Hi all,
Although I don't post often here, I have been fortunate enough to gain lots of great info based on the vendor reviews that others post. So I wanted to return the favor. See below for my vendor reviews - best of luck to all of those still planning! Hope this helps!
Venue: Contemporary Arts Center (downtown Cincinnati)
Grade: A-
Recommended: YES
The CAC was an awesome venue - it provided the modern, simple background we wanted for our wedding. We originally signed on with Michael (former event coordinator) and then Joe Penno came and replaced him about 8-10 months before our wedding. Joe was a breath of fresh air - very open and flexible, willing to make it work for the bride/groom, and just a fun person to talk to. He was able to give us the CAC's Unmuseum (for our cocktail hour) at a much lesser cost that Michael was going to charge us and he threw in a couple of extra perks for us.
The only reason they got an A- is because Joe sometimes took a while to respond to us (I know he was very busy since he came onboard) and the night of the wedding we were supposed to have champagne for all guests during our champagne toast, and that did not happen.
Be aware that the CAC owns all of the bar components for events, so you will work with them on liquor costs, bar staffing, etc.
If you are looking for a downtown location that is very unique and modern, the CAC is perfect!
Caterer: Funky's
Grade: B
Recommended: YES (with caution)
Funky's has awesome food, you cannot get around that. They blew us away at all of our tastings and at the wedding. The food was the talk of our wedding and all guests said how it was the best wedding food they'd ever had. Funky's isn't afraid to season food and their food selection is interesting and they offer a wide variety.
They went above and beyond by providing the wedding party with appetizers during the getting ready period and had apps set up for DH and I for when we took some alone time together after the ceremony.
We also used Funky's for our day-after brunch and that team did a spectacular job! They prepared and served food onsite at our club room and our guests were so impressed with the food quality, presentation and service.
But despite these great reviews, Funky's does have some drawbacks:
1) They are not great at response times. My DH and I had to have several conversations related to our expectations around responses/feedback from them.
2) They gave us a staff member to manage our wedding who I am now told was a bit scattered and even one of the Funky's execs told our wedding coordinator that he sometimes "lets things fall through the cracks" so he told her to feel free to stay on top of him. Well, he did let things fall through the cracks.
3) Funky's left our food at the venue overnight (without discussing implications/plans with our wedding coordinator) and it wasn't packaged properly or refrigerated, so it had gone bad by the next day. My DH was really looking forward to enjoying more food, so it was a huge letdown.
4) The Funky's event manager asked us if we wanted to cut the grooms cake and serve it (he asked during the reception) - we said yes. They never cut or served it, and it was also left in the venue overnight UNCOVERED and was bug infested the next day when DH and I went to pick it up. That was a sad thing, b/c my DH only got to taste one bite of his grooms cake and I had been planning that surprise for him for over a year. It was his favorite flavor and nobody got to eat any.
5) Funky's has this special ice tea that is awesome. My DH drank like 5 cups of it during our tasting. We were really looking forward to our guests trying this tea. Unfortunately, the ice tea that we loved so much was not served at the wedding. We were later told that only water was on the table, and a Funky's person told someone that they only served ice tea to "the guests who requested it" - but how would they know to request it? We had talked about this tea to several family members, and they were highly disappointed that it was not served.
6) We had an agreement upfront that we did not want to save the top layer of our wedding cake, we wanted it served to guests. Funky's did not cut or serve our top layer, and it was also left at the venue overnight and was not edible when we picked it up the next day. Along with the remains of our cut cake, which we couldn't eat - so we ate none of our wedding cake, except the one bite we did for the cake cutting ceremony.
Overall, we'd still recommend Funky's for the food and value, but be aware of issues that might arise.
Flowers: Designs by Tia
Grade: A
Recommended: YES
Tia works in a greenhouse and does flowers on the side. She was recommended here on The Knot and we were so pleased. She created very modern, elegant arrangements for our wedding that exceeded our expectations and looked WAY more expensive than they actually were. We used peonies and mostly orchids and got a great price from Tia. We got tons of compliments on our flowers and another vendor said they were as good as flowers from a famous florist that he just worked with at another wedding. Tia's email is tbird2@fuse.net. Give her a try - we met with a few other highly recommended local florists and they could not come close to Tia's prices and her quality/creativity equals theirs!
One thing to note - Tia is a bit scattered and needs structure. She writes lots of one-line emails and is sort of all over the place during the planning process. We attributed that to her creativity and were happy we stuck it out with her.
