Vendors
If you have any questions about any of them, please page me on the North NJ board, and I'll be happy to answer them, if I can. I don't frequent the board a lot, but I know others who do, and they'll let me know. For some of them, I spent a lot of time researching them. Others, I booked them purely on recommendations from others, and a few, just on price/gut instinct.
Venue: Ocean Place Resort & Spa
We chose this venue, pretty much by default, as it was the only one that met all our requirements and was still in our price range. We wanted to be married by the beach, but not on the beach. We wanted a formal wedding and also needed a venue that could provide an outdoor site for the ceremony as well as an indoor site in case of bad weather. And lastly, we wanted a view of the beach from the reception room. Every other place we looked at on the Jersey Shore was missing at least one element...either no outdoor ceremony site at all, or those that had an acceptable outdoor ceremony site had an unacceptable indoor backup site. There were a few venues much farther south, that met all our requirements, and are absolutely stunning, but they charge a rental fee on top of a very high pp fee, making them cost prohibitive. The Ocean Place has a reputation for amazing food, and since it's also a hotel, had rooms available for getting ready and for our OOT family and guests. Unfortunately, the reception rooms with the ocean views aren't decorated very nicely, and while we did have some venue regret after we signed the contract, realized we could at least control that somewhat.
Wedding Gown~Bridesmaids' Gowns~MOB Gown: True Love Bridals
I went to about 13 different dress shops...some more than once...and quickly learned who provided me with good customer service and who I would never order a gown from. I had narrowed it down to two shops I loved working with, True Love and Hearts for You, and was not sure who to pick when it came time to order my gown. When I chose a Casablanca gown, the decision was made for me, as Hearts for You didn't carry Casablanca. Not much of a consolation to them, but I did order my earrings and flowergirl dresses from Hearts for You. True Love gives a 15% discount to MOB and Bridesmaids, so the bridesmaids dresses and my Mom's dress will be ordered from there also. My only complaint with True Love Bridal is their dressing rooms and the area in front of the mirror are extremely small.
Tuxedos: Mens Wearhouse
I've heard very mixed reviews of them, but considering that the groom, best man, three ushers and two fathers live in 5 different states, we needed some place that would accomodate all of them. Just have to cross our fingers that all goes well.
Graphic designer: Jessica's Design Shop
Jessica was a sweetheart to deal with. She has the patience of Job, and needed it, considering my indecisiveness. She did a great job on designing our STDs. We just started working with her again on our invitations and co-ordinating paper products. We'll be updating the paper section to show our progress. UPDATE: Jessica did an amazing job on our invitations. She nailed my vision on the second graphic she did and it only took a few tweeks to get them perfect. She also used the graphic to design our menues.
Printing Paper Products: Vistaprint
What can I say? Anyone who pays full price for anything on Vistaprint is an idiot. They are always running sales, and 50% off, free picture upload and free shipping coupons can be found all over the internet. Every week, they offer different products for free, just pay s/h. Quality isn't great, and their font/design options are limited, but are more than adequate for most paper products for the wedding. I really need to add that while they are perfectly suitable for minor printing, I would never consider them for any serious printing projects, and certainly not for wedding invitations or menus. Our rehearsal dinner invitations were done with them and we had to hand trim all of them, as the border was missing on one edge. Also, the weight of the paper is not heavy - at all. The postcards we had made for the bon fire were also missing one edge border. While we could live with this (and honestly, had no time to have them corrected) I would be mortified if our wedding invitations or menus were of the quality. I will say, though, that the day of time line cards and posters were awesome. Win some, lose some.
Officiant: Rev Phil from A Beautiful Affair of the Heart. We found out three days before the wedding that Rev Phil would be our officiant (see below for the reason why). We had zero choice in this, really, as there was just no time to find anyone else at such late notice. Thankfully, we had created our own ceremony and just had to forward it to Phil. We met him, literally, 15 minutes before the ceremony to go over it quickly, learn how to pronounce names, etc. All things considered, he did a great job. He was warm, personable, and aside from the few people who knew the situation with the last minute switch, no one had any idea he was virtually a stranger marrying us.
Officiant: Mitch the Minister. DO NOT USE THIS VERY UNPROFESSIONAL PERSON! We had wanted to be married by someone who knew us personally, but two different people we approached and asked if they would agree to become ordained online turned us down, so we had to look for a professional officiant. I has seen a Knottie who had used Mitch the Minster and raved about him. I googled him and saw he had rave reviews all over various wedding websites. Craig and I met with him in Dec, and found him very personable and felt very comfortable with him, so decided to use him. Sad to say, since then, he has been nearly impossible to get ahold of. It takes numerous emails and voice mails for him to return our calls. We are now two weeks out from our wedding, and we've yet to decide on a ceremony or readings with him. We finally spoke with him while driving up to NJ for our wedding and made arrangements to meet with him 10 days prior to the wedding. At that meeting, we discovered he was changing the order of the ceremony from what he had told us (and our programs had already been printed and were in the mail). Readings, vows and intent still had to be finalized. The following week....THREE days before our wedding, I received an email from some man, saying that he heard we needed an officiant for our wedding, and he had all the details of where and when the wedding was taking place. Thinking it was a scam, I emailed him back and asked him who he was and how he knew this information. He advised me that Mitch the Minister had contacted him, since he was unable to perform our wedding ceremony. Hysterical crying, I called Craig, and he called Mitch to find out what happened. Mitch "claims" his mother-in-law had died. I put the word claims in quotes because his individual FB page (not his professional one) makes no mention of his loss, but included a ton of 'happy' postings and, after our wedding date, makes mention of performing two different weddings on our wedding weekend. He also used a 'death in the family' before in excusing his lack of responding to us. Even if it was true, he should have at least called us himself, and not let us find out via a total stranger.
Florist/Event Designer: Marquis Florals
Kim was the second florist I met with, and loved everything about her. My Mom and I had met with Rose, Petals and Lace a few days earlier, and came away more confused than ever. Kim just 'got' me...understood my vision and immediately laid any concerns I had to rest. Her estimate was almost $1,000 less than Rose, Petals and Lace, and that sealed the deal for me. A few months later, I was going through some 'venue regret' and met with her to see what she could do to dress up the room. Very calmly, she showed me some ideas and told me not to worry, everything would turn out fine. At some point, you have to put your trust into the professionals you hire, and I trust her completely.
Photographer: John Arcara
My Mom was googling for some pictures of venues along the Jersey Shore, when she came upon his blog. She forwarded it to me, and it was love at first sight. He was the very first vendor we met with and booked him before we even had our venue decided on. Craig and I immediately felt as ease talking with him, and after doing an engagement photo session, knew he was the right choice to document our wedding. We never met with another photographer, or compared prices. We now know he's one of the highest priced photographers in NJ, but we don't care. To us, he's worth his weight in gold.
Transportation: First Class Limo
This wasn't a hard choice. We wanted a classic rolls royce to transport us from our venue to Monmouth University for pictures, and there aren't many companies that have these vehicles. This company came very highly recommended from the NNJ Knotties, and are located close to my Mom's house. Their prices were very competitive.
Reception Band: Brian Kirk & The Jirks
We knew we wanted live music at our reception, as Craig is a classically trained musician, teaches music and most of his friends are musicians. We just had no clue how to go about finding a wedding band in NJ from NC. My cousin was getting married in May, 2009, and she had hired The Jirks for her wedding. The Jirks are a club band, playing mostly on the Jersey Shore, and we had heard some negative things about club bands and weddings, in general. I started asking some of my Jersey friends if they knew anything about the Jirks, and they all went crazy. They LOVED this band. We contacted Brian in January, 2009, explained our situation, and he agreed to hold our wedding date until after my cousin's wedding, so we could actually get to hear them play. Score! What could be better than a 5 hour audition? Our joy was short lived, when Brian called us a few weeks later to advise us that someone else wanted our date, and we would need to give him a deposit for him to continue holding our wedding date. Then, he told us his price increased! We were not happy, to say the least, and were seriously considering telling him "Thanks, but no thanks", when he called us back, completely on his own, to tell us he reconsidered and was willing to honor the first price he gave us. We mailed off our deposit and, while visiting the family in NJ in April, went with about 25 of our friends, to a club in Montclair, to hear the band. We were blown away - they were that good. Brian and Craig have bonded over music and Brian's insisting that Craig bring his trumpet and play with them at our reception.
Makeup Artist: Jeanine Mangan
Jeanine came highly recommended by not only the NNJ Knotties, but from other people I know who used her. Being in NC, I am pretty much at the mercy of recommendations, as I really don't have the time or opportunity to meet with many makeup artists. Jeanine lives in my NJ hometown and will come to my venue the day of the wedding, at no cost.
