Vendor Reviews!

I was married in November, and although I was primarily a lurker on these boards, I always loved reading the vendor reviews and about other brides’ weddings.  So I thought I would offer up my own vendor reviews in case it helps anyone! 

DH and I were very, very lucky in that we had some connections for vendors for our wedding.  I still discussed them below so that you all know where we actually hired vs what vendors we had connections for where the service/product provided was a gift, as well as see some of the advice I have for what it may be worth to you.  I HIGHLY recommend taking advantage of any connections any of you future brides have, as it saves you a ton of money and you can spend more in other areas of your wedding!

Our wedding was held at a family friend’s estate in La Jolla.  Unfortunately they don’t typically open up their home for weddings and events (ours was the first wedding!) but trust me when I say it was AMAZING!!!!  We really lucked out to have them offer their beautiful home to us and my DH and I are trying to talk them into hosting future weddings there because it has such a perfect layout!  Use of their estate was a gift to us from this family friend.

We used the French Gourmet and could not be more thrilled with that decision!  The food was delicious!!!  Our guests are still raving about how yummy the dinner and the cake were, and I personally think this was the best “wedding food” I have ever had.  I know I’m a little biased, but some of my family and friends at the wedding have said the same things.  Our cake was beautiful, and I have to also say that the presentation of the food in general was just really nice!  Although my wedding planner handled most of this, I know that working with the French Gourmet was totally easy, they were professional, and the service on the night-of was great too; I highly recommend French Gourmet!

Douglas DeShine. Again, we were pretty lucky in this category to have a family member on my DH’s side who dabbled in photography a few years ago and used to own a photography side-business up in northern CA.  I think he did a good job, and his services were a wedding gift to us (we only had to pay for the lodging and service provided by his assistant photographer, which was WAY cheaper than us hiring a completely different photographer).  But, I gave him a B+ because I am not totally in love with his photography style (more old school and formal than what I would have chosen).  Don’t get me wrong, the pictures turned out great for that style and I am happy with them, it’s just not what I would have chosen had we not had this connection. 

High Rize.  This band is located out of LA and they were SO AWESOME!!!  I have nothing but great things to say.  They did such an awesome job, worked well with my wedding planner and followed her lead to stay on schedule, were professional, sounded amazing, kept people out on the dance floor having a blast all night, and were also great MC’s to the evening.  They are a bit pricey (that would be my only negative comment) but to be honest I think they were totally worth every penny.  I wish I had some other excuse to throw a big party again just so that I could hire them and listen to them again!

I used Angie of Absolutely Events.  Completely and totally fabulous!!!  I can’t help but smile and let out a sigh of relief even now, 2 months after my wedding, when I think about her.  She was such a life saver, and I am so fortunate to have found her!  I initially hired her for just DOC, but quickly found from planning out-of-town that I probably needed more help than that.  Angie to the rescue!  I changed my package with her to month-of and then basically changed it again, to full planning and design.  She was organized, dependable, so sweet, creative . . . my list could go on an on.  She was just always there for me for whatever I needed, always with a smile on her face throughout the planning process.  By the time we got to my wedding day I really wasn’t stressed out at all because I knew everything would be fine with Angie there.  On the day-of, she continued her excellent service, and her assistants were amazing as well.  They set up the décor, set up the flowers (Angie and her team also did our flowers), coordinated the entire ceremony and evening, and tore down the décor at the end of the evening.  There were so many “little” things and issues that were handled throughout the evening by Angie and her team that I didn’t even know about until afterwards, which I just thought was further testament to how awesome she is.  For instance, fixing a guest’s dress which ripped, fixing my hair piece/flower for the reception after my flower girl got a hold of it and messed it up, having an extra set of our vows on-hand for us when my DH realized he had forgotten his copy (we personalized our vows).  I could go on and on about Angie, but the bottom line is that I think she is the greatest and I highly recommend her!

This was a DIY project, which, at the end became a DIA (Do-It-Angie – my wedding planner) project to finish up.  I wanted to save money and thought I would have enough time to do this since I had my planner doing essentially everything else for me, and my bridal party had offered to help me as well.  But in the end I didn’t have enough time, nor did my bridal party, so I handed them over to Angie to finish up.  I love the way they ended up turning out.  I just suggest to any brides who want to DIY your invites and/or other paper products that you schedule yourself enough time.  Like, twice as much time as you think you might need!

I actually wore my mother’s wedding dress, which she had preserved, and she performed minor alterations on it for me.  It was beautiful, and I felt so special to be wearing it on my big day! 

One of my bridesmaids did my hair and makeup and I could not have been more happy.  She lives up in northern CA (where I do) and we had practices several styles, so when it came to the day-of everything was smooth, I knew it would turn out well, and I was so happy with it.  Not to mention that it was nice to have one of my closest friends to chat with while I was in the chair that day!  She also did makeup for both moms and my grandmother which was awesome.  She’s not for hire though, unfortunately!  This is just a “fun” thing for her that she happens to be awesome at!

I think I mentioned it above under Angie’s review, but my wedding planner (Angie of Absolutely Events) did the florals for my wedding.  I swear everything she touched that day turned to gold.  We wanted very simple florals (Angie isn’t a florist and is upfront about that, but she did a completely wonderful job for what we wanted and I could not be happier with how it turned out!)  She did the bouquets and did our centerpieces (which were a mix of florals and other décor items from Angie’s inventory).  I didn’t want boutonnieres and the moms and my grandma didn’t want a corsage.  We had our flower girl hand out long stemmed roses to the lady guests so Angie got those stripped and ready, and she also did our petal cones for our guests for throwing after the ceremony.  All was beautiful!

Tiffany’s.  Do I really need to say more than that?  Rating speaks for itself!

Again, we lucked out here and my DH has a very good friend he grew up with who is ordained and married us and handled the marriage license for us.  Had he not offered to perform our ceremony he would have been in the wedding party!  I thought it was really sweet that we had someone we were close to perform our ceremony; it further personalized the day for us.  I highly recommend this personal touch to anyone who has a friend or family member who speaks well and you are considering this route!

Good luck to all of you 2010 brides!  Hopefully this was somewhat helpful!