Tara was great. She is very creative and helpful, and she doesn't try to push over-priced vendors on you, she's very budget-conscious!
Shannon baked our cake. It was exactly what we wanted and tasted great. We received so many compliments on our cake. We had our first meeting with her several months before the wedding. She met up with us and brought about a dozen cake samples. They were the best of any of the cakes we had tried. We decided on a pound cake/wedding cake hybrid with buttercream icing. We brought pictures we had collected from magazines and went though her photo collection of cakes she had already done and came up with our design together. Her prices were very reasonable, and she was highly recommended by Tara at LHCC. If you are interested, be sure to give her a call. Her husband maintains the website and email, I believe, and she's much more responsive to calls.
I'm not a big flower person, so I had no idea what I wanted or what would be in season. Tom got out his photo albums of past weddings, and the first thing I noticed was that unlike every other florist in the area we had seen, his wedding photos did not look like they came out of 1989. Together we picked out flowers in our colors that would be in season, and he wrote up a detailed description of each piece and faxed me an estimate the next day. I forgot to include a bouquet for my bridal portraits, but I called a few days before and he made one for me, a small replica of my wedding day bouquet. The week before the wedding, we had some extra money in our budget so we requested more flowers for the bridal party bouquet. This was no problem. The flowers were delivered to the church several hours before the wedding, and they were stunning. I was so happy with our bouquets and decorations.
Poffie Girls service was on par with the high-end shops in Charlotte, but they carry more affordable brands. I bought a Maggie Sottero dress and they never go on sale, but PG was doing a 20% off sale and made no exceptions. I saved $300 on my dress. During each visit, everyone who worked there was super nice. They always showed genuine interest and would talk and joke around with me while I waited for my dress to be brought out, etc. They take pride in their work and it shows. They will press your dress for you for bridals and for the wedding if you give them a weeks notice.
In looking at places to rent tuxedos, we found they were all pretty much the same. They all gave discounts based on how many groomsmen there were, it was 6 here, half a dozen there. We went with Mister Tuxedo since they had multiple locations in the area. My husband picked out brown tuxes with orange vests and ties for the groomsmen and brown vest and tie for himself. The tuxes weren't ready until noon the day before the wedding, and when he tried on his tux, it was too big, and by that time there was nothing we could do about it.
We used Smokey Creek as the caterer for our rehearsal dinner. They are only open Fridays and Saturdays. But, the food is great. When I finally got a hold of their catering manager, we worked out a menu of Pork BBQ, chicken tenders, corn on the cob, red potatoes, baked beans, slaw, rolls, cornbread, banana pudding, sweet and unsweetened tea for $9 a head, including delivery, setup, and plates and silverware. The food was great. I went back for thirds.