Krista and her sister, Tanzyn, came to the hotel the morning of the wedding to do my hair and a few others’. We all had fairly difficult ‘dos but they made it sound easy. My ridiculously straight hair stayed curly all day long. Everybody else looked simply gorgeous.
Shara created a rehearsal dinner cake for us as well as our wedding cake. We asked her to make an Antarctic-y looking cake for rehearsal, and it was so cute. She made a little ice rink for our penguin toppers to sit on and covered it with sugar crystals to make it look like ice. The wedding cake was better than I could have imagined! People kept going up and trying to touch it because they couldn’t believe it was real. She matched our colors perfectly with her delicious icing and it just stood so majestically at our reception. I was upset that I had to cut it, but the flavor (white wedding with fresh berries and cream) was well worth it.
Dave was a great choice for a DJ. He really seemed to have a feel for our personalities and what we were looking for in a party. We met with Dave a month before the wedding, and provided him with a CD of all of our songs (we had a LOT of unusual special requests). Dave incorporated all of our favorite songs into the reception at some point, and was even in on a scheme to have my husband serenade me with “Love and Affection” by Nelson. Dave read the crowd well and understood when we grew tired of dancing and needed to slow things down.
I loved all of our vendors, but Dan was my favorite. He arrived early and checked in with me to see if I had anything to tell him, then just started shooting. All during the day, if someone saw something that was cute, funny, or would make a good picture, they saw Dan there shooting away. I never understood what people meant when they say “He was everywhere and nowhere” but that describes Dan to a T. He was never in the way, but was ready at every moment. Dan handled minor incidents (a huge spider landing on my dress, a baby bird flying into a groomsman, a flower girl throwing a tantrum during formals) with grace and humor. He even took time to offer to help when our flower girl had trouble buckling her shoes. My best advice: hire him.
I really loved the versatility that Alfred Angelo offers, and decided to go with Marry and Tux for the Bridesmaids gowns. It was tricky because everyone somehow worked with a different consultant depending on the day or time. Kristen was extremely helpful the few times I was there. It was a bit frustrating for my ‘maids that there weren’t gowns in their size to try on, but we loved that the tuxedos are housed on-site so that if there were any issues the day before, they could be easily taken care of.
Some of my ‘maids decided to order gowns online to save some cash. I am not quite positive what happened, but the dress came in about a month later than they originally quoted. No harm, no foul in the end, but it was quite stressful for a few weeks.