Here are the rest of the reviews for my wedding
Ceremony Musicians: La Bella Musica (A-)
As our venue Oceancliff does not allow amplified music outside your only music options for your ceremony is to put a CD on or to have actual musicians, we opted for actual musicians. We found La Bella Musica through Gig Masters and were happy with their reviews and the fact that they had played at our venue multiple times so they were aware of and could comply with Oceancliffs rules on music. We had to pay a fee to book through Gig Masters so I would suggest contacting them directly. We hired a violinist and cellist and worked with Emily Chen who was great. Emily took the time to discuss song selections with me, as I am not musically inclined, and offered some great suggestions. They showed up on time, were dressed appropriately, and played great music. I would recommend them to anyone looking for ceremony musicians.Ice Sculpture: Brilliant Ice (A-)
We ordered a gorgeous ice luge for the bar at our reception and were very pleased. It looked just like the photos on the website and they included our selected items (limes and coconuts).
Florist: Springs (D-)
We had originally selected Sprigs because my mom, who is unemployed and was paying for the flowers couldn’t afford to pay a lot, and her friend Janice owns the store and told her she would do the wedding at practically cost and meet her budget. We had problems from the start as Janice was not creative at all, and could not even put together flowers when I in detail explained every flower and idea I wanted for the wedding. She was very difficult to get a hold off, could not put together a readable proposal and was very unprofessional. A few weeks before our wedding she raised the price of our flowers by $500 and we were forced to eliminate many flowers to get the increase to be only $500 and she refused to honor the prices she had originally gave us. Being a few weeks before our wedding we did not have time to find another florist. When it came to our wedding day and Janice arrived she barged into the house we were staying in at Oceancliff and demanded to see my mother in law, and when the best man told her she wasn’t there she demanded to see me to get the rest of her money or she wouldn’t deliver any of the flowers. Our arrangement with her was that we would not make the final payment until we RECEIEVED ALL OF THE FLOWERS as we were afraid she wouldn’t show up at all. So we were not going to pay for until she actually delivered the flowers to the venue. My mom arrived and informed her that she would be paid when we got the flowers. The only reason she got a D- and not an F is that she did show up with flowers, just not what ordered. My bouquet was so small I was so embarrassed to even carry it, the bridesmaids bouquets were only a few cheap flowers put together, not at all what I paid for. Our centerpieces were half the fullness they were supposed to be and very messy looking, we paid for rose petals to be our head table and cake table and we received none, we ordered centerpieces for the cocktail tables and we received none, the rose petals for the isle were pale pink instead of bright coral as they were supposed to be and the kissing balls hanging from our wedding arbor were pale pink instead of bright coral as they were supposed to be. My mother and myself feel so taken advantage of, hurt and angry I can’t even describe it to you. When it comes to weddings there are some really bad people out there who will just take advantage of you and unfortunately I found one of those vendors in Sprigs.
Photographer: EG Photo (B)
We choose EG Photo because we received a good price and had heard good reviews about Soozie. We were happy with most of the pictures but we were missing a lot of what we wanted. We did get the formals we wanted, with the exception of a portrait of my husband and myself, but we had requested the photo journalistic style of photography and all we really got was a few candid’s that aren’t really usable photos. The quality of the photos is good and Soozie and her staff are great to work with, it just wasn’t a great fit for what we wanted for our wedding.
Manicures/Pedicures: Stillwater Spa @ the Hyatt (A-)
I took my bridal party to the spa the day before my wedding and we had a very relaxing afternoon. The staff really makes you feel pampered and you cannot beat the views. It is very expensive so be prepared to spend over $100 a person for a manicure and pedicure
Cake: It’s My Party (Newport, RI) (B)
We ordered our wedding cake from Amanda and were very happy. She does exceptional work, has the best prices ($3.50 a slice) and most importantly makes great tasting cakes. I also ordered by bridal shower cake and cookie favors for our rehearsal dinner from her. My only issue is we ordered two flavors for our wedding cake and all the guests we spoke to all had the same flavor, so we are nervous that the second flavor was made as our top layer which we did not want. We are considering cutting into the top layer of our cake just to make sure we don’t get a bad surprise on our anniversary. Also our cake was suppose to be place on a gorgeous silver stand that we had picked out, but instead it was place directly on the table, which really did not look that great All said we are happy with our choice and would recommend this vendor, just make sure you get what you ordered
Hotel the Night of Wedding: Newport Harbor Hotel (F)
My husband and I had stayed at the Newport Harbor Hotel a few times and had always been happy with our stay and the price. We choose to stay here the night after our wedding because it is one of the cheaper options in Newport and we didn’t want to ask our friends to spend a lot of money to stay over after our wedding. Our bad stay started when we choose to stay at the hotel and found out they will not do a block of rooms without you agreeing to pay for any unbooked rooms that had been blocked off. That said we did not block off any rooms, I have never heard of this before. As we had made last minute reservations for the same weekend one year before our wedding to try the hotel out and there were many rooms available we were not worried about the hotel booking up. And in fact there were many rooms available the day of our wedding. It continued the moment we checked in with them not allowing my husband’s brother to check into his room because his parents had called and paid for his room since he is in college and doesn’t have a credit card. Even though they made the reservation in his name the hotel would not allow him to check in because his name was not on the credit card. In order to let him check into the room my husband had put his brothers room on our credit card. When we left at 4:00am for our honeymoon we left our laptop in the hotel room, when we called about ½ later to ask the hotel to get our computer and leave it at the front desk for my husband’s brother to pick up for us the person at the front desk just told me that there was no there that could help us and transferred us to housekeeping, where no one answered and we had to leave a message and never received a return call. While we did get our computer back my husband’s brother had to fight with the hotel desk for an hour to get them to go get our computer from the room we were in. To top it all off, we had reserved a room for a guest who due to a family death could not attend our wedding. They called and cancelled their room and were told there would be no charge. But it turned out the manager they spoke with cancelled my room instead of there’s and charged my credit card for the room. Since we ended up staying in our room we were charged twice for one room. It took one month of constantly calling the hotel by myself and the guest to get the manager on the phone and another half an hour of fighting with the manager who was completely incompetent to have the charge removed. We will never stay at the Newport Harbor Hotel again and advise no else to either.
Wedding After Party: H2O, Newport RI (D)
We had a day time wedding so we hosted an after party for our friends at H2O. I made a reservation for a table by the bar for 20 people but when we arrived they had only reserved us a table in the way back of the restaurant, so the 20 of us had to wait about an hour for enough tables to clear by the bar so we could all sit down. The menu was vey limited, and me not eating seafood, the only option for me and ten of my guests was a cheeseburger. The food and service weren’t the best but we did get our food. I would have given them a B, but myself and a few of my guests got food poisoning. This caused me to be sick the entire plane ride on the way to our honeymoon.
Inviations: Papers (F)
We selected Papers to do our wedding invitations and it was one of worst choices we have ever made. I have never been treated so poorly and received such awful customer service. The staff is incompetent, rude, and careless with your personal information. The sales women we dealt with Danielle let someone come into the store and completely change our wedding invitations. She didnt question who this person was or even contact me to let me know that someone had come in and tried to change our wedding invitations. The fact that she actually made these changes is unthinkable. They refused to return our deposit so we were forced to still use them for our invitations. Due to there unthinkable behavior our wedding invitations did not go out until right before our wedding, we missed the deadline with our vendor to change our number of guests, and were unable to invite additional people to fill seats that people RSVP no for and were stuck paying hundreds of dollars for meals no one ate. I have never been so hurt, angery and just plain appalled at suck horrible customer service. We never received an appology or even a discount. Avoid this vendor at all costs, they will ruin your wedding.