it under heat lamps. Definitely would recommend this location to anyone looking to have a fabulous wedding on a tight budget (like we were).
*The Hotel and Restaurant are both seasonal, so it can be difficult to reach Sandy from December to April, but she does respond eventually. As it gets closer to the wedding, phone calls are definitely the best way to get in touch with her.
Photographer: Kristen Dawn Photography: A+ (pending final photos)
Kristen and her sister Jocelyn were absolutely wonderful and so professional. They were fun and interactive with guests and the wedding party. Kristen’s engagement photos from April were gorgeous so I can only imagine our wedding pictures will be just as fabulous! They even stayed late when we had to hold off on the cake cutting/garter/bouquet toss because some of the guests had not eaten their food yet. They had to contest with quite a few amateur pro guests with their big cameras also trying to take pictures and they handled them beautifully!
Cake - Casual Gourmet: A+
Cake was beautiful, and absolutely delicious. We were hearing wonderful comments about the cake all night (and still do)! Sarah was so easy to work with, and very responsive through email and phone.
Ceremony Music - Jefferey Clayton of Panneubean Steel: A+
Jefferey was absolutely fantastic, and added that special touch to the ceremony and cocktail hour we were looking for. We had wanted to have a caribbean destination wedding, and Jefferey definitely brought us as close to that as we could be without actually leaving the country with his beautiful steel pan music! We only wish we could have afforded the full band for the reception!
DJ - Scott Elias - A+
This was a friend of DH, and he has a DJ company but I do not know the name of it off-hand. He was absolutely fantastic, played great music, and made sure to follow our short Do Not play list. When he had a few requests for a specific song that had been on the list (one of those preset dance songs), he made sure to ask us before playing it. Everyone was dancing all night, even people who NEVER dance. Highly recommended!
Tent/Chair rentals - American Tent & Table: A
We only rented chairs and a tent to be plan B in case of rain (which we used as a shady area before and after ceremony). They came on time, were easy to deal with, and set up the tent with no problems. They were late coming to take down the tent, but that was really our only issue with them.
Rehearsal Dinner: DiParma Italian Table, South Yarmouth - A
Delicious food, fabulous drink, wonderful staff (after our initial rude server was removed from our party). While we did have an unprofessional and rude server (who MIL got fired - not intentionally, she just asked that he be removed from our party so clearly this was not his first offense), the management was overly accommodating and made sure that after an initial bad experience that everything was beyond perfect. We had eaten here on numerous occasions so we had high expectations for the food, and we were not disappointed!
Florist - Karen Bryden of Petals By the Sea - A-
Karen was fantastic to work with through the entire planning process leading up to the wedding. She created a wonderful vision for our flowers, and had a wealth of knowledge for someone who knows nothing about flowers. The bouquets were exactly as we discussed, and were beautiful - and they lasted through to at least part of the reception even though it was quite hot that day. Karen even came back in to add a last minute personal memento to my bouquet that I had not had the chance to ask her about when she delivered the bouquets. We did have some mutual misunderstandings which led to missing boutonnieres (this was a mutual mistake - we were looking at 2 different contracts, the missing bouts were not included in the final quote price so obviously were not there). Tip - make sure to confirm the correct number of bouquets, bouts, centerpieces, etc to ensure you are on the same page when sending your final payment (for any florist, not just Karen). There was only a $20 difference between what I should have paid and what was actually paid so it didn’t trigger a question by me to go back and check.