My long and VERY LATE review-MPI, thomas paul photography, high energy, and more!

I never posted much, but this site helped me with every aspect of my wedding and the reviews were always so helpful to me! It has taken me a long time to sit down and write my review, mostly because I have been enjoying married life!

My fiancé proposed on Palm Sunday of 2006 and we quickly decided that we wanted to get married February 17, 2007. We are both teachers and getting married on that Saturday meant that we could go on a honeymoon right after the wedding, because we had off the following week for President’s Week. Being that the date was only 10 months away, we quickly started looking at reception halls and booked The Miller Place Inn within 4 days of getting engaged! I had been to a wedding at The Miller Place Inn a few years earlier and loved the décor and the homey feel. It was the perfect size for our wedding and was very warm and inviting for that time of year.

OK on to my reviews, they are in no particular order:

St. Rose of Lima Church, Massapequa:
I don’t think you can really rate a church. We chose this church because it is where many of my family members have celebrated their sacraments and it was close to my mother’s house. Overall, the experience was OK, I was very unhappy with their upkeep of the grounds and some of the interactions with the church during the planning process. Three days before our wedding, New York was hit with a major ice storm. The entrance to the church was one huge sheet of ice and it was extremely dangerous to walk on. We have no pictures of anyone in front of the church (it may have been to cold to do that anyway!) but I was most concerned with people getting hurt trying to get in and out of the church, we were hanging on each other and holding each other up on the way in and out of the limo. This was totally unacceptable to me.

Miller Place Inn:
Like I mentioned earlier, we booked the MPI within four days of getting engaged. This was by far one of the best decisions we made. We dealt with Christopher throughout all of the planning and he was an absolute pleasure to work with. He was very accommodating and helpful. He was available anytime we called, and we did call as early as 8 am and as late as 8pm throughout our planning, and made everything really easy for us. He always remembered us when we called, and made us feel like we were his number one priority-he made us feel like our business was really important to him. The day of the wedding our maitre d’ and bridal attendant were everything we could expect them to be. They were attentive and worked hard to make sure the evening went smoothly, and because of their hard work the night was wonderful! We could not have asked for more. I highly recommend the MPI.

High Energy DJ (Ralph and Kenny):
We originally booked another DJ, a popular DJ on this site. We were unhappy with the way we were treated and decided to cancel that contract and book High Energy. A friend at work recommended Ralph and his company and we are so grateful that they did! Ralph is very professional and easygoing and very reasonably priced-three things that we were looking for in a DJ. We didn’t want a DJ that did a lot of talking and harassing of the crowd. We met with Ralph about a week before the wedding to go over song choices etc. We gave Ralph an idea of the music we liked, a very small list of songs we didn’t want played and then told him that we trusted his judgment. That he was to read the crowd and play what he knew would keep everyone dancing. Well he did a great job; the dance floor was never empty! At the end of the night, a friend requested a song we had put on the no play list-Ralph immediately approached me and asked if he should play it. At that point, I had no problem with him playing the song, he checked with me first, it was the end of the night and I had enough champagne to like any music he played! I highly recommend High Energy!

All Star Limos:
We looked at several different limo companies and kept feeling like we were being swindled! We booked All Star and felt like we were in good hands. We had two 10 passenger limos. The two limos were supposed to go to the guy’s house, bring them to the church and then come to my mother’s house and pick all the girls up. Well one of the limos was extremely late getting to my mother’s house and it delayed the wedding by over a half hour. We were never really given any kind of explanation as to why the limo was so late, the driver in my limo kept saying the other driver was on his way and would be there momentarily. In the grand scheme of things it didn’t really screw up our day, but it did put a slight strain on everyone. It seems to me that the driver must have stopped somewhere in between the two houses, but we were never given an explanation. We also used All Star for pick ups at the end of the night (a town car for us, and a 14 passenger van for my family) and a pick up in the morning to go to the airport for the honeymoon. For those pickups they were on time.

Wedding Cinema Video (Pete):
We met with Pete and instantly knew we were going to book him. We thought about looking at other videographers and decided to just go with our gut and book Pete. Pete was exactly what we were looking for in a videographer. He was laid back, unobtrusive and his work speaks for itself. We haven’t gotten our video yet (our fault not his, we have yet to pick out our music selections etc) but I am sure it will be wonderful. Pete was on time and ready to work when our ceremony started. He never got in anyone’s way, although he did make my 7 year old niece feel like a movie star-at one point on the dance floor she said, “Aunt Jenny I think the video guy thinks I am famous, he keeps taping me!” I can’t wait to see the video!