Hair Stylist: Danielle ([email protected])
Danielle has been by Mom's hairdresser for almost 10 years, and eventually, both my sister and I started going to her. Even after moving to NC, I always made an appointment with her to do my highlights and cuts when I came home to NJ to visit. Danielle has agreed to come to our venue the day of the wedding, at no additional cost. While she has a 'regular' job as a stylist at Milagro Spa, she is available to do hair for wedding parties on weekends. You can email her and mention my name as a reference.
Ceremony Musicians: St Peter's Brass Quintet. Since our ceremony was outdoors and beachside, we wanted a brass ensemble, as the sound of strings could easily be carried away with the wind. Also, string musicicans can be very picky about playing their instruments in an unprotected area outdoors. And lastly, Craig is a classically trained trumpet player, and is partial to the sound of brass instruments. While communication with them was iffy, they were able to play all the songs we wanted for the ceremony.
Photo Booth: East Coast Photo Booths
This choice came down to an Excel spreadsheet, comparing all the various companies, what they offered and for how much. East Coast won, plain and simple.
Videographer: Your Cinematic Wedding
We chose this company purely on gut feeling. Video was always low on my wish list. I knew I wanted a video of our wedding, but I also knew this would be the area we would compromise the most on. When we started pricing videographers, we were shocked at how expensive they were. Then I saw Rob Adams work and wanted a video with all the bells and whistles. Craig didn't even want a video...thought it was a waste of money. I sent an email to Rob Adams, to see if my date was available. He never got back to me. At first, I thought he might be on vacation, until I found his FB site, and saw he'd been posting the whole week I'd been waiting for a reply to my email. Ummm....it's hard enough dealing with NJ vendors while I'm in NC, I don't need a vendor who doesn't communicate well. After searching various wedding message boards for videographer recommendations, I came across Your Cinematic wedding. His pricing allowed me to have all the bells and whistles at half the price of Rob Adams. The catch? He's new to the wedding video game. He produces films for a living, so he knows how to work a camera, and loves the editing process. I just had a gut feeling that this guy could give us a reasonably decent video, and he's got close to a year to get some experience.
Wedding Cake: Palermo's
This is the baker my venue uses, so unless I want to pay out-of-pocket and go elsewhere, this is who I'm using. Luckily, they come very highly recommended. We went for a cake tasting and while we always knew we wanted red velvet, we loved all their flavors. They were very easy to work with and allowed us to purchase our own brooches and ribbon for the cake, saving us a bunch of money.
We chose this venue, pretty much by default, as it was the only one that met all our requirements and was still in our price range. We wanted to be married by the beach, but not on the beach. We wanted a formal wedding and also needed a venue that could provide an outdoor site for the ceremony as well as an indoor site in case of bad weather. And lastly, we wanted a view of the beach from the reception room. Every other place we looked at on the Jersey Shore was missing at least one element...either no outdoor ceremony site at all, or those that had an acceptable outdoor ceremony site had an unacceptable indoor backup site. There were a few venues much farther south, that met all our requirements, and are absolutely stunning, but they charge a rental fee on top of a very high pp fee, making them cost prohibitive. The Ocean Place has a reputation for amazing food, and since it's also a hotel, had rooms available for getting ready and for our OOT family and guests. Unfortunately, the reception rooms with the ocean views aren't decorated very nicely, and while we did have some venue regret after we signed the contract, realized we could at least control that somewhat.
Wedding Gown~Bridesmaids' Gowns~MOB Gown: True Love Bridals
I went to about 13 different dress shops...some more than once...and quickly learned who provided me with good customer service and who I would never order a gown from. I had narrowed it down to two shops I loved working with, True Love and Hearts for You, and was not sure who to pick when it came time to order my gown. When I chose a Casablanca gown, the decision was made for me, as Hearts for You didn't carry Casablanca. Not much of a consolation to them, but I did order my earrings and flowergirl dresses from Hearts for You. True Love gives a 15% discount to MOB and Bridesmaids, so the bridesmaids dresses and my Mom's dress will be ordered from there also. My only complaint with True Love Bridal is their dressing rooms and the area in front of the mirror are extremely small.
Tuxedos: Mens Wearhouse
I've heard very mixed reviews of them, but considering that the groom, best man, three ushers and two fathers live in 5 different states, we needed some place that would accomodate all of them. Just have to cross our fingers that all goes well.