DJ: DJ Pillo
Grade: B-/C+
Recommended: NO
We liked DJ Pillo b/c he came recommended from a friend who knows our musical taste, and we attended a couple of events he did and he is an awesome DJ. He does lots of events for the CAC, P&G, etc. so he comes with credibility. He worked with us on our very specific playlist and went out of his way to give us a flash drive with all of our requested songs that we could put on our iTunes.
However, he was very hard to reach and did not get back to us for weeks at a time. He hardly ever responded to emails, was late to a few meetings and our large final vendor meeting at the CAC, and screwed up our songs during the reception and our names as he announced us at the reception. At one point he asked my DH to call and remind him whenever we were having a meeting (that we pre planned), which I thought was a ridiculous request. We did not have time to babysit any of our vendors.
Overall, it took too much time/effort to monitor him and make sure he got everything right (and he still didn't) so I wouldn't recommend his services. But all of our guests LOVED our wedding/reception music and many asked for CDs of the songs - however the thanks goes to my DH for the songs, b/c he picked them all himself.
Cake: A Spoon Fulla Sugar
Grade: A-
Recommended: YES
A Spoon Fulla Sugar did an excellent job on our rehearsal dinner, wedding and grooms cakes. Their cakes are moist and delicious, and they offer a great variety of flavors. We had red velvet for our rehearsal dinner, carrot cake for our grooms cake and amaretto/tiramisu/pumpkin spice for our wedding cake.
We really liked working with Mark and mid-way during the process he went to work somewhere else full time, so we had a few different people contacting us after that. That was where we started to have some issues - a few people didn't know what our order was, or had old info. Then one person tried to charge us their current cake prices when we had booked them for their previous cake prices in 2010. We had to produce old emails to prove to them that they should charge us $150+ extra for our cakes.
But for the rehearsal and wedding, they were great and delivered as expected. The cakes tasted awesome and we had guests telling us it was the best red velvet cake they ever tasted (better than their mom's!) and best wedding cake they've ever had. We loved the little bit we did taste.
Photographer: Amanda Donaho
Grade: A+
Recommended: YES
Amanda is incredibly talented, and the price you pay for her services is a huge value. She is an upbeat, positive person and an overall sweetheart. She knows how to get the artsy, journalistic shots we wanted and can help you feel very comfortable in front of the camera. She is good at giving direction, but not too much direction where you feel "fake".
She is prompt at responding and attending meetings, she is flexible and well worth what she charges. We cannot say enough about Amanda, she was a joy to work with.
Videographer: Poetic Cinema
Grade: A+
Recommended: YES
I could almost write all of the same things about Dan that I just wrote about Amanda. I will add that Dan takes the time to get to know you, and that is invaluable. He wanted to understand more about me and my DH, and that helped him know what to focus on at the wedding. He completely went above and beyond by showing up at our engagement shoot to get footage, even though that wasn't in the contract. He was a complete pleasure to work with, and even though we haven't seen the film yet we already know it will be amazing - based on all of his previous work. Please consider Dan when looking at videographers, it was a very personal, enjoyable experience getting to partner with him.
Wedding Coordinator: Tracey Reese
Grade: A-
Recommended: YES
Tracey is working on establishing her wedding coordinator business, so we were one of her first official clients. She has an amazing attention to detail and is very pleasant to work with. She was flexible and more than willing to go above and beyond what we originally agree to, in terms of her workload. She was actually supposed to be a day-of-coordinator, but she ended up working on several items for us a for a few months leading up to the wedding. But we already had all of our vendors in place, so we didn't need help there.
The only reason Tracey gets an A- instead of an A+ is because she lost control of the group during our rehearsal and everyone was confused - she didn't step up to take control of the situation and keep everyone focused. Other than that, she was awesome and I'd highly recommend her. She is great for those who are not willing to pay an extravagant cost for a coordinator. Her email is: TraceyEReese@aol.com.
Lighting: Vincent Lighting Systems
Grade: A+
Recommended: YES
Vincent was awesome - they charged less than Goodwin and other local lighting companies, met with us three times at our venue for no charge, and they were very easy to work with. They found out what we wanted, presented options, tweaked it where needed, and then showed up and did the job. No problems at all with them, it was a breeze to partner with Vincent. Our lighting looked amazing, we got up lights and pin spots - lots of color and design options with Vincent.