Flower Barn (Mike):
I went to two florists and decided to book Flower Barn. Their price was very competitive and Mike was very easy to work with. I didn’t really have an image in my mind as to what I wanted for the flowers, I was pretty flexible. Mike suggested ivory, cream and chocolate colored roses and hydrangea for the girls bouquets (they wore blue and brown) and similar flowers for the centerpieces. Since hydrangea are a delicate flower Mike said he would put an oasis on each of them in the bouquet so that they would have a constant supply of water. A week before the wedding I drove 40 minutes to drop off swatches of fabric from my dress as well as the girl’s dresses so that Mike could match the color for the ribbon that would be wrapped around the bouquet.

The day of the wedding, the florist delivery person dropped off the flowers and quite frankly they were not what I expected. My dress was a dark ivory and champagne color, and the ribbons on my bouquet were stark white. The boutonnières did not look very fresh and some of the roses in the girl’s bouquets were not the freshest either. They were already turning brown on the edges. I quickly told the delivery person that the ribbon was the wrong color and he very nicely took it back to the shop to have the ribbon changed. I realized nothing could be done about the other flowers; they wouldn’t be able to make the bouquets and boutonnières over after all. We just went with it and continued on with our day. I must say that some of the hydrangeas were drooping before the ceremony and the girls could not carry their bouquets in to the reception as they were introduced because they were basically dead! The hydrangeas were totally hanging down upside down at that point-it was then very obvious that they never put the oasis on the hydrangea at all! I must say the centerpieces and decorations on the cake were beautiful and surprisingly the flowers photographed really well.

Bridal Elegance (Phyllis):
I actually found my dress one day at RK Bridal but could not see spending the money they were asking. I called around to several bridal salons on long island and Phyllis was able to get my dress for $300 dollars less. She also saved us money on my girl’s dresses too. The girl’s dresses came in on time and she did the alterations and dyed their shoes. My dress however did not come in until a little under three weeks before the wedding! Talk about panic-this was the only thing that really went wrong before the wedding and thank goodness the dress did come in on time. We had to squeeze in the fittings and it made the last few weeks before the wedding a little stressful but it all turned out ok. I will say that Phyllis does get a little distracted and the store is overwhelmed with business. She needs some more help in there because it can get crazy at times! My mother bought her shoes and purse through Phyllis and had them dyed. She had to call repeatedly to see if it was ready and she kept getting the run around. In the end, she got her shoes and purse, I got my wedding dress and all was well-but it was a crazy couple of weeks!

Jacqueline Nicole Makeup:
I went for a trial with Jacqueline Nicole and absolutely loved her. I booked her on the spot and was happy that I did. She came to my mother’s house and did my makeup along with my mother and sister (matron of honor), the rest of the bridal party were small children and needed no help to look beautiful! No of us wear much makeup on a daily basis so we didn’t want to look like clowns or anything with the makeup. Jacqueline was very patient and helpful; she talked to all of us through the morning and kept everyone calm and happy. She was happy to adjust anything that we felt might be too heavy-or light and stayed until she knew we were totally happy with our makeup. She actually did my sister and mom first and then hung out for about 20-30 minutes before doing my makeup so that I wasn’t done too early. She was very easy to have around and was very professional! I highly recommend her-actually a neighbor used Jacqueline for her wedding three weeks later based on our recommendation. She made us all feel comfortable in the makeup and I LOVED my fake eyelashes-I felt like a movie star!

Salon 1041 (Chrissy)-
This salon is located in Massapequa Park and Chrissy is a godsend. I went for two trials with Chrissy and she is by far the nicest, most patient hair stylist I have ever worked with. I thought I knew what I wanted, and she did exactly what I told her to do. She spent two hours on my hair during my first trial. I thought I liked it, showed it to my fiancé and my parents. My mother and fiancé both said it was nice, and when my father saw me, all he said was, “That’s not my Jenny!” I looked in the mirror and thought you know what it is not me, it was to tightly curled and too “styled”. I went for another trial with Chrissy, she tried to make the curls looser and pinned half of it up again. I wasn’t sure if I liked it, I kept apologizing, and all she said was you are going to stay here until you like it, you only get married once and you should definitely like the way your hair looks! She was so patient-and after 4 hours of curling and styling my hair in a million different ways I said, you know I think I just want to look like myself, why am I trying to curl my hair when my hair is straight?? So after four hours of trying different curly styles, she then straightened my hair, pulled some of the front back off my face and put my comb in-voila, it was me only better! Now that is what I call a patient hairdresser! I now go to Chrissy to get my haircut. I can’t recommend her enough!

Barrons (veil and hair comb):

I knew I didn’t want a tiara and I found a simple and pretty comb at Barrons at the tri-county flea market. I found it after trying on practically every headpiece at the place! Again, I was dealing with very patient, kind salespeople. I knew I had a hard time making decisions but this was getting ridiculous! I ordered a simple two tiered veil and since we didn’t have a swatch from my dress yet, they said they would wait to make the veil. Well, it got to the point where they couldn’t wait any longer and the dress was still not in! So I had to guess on the color of the veil. Let’s just say I am not a good guesser! The veil was way lighter than my dress and did not work at all. Barron’s was very accommodating. The rushed to make me a veil to match my dress and only charged me a small fee instead of charging me for a whole new veil-which they had every right to do. Their policy clearly states that there are no returns or exchanges.

Now the best for last:

Thomas Paul Photography!!!!!!!!!

Tom was by far our favorite vendor. When we were looking for photographers we actually met with Tom first and really liked him. We felt obligated to shop around so we met with two other photographers and realized that we weren’t going to find someone to compare with Tom. We didn’t have a huge budget and Tom was definitely giving us the most for our money. However, that was not a deciding factor for us, what made us really want to book Tom was his personality. We knew that the photographer would be the one person that would be spending the most time with us during the day. We wanted to make sure that we felt comfortable with them and that we would not mind having them around us all day. We made the right choice with Tom. We felt very comfortable with him, almost like he was an old friend hanging out with us. We went for our engagement shoot in the fall and Tom made us feel at ease instantly! He then called us periodically to check on things and to see if we had any questions leading up to the big day. He even called us during the holidays just to say hello and wish us a happy holiday-no other vendor did that! The engagement pictures came out beautifully and we loved them all! The day of the wedding he came to my mom’s house to take pictures and his associate colleen went to our apartment to take pictures of the guys. They showed up early and ready to work. Tom showed up right around the time that the flowers were delivered and I was a little upset about the quality of the flowers. Tom (and everyone else) let me vent for a few minutes and then Tom calmly said, “Jenn you are getting married in two hours, forget about the flowers!” and that says it all, he put things in perspective and calmed me down. He works quickly and didn’t get in anyone’s way. He made all of us feel very comfortable and he was able to get some adorable shots of my flower girl-even though she wouldn’t pose for any of the group shots. Tom was able to get pictures of things that I didn’t even see, he captured such special moments for us. In between the ceremony and cocktail hour, Tom did most of our family pictures. Even with the posed pictures he worked quickly and we were able to get them done quickly enough that we got to attend our cocktail hour. Since some of my husband’s family didn’t go straight to the reception hall-we forgot to tell them we wanted to do pictures then!-Tom pulled us out of the reception when the salad was being served. He worked so quickly we barely missed anything, and I actually got to eat the salad! I can’t say enough about Tom’s work ethic-he is top notch. Tom had our proofs ready two days after we got home from the honeymoon, and we were not disappointed. It was so difficult to choose the pictures that we wanted to include in the album-there were no bad shots to leave out! We are so pleased with the work Tom did and he was an absolute pleasure to work with.


We did do many DIY things such as menus, wishbowl, bathroom baskets, scrolls for donation favor, votive placecards that were a nice touch. My advice is to start them early on in your engagement so that you can enjoy making these things and not be stressed out at the end of your engagement as the wedding is approaching. I wouldn't have known about half of these things without liweddings.com so thank you all for your great ideas!!

In the end, we had a wonderful day! We were blessed to be surrounded by all the people we love and we enjoyed every minute of the day. It is true what people say, the day goes by so quickly! Although a few things did go wrong, it did NOT put a damper on the day at all. At the end of the day, to be able to say we were surrounded by friends and family, celebrating our marriage-who really cares if the flowers were droopy? We tried to keep things in perspective during the planning and that day, and luckily we never got too stressed out. It was a beautiful start to our new life together. I have no idea how to include pictures (and my husband did not want his face on the internet ) but you should definitely look at Tom’s website (thomaspaulphoto.com) to see his work-his work really speaks for itself!

Thanks for reading!

Re: My long and VERY LATE review-MPI, thomas paul photography, high energy, and more!

congrats!!!
cannot wait to see pics!!!

Re: My long and VERY LATE review-MPI, thomas paul photography, high energy, and more!

congrats!! great review!

Re: My long and VERY LATE review-MPI, thomas paul photography, high energy, and more!

Congrats!

Re: My long and VERY LATE review-MPI, thomas paul photography, high energy, and more!

thanks for the review

Re: My long and VERY LATE review-MPI, thomas paul photography, high energy, and more!

I felt the same way about Tom when I met him.

I met two other vendors before him. They both felt like a factory, Thomas Paul I felt very comfortable with.

Re: My long and VERY LATE review-MPI, thomas paul photography, high energy, and more!

congratulations! Post pics when you can ~ thank y ou for sharing your review!

Re: My long and VERY LATE review-MPI, thomas paul photography, high energy, and more!

Great review!! Would love to see pics! I'm so glad you loved Tom! I almost booked him and sometimes kick myself for not doing it! CONGRATS!!

Re: My long and VERY LATE review-MPI, thomas paul photography, high energy, and more!

Congrats!!! I can't wait to see pics!

Re: My long and VERY LATE review-MPI, thomas paul photography, high energy, and more!

Congrats