Graphic designer: Jessica's Design Shop
Jessica was a sweetheart to deal with. She has the patience of Job, and needed it, considering my indecisiveness. She did a great job on designing our STDs. We just started working with her again on our invitations and co-ordinating paper products. We'll be updating the paper section to show our progress. UPDATE: Jessica did an amazing job on our invitations. She nailed my vision on the second graphic she did and it only took a few tweeks to get them perfect. She also used the graphic to design our menues.
Printing Paper Products: Vistaprint
What can I say? Anyone who pays full price for anything on Vistaprint is an idiot. They are always running sales, and 50% off, free picture upload and free shipping coupons can be found all over the internet. Every week, they offer different products for free, just pay s/h. Quality isn't great, and their font/design options are limited, but are more than adequate for most paper products for the wedding. I really need to add that while they are perfectly suitable for minor printing, I would never consider them for any serious printing projects, and certainly not for wedding invitations or menus. Our rehearsal dinner invitations were done with them and we had to hand trim all of them, as the border was missing on one edge. Also, the weight of the paper is not heavy - at all. The postcards we had made for the bon fire were also missing one edge border. While we could live with this (and honestly, had no time to have them corrected) I would be mortified if our wedding invitations or menus were of the quality. I will say, though, that the day of time line cards and posters were awesome. Win some, lose some.
Officiant: Rev Phil from A Beautiful Affair of the Heart. We found out three days before the wedding that Rev Phil would be our officiant (see below for the reason why). We had zero choice in this, really, as there was just no time to find anyone else at such late notice. Thankfully, we had created our own ceremony and just had to forward it to Phil. We met him, literally, 15 minutes before the ceremony to go over it quickly, learn how to pronounce names, etc. All things considered, he did a great job. He was warm, personable, and aside from the few people who knew the situation with the last minute switch, no one had any idea he was virtually a stranger marrying us.
Officiant: Mitch the Minister. DO NOT USE THIS VERY UNPROFESSIONAL PERSON! We had wanted to be married by someone who knew us personally, but two different people we approached and asked if they would agree to become ordained online turned us down, so we had to look for a professional officiant. I has seen a Knottie who had used Mitch the Minster and raved about him. I googled him and saw he had rave reviews all over various wedding websites. Craig and I met with him in Dec, and found him very personable and felt very comfortable with him, so decided to use him. Sad to say, since then, he has been nearly impossible to get ahold of. It takes numerous emails and voice mails for him to return our calls. We are now two weeks out from our wedding, and we've yet to decide on a ceremony or readings with him. We finally spoke with him while driving up to NJ for our wedding and made arrangements to meet with him 10 days prior to the wedding. At that meeting, we discovered he was changing the order of the ceremony from what he had told us (and our programs had already been printed and were in the mail). Readings, vows and intent still had to be finalized. The following week....THREE days before our wedding, I received an email from some man, saying that he heard we needed an officiant for our wedding, and he had all the details of where and when the wedding was taking place. Thinking it was a scam, I emailed him back and asked him who he was and how he knew this information. He advised me that Mitch the Minister had contacted him, since he was unable to perform our wedding ceremony. Hysterical crying, I called Craig, and he called Mitch to find out what happened. Mitch "claims" his mother-in-law had died. I put the word claims in quotes because his individual FB page (not his professional one) makes no mention of his loss, but included a ton of 'happy' postings and, after our wedding date, makes mention of performing two different weddings on our wedding weekend. He also used a 'death in the family' before in excusing his lack of responding to us. Even if it was true, he should have at least called us himself, and not let us find out via a total stranger.
Florist/Event Designer: Marquis Florals
Kim was the second florist I met with, and loved everything about her. My Mom and I had met with Rose, Petals and Lace a few days earlier, and came away more confused than ever. Kim just 'got' me...understood my vision and immediately laid any concerns I had to rest. Her estimate was almost $1,000 less than Rose, Petals and Lace, and that sealed the deal for me. A few months later, I was going through some 'venue regret' and met with her to see what she could do to dress up the room. Very calmly, she showed me some ideas and told me not to worry, everything would turn out fine. At some point, you have to put your trust into the professionals you hire, and I trust her completely.
Photographer: John Arcara
My Mom was googling for some pictures of venues along the Jersey Shore, when she came upon his blog. She forwarded it to me, and it was love at first sight. He was the very first vendor we met with and booked him before we even had our venue decided on. Craig and I immediately felt as ease talking with him, and after doing an engagement photo session, knew he was the right choice to document our wedding. We never met with another photographer, or compared prices. We now know he's one of the highest priced photographers in NJ, but we don't care. To us, he's worth his weight in gold.
