Better late than never, right? Here are my vendor reviews from my wedding on May 9, 2009. It's really long! Feel free to email me if you have any questions, autumn witt at gmail dot com (no spaces). Normal.dotm 0 0 1 1381 7874 Harmon & Seidman LLC 65 15 9669 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false Venue: Fall Creek Falls State Park: A+++ We stayed in the hotel (me and lots of guests) and cabins (groom and families) for several days prior to our wedding, and had our wedding and reception in the conference center. The conference center catered the reception and the catering manager, Zonda Hollaway, was amazing. The food was great, the service was super, and they bent over backwards to set up everything just like we wanted, even changing everything last minute because it was too wet outside to have our ceremony where we had planned. They worked with us on our budget and we were able to serve a great southern buffet meal for $20 per person. The best part is you can bring your own alcohol, a huge cost saver. Cannot recommend this venue highly enough (not a typical wedding venue although they do lots of weddings in addition to reunions and conferences). Hair: Steven’s Salon (Chattanooga, TN): A+ Steven (who is my normal hair person) and his coworker Melissa came all the way to FCF from Chattanooga, arrived early with all their gear and got set up, then took great care of making all of us gorgeous, even doing more people than I had originally told them and completely changing the style I wanted at the last minute. Their price was incredibly reasonable, much lower than anywhere else I got quotes. Plus they were fun, easygoing and laid back so that made for a great atmosphere! Steven also did a trial for me the week before the wedding at no cost because I was a client. DJ: FADDS Mobile DJ (based in Nashville, TN but will travel): A+ I met with the company’s owner David to go over details prior to the event, and then our DJ Jim ensured that everything went smoothly. He arrived in plenty of time to set up sound for our ceremony and reception. I never even talked to him because we were so busy dancing and greeting guests, and everything was perfect, how great is that? He did not talk much, totally kept songs on my “do not play” list off the air and handled many requests from our crowd with ease, keeping the rap and hip hop to the end of the night as I had requested. Best part: dance floor was full of young and old all night long! Great price and he was willing to travel. Cake: Publix (Hixson, near Chattanooga, TN): A We ordered 200 cupcakes, 75 petit fours and a small birthday cake from Publix in Hixson, TN. They were delicious and very reasonable. Only reason they didn’t get an A+ is because we called and ordered a cake sampler a few months before our wedding, and they had no record of it when we went to pick it up. I made sure to order the cupcakes in person, and they had a lot of trouble figuring up my total (took 4 ladies about 30 min. to figure it out). But the cupcakes, petit fours, and cake were all ready to go and perfect on the day (friend picked them up so can’t comment on their delivery services). Rentals: RSVP Rentals (Crossville, TN but travels): B We rented chairs for our outdoor ceremony, a dance floor for the reception and martini glasses for our mashed potato bar. The owner Robin is very knowledgeable and they do a lot of events at FCF so she was very helpful. My only complaint was that she wasn’t sure about the size of the dance floor and thus, the final price, until the day of the event. It all turned out fine, they did a great job setting up and taking down. We ended up not using the chairs because we had to move the ceremony inside, and she only charged us half for them, which I appreciated (they were already loaded in her truck by the time I called to tell her we didn’t need them). Linens and chair covers:
www.chaircoversandlinens.com: B This company was very helpful, sent lots of fabric swatches, and a sample chair cover to make sure they would fit (although there was a charge for that). The prices were reasonable, they looked great, the company shipped them to the venue and I shipped them back after the wedding. Only problem was the return labels were apparently included in one of the boxes, but I didn’t know to look for them so they got thrown away by my family who helped me set up. Clearer instructions would have helped, we got it cleared up but it was high stress when we needed to be leaving for our honeymoon. Alterations: AAA Alterations (Chattanooga, TN): D I bought a sample dress so I needed it taken in about three dress sizes and also wanted to add a ruffle and bow to it, a lot of work, so I shopped around quite a bit and got a wide variety of quotes. This store was recommended by a friend and when I went in the owner said it would be no problem to do what I asked, and quoted me an absurdly low price (about $60 total). However, when I brought the dress back to be altered with the extra fabric, she wasn’t so happy about sewing the ruffle and bow. At that point, it was too late to take it elsewhere so I pleaded with her to do it. She said she would, then when I called to see when it would be ready, she said she hadn’t started and asked if I could take it somewhere else! It was only two weeks to my wedding at that point and I just about had a breakdown. She finally did everything she said she would, for the original price quoted, but waited until the very last minute to get it done. It turned out fine but there was a lot of stress to get there! Also, she was unable to get the bodice fitted like I wanted, there was some beading and she didn’t know what to do. It turned out ok but not as smooth as I wanted. Photos: Misti Abner Photography (now Studio Douglas, based in Nashville, TN): D I was really pleased with Misti from the beginning, another Knottie recommended her highly, she was fun to talk to and great at emailing and calling me quickly. Her prices were reasonable and her photos looked great. She took our engagement shots at the state park where we planned to get married, I wanted to make sure she knew how to get there since it’s kind of in the middle of nowhere. She was a bit late (maybe 15-20 minutes) because she got lost but it wasn’t a big deal. The annoying thing was that she brought her two kids to the shoot (maybe 7 and 9 years old?). They were generally well behaved but they’re kids, so they were all over the place, and she was distracted by wrangling them a bit, and they ended up in a few of our shots! Overall we were really happy with our engagement photos, we got a ton of awesome shots, and we received them on a DVD a reasonable time after the shoot, although it did take some asking. On our wedding day, once again she arrived late, again probably only 15-20 minutes, but it made me a bit frazzled. She did call to let me know she was running late, and that set my wedding party a bit behind in getting ready since they knew she wasn’t there yet. When she arrived, the wedding party was still getting ready but she took some photos with the rings, bouquets, etc., then we did a bunch of group shots in various spots, and she stayed about halfway through the reception, getting all the events. The problems began after the wedding, when I was waiting to get our photos and had a lot of trouble getting Misti to return phone calls or emails. I found out after the fact that she had several family emergencies in a row and had to leave town, and during these times she did not check email or phone messages, and her assistant apparently flaked also. When she returned she contacted me and did send a DVD of the photos just a few days outside the 6 weeks in our contract. But the worst was after all of that had settled down when I emailed her to order prints and albums of our photos, I didn’t hear back for several weeks despite phone calls and emails again. I actually googled her to see if other brides were having the same problems, and found postings on The Knot and Weddingwire with similar complaints, and brides wondering whether to book her, so I posted my story. Immediately after I posted my story, Misti contacted me by mail with a very long message, and was quite upset that I had posted about my dealings with her because it was scaring off her other customers. We agreed to disagree and she told me that if I sent her my order, she would get it back to me shortly, 1 week for photos and 1 month for albums. I sent her the order on 9/24/09, she responded to confirm she had received it, and I still don’t have any of it, more than 6 weeks later. I’ve been emailing and calling her for two weeks, but she has been avoiding me again. At this point I don’t have much of a remedy other than taking her to small claims court, but I’m hopefull we will get this all resolved and I won’t have to do that. Overall, the photos were pretty good—I didn’t think they were as good as our engagement shots, but I was pretty happy. My major complaints were (1) Misti only took ONE posed photo of my groom and me looking straight at the camera (and we don’t like it), (2) Misti took very few shots of my family or wedding party during the reception, it’s as if they weren’t even there, but there were tons of photos of other people. To be fair, these weren’t things that I specifically asked her to do (and I was so in another world on our wedding day I didn’t even realize we didn’t have posed pictures of the two of us) but I would think it’s obvious, we want posed photos of just us together that we could frame or send to the paper, and our family/ wedding party are the people we care most about. I would not recommend hiring Misti for your wedding.