I had my wedding on April 23rd and had fantastic vendors, all of which I was able to find because of this board, so I wanted to share my experience and hopefully help future brides with their choices.
Coordinators - Embellished Affairs, A++; Sheena and Tabitha were amazing, they were great to work with, very professional and affordable. They were great at the rehearsal for corraling my huge wedding party and if there were any problems throughout the night, I never heard about it. They were even able to fix my bussell twice which had broken earlier in the night, had all the safety pins needed!
Venue/Caterer/Ceremony Site - Whitehall Manor - A+, This was our dream site, the manager, Doug was very easy to work with and was always available for questions or suggestions. The food was great, and all the staff was very professional. They do a great job there!
Officiant - Jeff Maszal "Weddings by Jeff" - A+, We booked him pretty late, only about 2 months before the wedding. He was very accomodating and great to work with, let us design our own ceremony out of multiple ones he had and cut and paste what we wanted. He was very professional and delivered a great ceremony.
Hotel - Comfort Suites Leesburg - A+, they were easy to work with and accomodating. We rented their meeting room for a rehearsal dinner BBQ and morning after brunch. They even let us use their 2nd van when no one else needed it.
Cake - Amphora Bakery - A+, we tried about 4 cake places and Amphora was by far the best. They cake looked exactly as we had discussed and tasted great.
DJ - Dave Grimm (Bialeks) - A++, Dave was great to work with, we were looking for a DJ with international music experience since half of the wedding was Persian. He even made us a "mashed up" version of a song to dance to for our first dance. He did our ceremony music, cocktail hour and reception and kept the party going all night long.
Flowers - Wegmans Florist Sterling - A+ I went with Wegmans because I wasn't doing floral centerpieces and just needed bouquets and boutinneres, they were very easy to work with and very affordable. I could not believe their prices! They can get you whatever flowers you want, special order anything at a great price.
Flower Petals - Petal Garden - A+ I used this website to order freeze dried flower petals for the ceremony aisle. Many options to choose from and good product.
Makeup/Hair Artist - Kim Steele - A+ Kim was great to work with. She even travelled all the way to Leesburg for me. I gave her a photo of the hairstyle I wanted and she was able to recreate it perfectly. My hairstyle stayed all night long and I got many compliments on my makeup. So happy I splurged and went with Kim!
Buses - Chariots for Hire - A They were easy to work with, there was a slight mixup the day of, they didn't think they could get their big 60 person bus to the location, so they changed it for 2 30 person buses and the 2nd bus left before the end of the night, so about 45 people had to smash onto a 30 person bus, but they are giving us the last hour of our payment back to rectify the situation, and it just seemed to be a miscommunication somewhere down the road, other than that, they did a great job and were very professional.
Invitations - AmericanWedding.com - A We were very happy with our invitations from this website, we went with the cheapest option we could find and they still did a very professional job. For some reason, we missed where we were supposed to put our address on the back of the envelope and when it came with no address, they let us just mail them back and reprinted them, and we got the envelopes back in a week all corrected.
Dress - Jeanette's Bridal, Manassas - A+ My consultant, Joan was a dream to work with, very professional and knew what to do, I went in with a price point and she showed me which dresses would be in my budget. They take excellent care of their dresses, help you in and out of them in the dressing room, because of this, I was able to get a dress off the rack in fantastic shape for about 1/3 of the retail cost! I love my dress. I had heard they were selling the business and this was as of August 2009, so not sure if they still have the same management, but my experience then was great.
Dance Lessons - Dance Factory Arlington, Natalie - A++ Natalie was great to work with, we did the 5 lesson wedding survival package, which you can get a discount code/coupon off their website for. My husband does not dance well and we went in with big hopes and Natalie was a great teacher, very accomodating and able to show him to do the steps so he got it! We had a fantastic first dance and owe it all to her! Our guests loved it and even started singing/claping along!
Overall we had wonderful vendors because of the recommendations I was able to get off this board. I hope each of you brides have the same! If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask!