Re: Pictures from my wedding at Vanderbilt Mansion

Congratulations!! You look Beautiful. Love your dress, the girls dresses and the flowers.

Re: Pictures from my wedding at Vanderbilt Mansion

Very nice... Congrats

VENDOR REVIEW

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....

Re: Pictures from my wedding at Vanderbilt Mansion

You look beautiful! Like the perfect bride- congratulations!

Re: Pictures from my wedding at Vanderbilt Mansion

You looked beautiful....congratulations

Re: Pictures from my wedding at Vanderbilt Mansion

Beautiful!

Re: Pictures from my wedding at Vanderbilt Mansion

Beautiful pics. You have to post some more.

Please join us on the newlyweds boards.

Re: Pictures from my wedding at Vanderbilt Mansion

Wow!! Just gorgeous!! Congratulations! It all looked beautiful even if it did rain! Thank you for sharing! I love seeing the Vanderbilt!! Hooray, you are married!

Re: Pictures from my wedding at Vanderbilt Mansion

you look soo gorgeous!!

Re: Pictures from my wedding at Vanderbilt Mansion

Review continued...

Caterers for Vanderbilt: A Lovin' Oven did a fantastic job. From the moment we arrived, we were being taken care of. The banquet manager, Carolyn, is very organized and she was very helpful throughout the whole planning process. You are in good hands with her taking care of things. When we needed to get to the mansion earlier for picture taking they were able to accomodated us - there was food and beverages all set up upon our arrival. Carolyn, the Maitre D and the bridal attendant made sure everything went smoothly for our day. If there was a problem, they made such great efforts to solve them - For example, I named the tables with signs from the Chinese astrology and I had one table left that I forgot to make a table card so Carolyn and her staff searched high and low on the internet trying to find a description and made up a table card for me at the last minute. We unfortunately did not make it to our cocktail hour as we were busy with additional picture taking - but they brought us a sampling of the cocktail food and it was so yummy and we were quite hungry by then that we were stuffing our faces privately in the bridal room. The food at the reception looked great - we didn't eat much as we were too full of adrenaline - but our guests told us the food was great and they were stuffed by the end of the evening. Many guests were telling us it was the best wedding they've been to!


Transportation/Shuttle Bus: C- We rented a bus from Best Trails & Travel Corporation to shuttle the bridal party and some family members from Manhattan to Long Island and then shuttled guests from the hotel in Long Island and from the Oakdale train station to the Mansion and back. The bus was 20minutes late to pick up the bridal party and family members from Manhattan. Then the bus driver tells my FH that he can’t use the directions we gave them ‘cuz buses are not allowed on the Southern State Parkway (note that we sent the company directions to get to the mansion a couple weeks before the date but they never told us they couldn’t travel based on our directions). So my FH and bridesmaids had to figure out how to go by LIE as they were driving, needless to say, they got stuck in traffic and got lost and was about an hour late.

I had traveled separately from the bus and had arrived early and so I calmly waited for their arrival – what helped was that I didn’t have a watch on so I did not know what time it was. Once everyone arrived – it was a whirlwind of activity. As the bus was late, it cut into the time we had to take pictures. But, I took everything in stride and just went with the flow. Once the ceremony started, I just shifted into cruise control and let everything fall into place. We had a great time, despite the rain and the initial delays. I wish I could do the ceremony/reception all over again!


Review of photographers: VIP Studios - see my post on the next page.

Re: Pictures from my wedding at Vanderbilt Mansion

you look great.. the place looked amazing.. your bridesmaids dresses were a great color

Re: Pictures from my wedding at Vanderbilt Mansion

Beautiful you looked like a princess

Re: My June 7, 2003 wedding at Vanderbilt Mansion -Updated with more pictures and reviews

great pics, you looked beautiful!

Re: Pictures from my wedding at Vanderbilt Mansion

congrats! beautiful dress!!!

Re: Pictures from my wedding at Vanderbilt Mansion

Glad you were happy with your band. We used that band when they had their other name. We had MAJOR issues with them. Kim didnt show up to our wedding and neither did 3 other members that were on our contract. I am glad they stuck to your play list, because out of the 8 songs I had on mine, they only played about two. THe saxophone player didnt show up so that was another issue with us. Seems like it is hit or miss with this band. You must of got lucky and hit a good day where all members you booked were able to make it. Good luck!

Re: Pictures from my wedding at Vanderbilt Mansion

Cindy: So sorry to hear you had a problem with the band. Thankfully everything went well for us, they must have pulled their act together. We actually booked them 2 months before our wedding and were in frequent contact with Kim during that time, so we felt comfortable with them. We also put into our contract that if the named band members did not show up then we would deduct from their fees.

Re: Pictures from my wedding at Vanderbilt Mansion

Congrats, you looked lovely. I love your pix and your dress.

Re: Pictures from my wedding at Vanderbilt Mansion

PS your hair was gawjus too

Re: Pictures from my wedding at Vanderbilt Mansion

Your hair looked great

VIP Studio Review

A- I finally got my proofs back and have been looking through them and I have to say they are great! We had two photographers - one being John and Kathy (I think) and they shot over 900 pictures for the whole evening. They are very pleasant to work with. John was very easy going and was flexible in structuring a custom package for us. A great thing about VIP is that as part of the basic package you get two photographers - this turned out to be a important thing for my wedding since John ended up getting a flat tire on the way to my wedding and was late in arriving but we were able to start shooting as planned with the 2nd photographer. Another minor glitch was that when we contracted with VIP we were supposed to also get a photo assistant (written in contract) but on the day of there was no photo assistant and we were not informed ahead of time (we have since worked this out with VIP, though). Another minor issue I have is that it's hard to contact the studio and/or John as there's no one who staffs the phone on a regular basis - you need to leave a message and wait for someone to call you back and sometimes you don't get called back until 1-2 days have passed. But I guess, this keeps VIP's pricing very competitive because of low overhead. I recommend them highly.