Transportation: First Class Limo
This wasn't a hard choice. We wanted a classic rolls royce to transport us from our venue to Monmouth University for pictures, and there aren't many companies that have these vehicles. This company came very highly recommended from the NNJ Knotties, and are located close to my Mom's house. Their prices were very competitive.
Reception Band: Brian Kirk & The Jirks
We knew we wanted live music at our reception, as Craig is a classically trained musician, teaches music and most of his friends are musicians. We just had no clue how to go about finding a wedding band in NJ from NC. My cousin was getting married in May, 2009, and she had hired The Jirks for her wedding. The Jirks are a club band, playing mostly on the Jersey Shore, and we had heard some negative things about club bands and weddings, in general. I started asking some of my Jersey friends if they knew anything about the Jirks, and they all went crazy. They LOVED this band. We contacted Brian in January, 2009, explained our situation, and he agreed to hold our wedding date until after my cousin's wedding, so we could actually get to hear them play. Score! What could be better than a 5 hour audition? Our joy was short lived, when Brian called us a few weeks later to advise us that someone else wanted our date, and we would need to give him a deposit for him to continue holding our wedding date. Then, he told us his price increased! We were not happy, to say the least, and were seriously considering telling him "Thanks, but no thanks", when he called us back, completely on his own, to tell us he reconsidered and was willing to honor the first price he gave us. We mailed off our deposit and, while visiting the family in NJ in April, went with about 25 of our friends, to a club in Montclair, to hear the band. We were blown away - they were that good. Brian and Craig have bonded over music and Brian's insisting that Craig bring his trumpet and play with them at our reception.
Makeup Artist: Jeanine Mangan
Jeanine came highly recommended by not only the NNJ Knotties, but from other people I know who used her. Being in NC, I am pretty much at the mercy of recommendations, as I really don't have the time or opportunity to meet with many makeup artists. Jeanine lives in my NJ hometown and will come to my venue the day of the wedding, at no cost.
Hair Stylist: Danielle ([email protected])
Danielle has been by Mom's hairdresser for almost 10 years, and eventually, both my sister and I started going to her. Even after moving to NC, I always made an appointment with her to do my highlights and cuts when I came home to NJ to visit. Danielle has agreed to come to our venue the day of the wedding, at no additional cost. While she has a 'regular' job as a stylist at Milagro Spa, she is available to do hair for wedding parties on weekends. You can email her and mention my name as a reference.
Ceremony Musicians: St Peter's Brass Quintet. Since our ceremony was outdoors and beachside, we wanted a brass ensemble, as the sound of strings could easily be carried away with the wind. Also, string musicicans can be very picky about playing their instruments in an unprotected area outdoors. And lastly, Craig is a classically trained trumpet player, and is partial to the sound of brass instruments. While communication with them was iffy, they were able to play all the songs we wanted for the ceremony.
Photo Booth: East Coast Photo Booths
This choice came down to an Excel spreadsheet, comparing all the various companies, what they offered and for how much. East Coast won, plain and simple.
Videographer: Your Cinematic Wedding
We chose this company purely on gut feeling. Video was always low on my wish list. I knew I wanted a video of our wedding, but I also knew this would be the area we would compromise the most on. When we started pricing videographers, we were shocked at how expensive they were. Then I saw Rob Adams work and wanted a video with all the bells and whistles. Craig didn't even want a video...thought it was a waste of money. I sent an email to Rob Adams, to see if my date was available. He never got back to me. At first, I thought he might be on vacation, until I found his FB site, and saw he'd been posting the whole week I'd been waiting for a reply to my email. Ummm....it's hard enough dealing with NJ vendors while I'm in NC, I don't need a vendor who doesn't communicate well. After searching various wedding message boards for videographer recommendations, I came across Your Cinematic wedding. His pricing allowed me to have all the bells and whistles at half the price of Rob Adams. The catch? He's new to the wedding video game. He produces films for a living, so he knows how to work a camera, and loves the editing process. I just had a gut feeling that this guy could give us a reasonably decent video, and he's got close to a year to get some experience.
Wedding Cake: Palermo's
This is the baker my venue uses, so unless I want to pay out-of-pocket and go elsewhere, this is who I'm using. Luckily, they come very highly recommended. We went for a cake tasting and while we always knew we wanted red velvet, we loved all their flavors. They were very easy to work with and allowed us to purchase our own brooches and ribbon for the cake, saving us a bunch of money.