Make Up: Chenese Bean
Grade: A+
Recommended: YES
Chenese did my e-pic shoot make up and I was highly impressed with how I looked in person and in the photos. She used the airbrush technique and did a great job matching my skin tone and bringing out my best features. I had her do make up for me, my bridesmaids and our flower girl (just lip gloss) on the wedding day. She arrived on time, had nice music playing and had everything she needed - no issues at all. She got along with everyone and made the time fun. I would highly recommend Chenese - she is a true professional and very talented.
Tuxedos: Folchi's
Grade: A+
Recommended: YES
Folchi's made our life easy. They had a wonderful tux for our GMs and my DH, and even with all of our GMs and our ring bearer out of town, it never felt like a problem. We were not stressed at all about tuxes, DH's friends came in town the Thursday before the wedding and they went on Friday afternoon for their final fitting. Everything turned out great and DH even got a couple of really nice blazers on sale while he was there picking up his tux! The guys there are very nice and accommodating - highly recommend.
Wedding Dress: David's Bridal (Atlanta, Cleveland, Cincinnati)
Grade: A
Recommended: YES
David's was awesome throughout my wedding dress purchase process. I bought the dress while I was still living in Atlanta. I moved to Cincinnati to be with my DH and then lost weight, I wanted to exchange my dress rather than pay for alterations, and the Cincinnati store let me try on their in stock sample for size confirmation. Then they found the nearest store where they had a brand new version of my dress, in my size in-stock. It was in Cleveland and it worked out b/c I had a work meeting there soon after. I picked it up and exchanged it with my old dress with no problems and no charge. I used the Cincinnati location again to clean/press my dress and veil. Again, no issues and I would use them again.
Calligraphy Artist: The Purple Squid
Grade: A+
Recommended: YES
Tasha at The Purple Squid is amazing! She is great at her craft and is a people person. She went out of her way to always meet us downtown (where we live) even though she lives in KY. She has a very positive attitude and was always thinking of new ways to extend our theme into small details in the wedding. She gave us tons of font and color options and often we both had the same ideas for the look of our calligraphy. We loved what she did with our invitations so much we asked her to do our table names as well. Everything came out great - I can't say enough about how great Tasha is. Her email is: tasha@thepurplesquid.com.
Hotels: Westin Downtown and Hyatt Downtown
Grade: A+
Recommended: YES
Both of our host hotels were great to work with. They were extremely helpful and even took a couple of guests at the discounted rate after the deadline. We paid $2 a bag at the Westin to distribute welcome gift bags from the front desk to all of our guests. We only had a few guests at the Hyatt, so they didn't charge us to distribute the bags. DH and I stayed at the Westin and it was really nice - the rooms were clean and modern. We had no complaints from our guests, and everyone loved Ingredients, the Westin's restaurant.
Rehearsal Dinner: Nada
Grade: B+
Recommended: YES (with caution)
We went to Nada for our first date, so it was important for us to have our rehearsal dinner there. We love the food and atmosphere and they have a private room upstairs that holds about 30 people (perfect for our needs). We also had the ability to make up our own menu, bring in our own dessert (that Nada would serve) and bring our iPod to play our custom playlist inside the private room. We initially had a great experience with the Nada staff, until their Event Coordinator left (Kelle) and was replaced by Sidonie. Sidonie began to question our pricing, even though we had a final contract completed with Kelle. She said it seemed to be lunch pricing, not dinner pricing and then she told us she had to remove some items from our menu b/c they weren't in season (and did not offer to replace them with anything else). We had to have our wedding coordinator go back and forth with Nada for a few weeks to get it all figured out and eventually they gave us what we wanted, at the price we agreed to. But we felt it was ridiculous to have to fight with them over a contract that was already finalized. That left a bad taste in our mouth (pun intended) but we still love Nada and our rehearsal dinner was a great success.
Bridesmaids' Dresses: Etsy (erinleighheart)
Grade: A
Recommended: YES
Erin was very cool and I loved the convertible dresses that she made for my bridesmaids. She charged less than half of what I would have paid for the same dress at Two Little Birds. I bought them all at once and my BMs paid me back, so I got a bulk purchase discount. They don't wrinkle and the color was perfect. Erin also has a deal where you send her a pro pic of your BMs in their dresses and you get a free dress from her site. I'm just waiting for all of my pro pics so I can claim my dress. 