John Morris Photography: A+
I don’t think I can say enough good things about John! My MOH used John for her Las Vegas wedding five years ago and I was really impressed with his work. Our package included an engagement session and 8 hours of shooting time on our wedding day so we spent a lot of time with him. For our engagement session, he took us out to Nelson (a 45 minute drive from the Strip) which is an abandoned mining town. Some of our engagement pictures can be viewed on his blog: http://johnmorrisphotography.com/blog/. I loved the variety of locations there. He took pictures of us on old cars, with bikes, in cactus fields… I can’t wait to see all the pictures! He also has a really dry, sarcastic sense of humour which me and my husband totally get so we felt really comfortable around him. He was also really great on the wedding day and kept us going on schedule. We did a first look shoot and I know that everybody has different opinions on this but I would recommend it because it gave us both a chance to have a few quiet moments together before the craziness of the day. He stayed right until the end of our reception and I am sure he got some really good party shots! He is well worth every single penny spent!
Color Salon (in Caesars Palace): A +
This place is amazing and they make you feel so special on your day! Myself, my matron and maid of honour, my mom, my mother in law and my grandmother in law all got pedicures or manicures, hair and makeup done here. Everybody was super nice and they did an AMAZING job! I was a little bit concerned because my mom never wears makeup but they did hair and makeup to everybody’s personal taste and we all looked fabulous. I went with the airbrush makeup which I think everybody should do. It didn’t rub off on anything and at the end of the night my makeup looked perfect! I had bought a few items in case I need some touch ups after all my tears, but the only thing I needed to touch up was my lipstick. I also went with fake eyelashes which I have never worn before. It felt a little weird at first but my eyes looked really good in pictures. I had two veils (a long traditional one for the ceremony and a birdcage for the reception) and the stylist let me stop in after the pictures. She attached the birdcage and re-styled my hair for me. Everybody here was awesome!
Caesars Palace Flowers: A+
I have to admit I had low expectations for my flowers but I didn’t want to have to pay the $200.00 outside vendor fee and loose my $200.00 credit, so I went with flowers from Caesars. They actually did a fabulous job and I got lots of compliments on my flowers. I had a calla lily and succulent bouquet for me and my maids, calla lily corsages for the moms and succulent boutonnieres for the guys. They looked great and I got lots of compliments on them. The total bill for 3 bouquets, 2 corsages and 5 boutonnieres was about $340.00 after my $200.00 credit. They held up through out the evening really well. I also had them make the boutonnieres with a magnetic backing (stole that idea off of the Bachlorette) which was great because nobody has pin holes on their suit and they were super easy to put on!
Caesars Palace Chapel (Juno Garden): C
My grading might be a little bit harsh but I was disappointed with the service from their chapels. Don’t get me wrong, the location is great, our marriage ceremony was beautiful, and I am so happy to be married but they definitely have room for improvement here! Our co-ordinator was Rebecca and while she was very nice she didn’t seem to be very detail oriented. She e-mailed me asking to pay about 4 times even though I had already paid when we booked the chapel and once we meet her she kept referring to our ceremony time as 3:00 pm even though it was at 5:00 pm.
They have a private waiting room at the back of the garden for the bride to wait in. I get that I was one of the last weddings of the day but it was really dirty. There were fake nails on the floor (which really grossed me out!) and when I went to the bathroom the garbage was over flowing so somebody had piled the garbage in the sink. They also made a mistake and played the wrong song for me to walk down the aisle. The minister was very nice and he did a good job on the civil ceremony. When I got up the front, I saw that they had put a microphone on Dustin. I had assumed that I was for when we read our vows (which we wrote ourselves). When I had watched the YouTube videos of other ceremonies everybody was loud and clear but the mic was just for the video and not wired for our guests. That meant when he read his vows nobody could hear him. When it was my turn I took the mic from the minister so that everybody could hear me. I wish I had clarified this prior to the service (and I recommend that you ladies do!) so that everybody could have heard both of our vows. I know that options might vary on this but I do feel that people flew all this way for our wedding so they wanted to hear our vows!
All Events DJ (Adam Flowers): A+
Another company that was well worth every penny spent! We paid about $1400.00 to have him DJ and MC our wedding (there are cheaper packages for just the DJ’ing portion). I am not to sure about how prices are within the States but I though it was very reasonable compared to what some DJ’s charge where I am from. Adam did such an amazing job and some of our family members said that they thought he was one of our friends he knew us and our guests so well. We had a total of three Skype appointments with this company to arrange our wedding. The first was just a consultation with the owner of the company and the second and third were with Adam himself to plan our wedding. He had a lot of great suggestions for planning fun activities and was really interactive with us and our guests (but not in a cheesy way). He had us fill out questionnaire about each other, our bridal party and some of our guests so that he could reference these points through out the evening. At the end of the night, he even did some cool magic tricks for some of our guests. He played great music and kept everybody dancing until the end of the reception.
Caesars Palace Reception (Jupiter Pool): A+
For all the other short comings I felt about Caesars, their catering department made up for it! We worked with Rachael leading up to our wedding who was great and all of the catering/bartending staff on the day of our wedding was fantastic! The total bill ended up being close to $21000.00 so it wasn’t a cheap option but the venue was amazing and I would choose it again in a heartbeat. The evening was the perfect temperature (but we had rented patio heaters just in case) and it was so beautiful being surrounded by the lights of the pool and the lights from the hotel towers surrounding the pool. Our guest had an amazing time and loved the fancy venue choice. The beverage packages were great and so was the food. We were so busy we didn’t get to eat a lot of it but what we had was great and everybody said it was delicious. We also had fewer guests than what we were expecting so we upgraded to having an ice cream sundae station and a slider station for later on in the evening. You are not able to have a plated dinner here so it was heavy apps, pasta stations and beef tenderloin station. There were lots of food and lots of places for our guest to sit as they had put out a variety of tables and chairs out. We also had a three tiered wedding cake and champagne toast included with the food package. The cake was crazy good and for our cake tasting a couple days prior they baked us three individual cakes. We had red velvet, chocolate cappuccino caramel, and chocolate hazelnut praline. I would recommend this venue choice for Caesars to anybody as it was truly an amazing night!
Cleopatra’s Barge (in Caesars Palace): A
After our reception, everybody came here to continue the party. There was no cover or line up and the band that was playing was lots of fun. It was a good place to go after our wedding.
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Sorry for the long reviews, just wanted to make sure that I didn’t leave any of the important parts out. Our wedding was amazing and I am so happy to be married! Good luck with all of your planning and I am happy to help like other Knotties have helped me!