Many of the Knotties recommended her, so I decided to go with her. I didn't do any comparison shopping with any other florist, but her prices are lower than I expected. She's a really nice ady and she made some suggestions for flower substitutions that saved me money. Interestingly, I told her my budget was between $500 and $700 and the final estimate ended up being $698 with tax, LOL. The flowers were absolutely lovely, and she also put left over buds and petals all over the shelves at the reception site.
Becky did our save-the-date cards for us. She painted a watercolor of our ceremony site from a photo we provided to her, designed and them and had them printed. They turned out absolutely gorgeous and she's so nice to work with!
I had a custom clay cake topper made of me, my groom and my too-adorable dog. Lynn did a terrific job! I did have some trouble with communication with her though.. for some reason she wasn't getting my emails and I wasn't getting hers. Never did figure out what the problem was.
Johnny is a really nice guy which was important to me... I've been to too many weddings where the photographer gets all snippy and frustrated with the wedding party. Which I never understood because if you are a professional, you should understand that bridal parties are like herding cats, and be able to control your temper. But I digress. Johnny was really laid back, which was great. His price includes an engagement session, and all day for the wedding, from the time you are getting ready in the morning to the end of the reception if you want him to stay that long, and he doesn't charge by the hour. Also, he gives you a DVD of all the original photos with the reproduction rights, so you can do whatever you want with them. (Actually 3 DVDs, one for you and one for each set of parents.) The DVDs come in a really nice leather case that has a photo on the front and another photo on the inside. I loved most of his photos, and he got some really nice "available light" photos of the flowers and candles which really set the mood of the reception. He also got some really nice close-ups of the cake and the guest book which were really neat.
There were a couple things I wasn't happy about with the quality of the photos, though. First, in the outdoor photos, my dress was washed out. Now, I understand that when you take a photo of a scene and only a small part of it is white, the white thing gets washed out. And I know he was worried about it because he commented on it when the sun came out from behind the clouds. But I also know that he pays someone to do his color-correcting, and it only takes 20 seconds in PhotoShop to fix blown out highlights, or to at least make them a little better. I am guessing they don't know how to do that. Luckily, I do. Also, some of the photos he took in my house with my mom helping me get ready had really distracting backgrounds. I had asked him where he wanted us to sit for the picture of her putting on my necklace, thinking that he would put us near some decorative object like a lamp, but he said we were fine where we were. But you can see half of the kitchen in the background, complete with papers and stuff piled everywhere and cupboard doors, etc. So, I was disappointed in those. And finally, he lost about 40 of our pictures because he either lost the card or forgot to take it out at the end of the night and then formatted it the next time he wanted to use it. Luckily, it was at the end of the wedding and most of them were just hug pictures of people saying goodbye, but he did lose the pictures of our hands with the rings and the bouquet. I was really bummed because I was dead set against fake nails and tried so hard not to break mine in the weeks leading up to the wedding. But he offered to pay the florist to create another bouquet so we could take the photos again, which was nice of him. I doubt we will do it just because it's too much of a hassle... I'd have to grow my nails out again, get another manicure (which I hate), etc. So, we'll let it go. We got plenty of other great shots.
Debbie was so patient with me during my Ebay dress saga... she had two fittings with me and her price for fixing the dress in certain areas was very reasonable. But the dress had to many flaws, so I decided to give up on it, and she was really nice about that. I did have her take up the hem on my new dress and she did a great job, though it turned out a little shorter than she had originally said it would be.