Here's my Vendor Review So where do I start??? Well it rained and poured all day even with some flood warnings on my day. What do they say about good luck and rain? Well I must have been the luckiest bride! I took it in stride and stay pretty dry but I'm not sure about my guests.
Make-up/Hair:
Beauty One (Beauty salon that is part of the photographers Wedding Group One www.weddingone.com 718-939-3535).
A- They are a full service salon in Flushing, NY and are especially good with Asians. They did an amazing job. The head make-up artist, Vicky, is so talented and really looks at your features and suggests styles that are suited for your face. They're prices are on the higher end but truly worth it. The negatives are that they prefer that you come to the salon and if you want them to come to you - there's a hefty location fee.
Close-up pictures of make-up/hair:
Wedding Dress:
B+ I got my
Ann Barge dress from a sample sale at
Kleinfeld's and I also had them do the alterations. They did a very good job on my dress since it had to be altered down a couple sizes and I had the long sleeve illusion sleeves removed to make the dress strapless. I liked the fact that there were specialists who worked on the beading after the dress is finished to make sure any beading which might have been loosened/fell off during the alterations were completed. The dress fitted like a glove - so I had no problems throughout the evening. The negatives are the scheduling of appointments for fittings- you can only schedule one appointment at a time, they only have 6pm and 8pm appointments available on weeknights after work, they often run late from one appointment to another and their alteration fee is on the high side if your dress doesn't require much work.
Bridesmaid Dresses: We got the dresses from Ann Taylor. I had my BM buy the dress when they went on sale and since they were off the rack, they could try on different sizes and none of them required any alterations, thus my BM's didn't have to spend a fortune and they were happy about that. I had my BM buy their own style of shoe and to get them dyed the color of the dress. If I had that to do again I would just tell them to get black satin shoes, 'cuz some of the BM's had problems with getting the right shade of red and none of them quite looked right.
Ceremony Music:
A We used the
Island String Quartet (Ira Kocivar 631-689-9879). They did a fine job. Ira was very easy to work with. We wanted to have a hymn during the ceremony for people to sing to and they were able to learn the song at the last minute for us. Their fee was very reasonable - better than most.
Band:
A Swept Away (aka Creations Production www.creationsmusic.com). We had a seven piece band (with saxophone). They were fabulous. Guests were coming up to us and telling us that the music was great and saying how this band should be touring and is not the typical 'wedding band'. The dance floor was constantly packed with people dancing. We had a very specific list of songs to be played and they kept to the list. They also learned our first dance song within a very short amount of time. We dealt with Kim Sozzi, the lead female vocalist, and she was great to work with on the business end besides having an amazing voice. They have an immense play list which was one reason we picked them - they could play songs to satisfy the older folks as well as more contemporary music to satisfy the younger folks and they played them well.
Officiant:
A We got Dr. Nishan Nanjarian, a methodist minister who is a professor at a college in LI, to perform our ceremony. He was very easy to work with and had a pleasant personality.
Flowers:
B- Burtons I thought they did a decent job on the flowers for the most part. The only issues I have with them are that they may not be as details-oriented as I would have like (explained below) but these are things that only the bride would be concerned with but the guests would probably not notice. I chose them because they are very reasonably priced for the type of flowers I wanted. I chose some exotic flowers (birds of paradise, orchids, anthuriums, ginger, roses, calla lilies) which would have cost a lot more elsewhere. My centerpieces looked fine in general- I thought my high centerpieces could have been a bit fuller with flowers, but maybe 'cuz I picked exotic flowers I got less. They did do a great job on my bouquet -I loved how it turned out but it was missing a particular rose that I had asked for. They were short in delivering a boutinere (sp?) at the wedding and by the time we noticed it was kind of late to call them. I also noticed that the ribbon tied to my bouquet was a bit dirty. And I had two of what they called 'alter' flower arrangements on tulle stands for my ceremony which sounded like they would be big arrangements (the florist described them as big requiring bigger types of flower to fill it) which I was disappointed with (I probably should have asked to see a picture) - they looked like the size of the low table centerpieces placed on a wire stand. And the worst part of the alter flowers was that they didn't remove these yellow paper tags that was attached to the top of each of the arrangement (the paper had our names on it to indicate to the delivery person which arrangement went to what event) so during the ceremony I notice the tags and they show up in all my ceremony pictures! If you are on a budget and flowers are not as important as other things then they are a OK florist. But if you want something special or very detailed then you may want to checkout other florists because they tend to be a 'factory' of sorts - I didn't feel like I got the personalization as some other brides did - this could be due to whom I worked with - this older woman (don't remember her name) and not with Mike, as some other brides who were very happy with their flowers did.
Review continued on my next post....
