First let me thank all of you who have answered my million questions and helped along the way. We got married last Monday at the Grand Luxxe event home through Brindley Beach - highly recommend! The house is beautiful and we had a blast there the whole week. Aside from being pretty windy, we had beautiful weather. We had an amazing time & I would recommend using any of the vendors that we chose!
DJ/Violin/Photographer: Sue & Matt Artz - hands down one of the best decisions we made! They are laid back, easy to work with, yet professional PLUS affordable. They gave so much guidance and help along the way and helped our big day go seamlessly. Music was so good that our neighbors commented the next day how much fun they had listening and singing along
And, we received 15 teaser photos within a week!
Catering for Rehearsal: High Cotton BBQ. We did delivery & set-up option. They actually came an hour earlier than they were supposed to but the food was excellent even though we had to keep it warm during rehearsal. Mmmm def get the mac n cheese!
Catering for Reception: Kelly's. I was a little worried about this vendor due to slow communication throughout the process but WOW did their service & food pay off. The wait staff was phenomenal - every time my husband or I turned around they had a drink or food waiting for us (they even brought some down to the beach while we were getting photos after the ceremony). We have a lot of picky eaters in our family and people liked the food so much that they went and ate at Kelly's the next day! We had tons of leftovers too which did not go to waste!
Videographer: Gary Randall of LNR Productions. He was recommended by Matt & Sue Artz and we are so glad that we chose him. We debated whether or not a videographer would fit in our budget but he was reasonable priced, super nice & we really enjoyed having him there the day of! Can't wait to see the footage....
Hair, Makeup, Nails: Hot Heads Salon. I had a nail appointment Friday before the wedding and Sofia did a fantastic job. Her team came to the event home morning of for hair and makeup. My best friend did my hair so I can't comment so much on hair, but they did a good job on everyone else. I will say that they didn't use a whole lot of makeup - many of the girls had to ask for more or put more on afterwards. And there was some confusion of payment amount which one of my bridesmaids took over and figured out - luckily we didn't overpay by $200 as what almost happened!!
Beer Nanny: We rented a portable kegerator through this service and highly recommend! They picked up our keg, delivered it, and picked up the equipment and returned the keg a week later.
Rentals: Ocean Atlantic - Dropped off tables and chairs early, easy to work with, picked up when they said they would. We forgot to set a few of the chairs out front & had to drop them off at the store, but it didn't seem to be a problem!
Officiant: Rev. Betsy Haas - Highly recommend her as well! We met several officiants during our planning trip but we really clicked with Betsy. We later found out that she also has some roots in PA and Penn State, so we had many things in common! She was easy to work with, gave great suggestions, and our ceremony was just beautiful!!!!
Cupcakes: Carolina Cupcakery - YUM! We did assorted mini cupcakes and then a small anniversary cake. They were a hit. Easy to work with and smooth transition even though the girl I was working with went on maternity leave a few weeks before our wedding. We will be visiting here each time we go back!
Rehearsal cake/groom's cake: I ordered a Steeler's jersey cake for my husband for our Sunday night rehearsal. I checked in with a few cake places but they were either really expensive or weren't available so I went with Harris Teeter. They said that they did jersey cakes all the time and that it would look great... butttt I wouldn't go there again. I am not artistic at all but think I could have done a better job writing the letters and numbers on the cake. Good thing is it tasted good and we all got a laugh
you get what you pay for !
Flowers, rentals: Shirley from Sugar Snap Events: Super easy to work with, great suggestions & took into account everything we wanted while working with our budget. I loved our flower bouquets! We also rented a bamboo arbor with burlap and flowers for the ceremony - beautiful! She set that up and took it away without anyone even noticing!
Hotels: Some of our guests stayed at the Sea Ranch Resort and Days Inn near our event home. No one had a problem with their stay. We stayed at Shutters on the Banks the night before we could check in to our event home and really liked it there! Definitely would stay at Shutters again.
Morning after brunch/blood mary bar: This was a super fun idea that everyone enjoyed. We ordered coffee, bagels, donuts, muffins, etc. from Dunkin Donuts. They were easy to work with, let me pay ahead of time, and had everything ready when they said they would.
I think that's everyone... I'll post others if I forgot! I would also suggest having your wedding earlier in the week rather than later. Having it on a Monday allowed a few days of prep but then I was able to relax afterwards. I would have been way too stressed/anxious to enjoy time with family and friends if we would have done a wedding at the end of the week!
We are sad it's over but we are soooo glad we chose the Outer Banks as our wedding destination! Can't wait to come back again already!
-Lindsey