found Renee at In Stiches through the knot and she was one of the best finds ever. She was honest with me about the fit of the dress, I needed to loose about 5 pounds, and the trim on my dress made it VERY difficult to hem. She told me that I could spend hundreds of dollars for her to take out the trim by hand, hem the dress an inch and put the trim back in by hand or I could just get taller shoes. I went with taller shoes and I'm so glad I did. Renee saved me lots of money and I got cuter shoes! She is a great lady with lots of moxy and she loves her brides. Her prices are extremely good and she will try to work with your schedule. Highly recommend!!
Andrea at Mishay did a great job with my hair. We took pictures of the style at the hair trial and I brought those with me on the wedding day so she could remember what we did. She changed it slightly to keep my hair off my neck more which worked out well. She used a lot of pins to keep my hair in place but I still had a couple loose spots in the back of my head. It wasn't bad at all, my Maid of Honor was able to fix the back. By the end of the night that spot had come a little loose. Again it was fine and did not ruin anything about my day. Another stlist, Kelly, did my mother's hair and it looked great and my mother was very happy with it. I would recommend Mishay for special occasion hair styling. Recommend!
Christine Dahl is a great pastry chef who worked at the Biltmore Hotel in Santa Barbara as the pastry chef for about 15 years and decided to go into business for herself. Her cakes are so delicious we couldn't wait to taste it again. The design of the cake was exactly what we had discussed and the flavors were even better than we remembered from our tasting. She was very easy to work with and easy to contact via phone, not so much an e-mail person. She took pictures of our cake after she set it up at the reception venue and sent them to us after the wedding. That was a nice touch. Her prices are very reasonable and I highly recommend her to any couple!
I was so very pleased with the flowers from Shell's Petals. I LOVED my bouquet. It was the exact deep shade of red that I was looking for. All the flowers looked lovely. The personal flowers were delivered early which was nice and Shell set everything up at the reception and they looked fantastic. I had asked for all red flowers for the centerpieces and all red rose petals for the cake table and some cream flowers were in the centerpieces and cream petals with the red ones on the cake table. Not what I asked for but they looked fabulous so I didn't mind. We went to see her progress the day before the wedding and she had most of the centerpieces to show us and when I saw the cream flowers I let it be. It looked better than I thought it would. Over all Shell was great to work with and she loves her job. I would totally recommend her for any wedding or special event.
Signing with Jordana as our wedding photographer was one of the best decisions we ever made. She is based in L.A. and travelled to Santa Barbara to photograph our wedding for a small travel fee. Jordana and her husband Chris, the second shooter, were fantastic! They arrived on time to start shooting us getting ready and it was amazing from there. They both have a light and fun attitude and are very personable to work with. We both felt so comfortable with them which helped put our nerves at ease. We laughed with them and shared a great day together. Chris ran the portrait booth which was the biggest hit of our wedding. He kept things so fun and kept people laughing that they kept going back to get a photo or 10 taken! We are so glad we decided to add this to our package. I can't wait to work with Jordana again. I'm already looking at a 1 year anniversary shoot with her. Highly recommend!!! (We have seen some samples of our pictures on Jordana's blog as well as all of the portrait booth pictures and they look fantastic!!)
I can't imagine not having had a coordinator on our day and Debbie fit the bill perfectly. She was very helpful throughout the planning process giving us vendor suggestions and sharing her knowledge of Santa Barbara as she is based there. She was very quick to respond to e-mail and phone calls which was awesome! She was on time and very detailed and pulled off everything we asked for with time to spare. She kept things moving along all day long. If there was a hiccup in the day we had no idea, and still don't. She made planning a Santa Barbara wedding from Burbank much easier and I would highly recommend her to any couple!
Matt Graumann was so much more than a DJ. He coordinated and played all the music for the ceremony and he acted as our MC for the reception. He had us write out our love story, (how we met, fell in love, and how I was proposed to) and combined the 2 sides and read it before our first dance. It was a great touch and he delivered it so well. He kept the music flowing so there was never a quite or awkward moment. He was FANTASTIC! He took our music lists and made such a great mixture of fast and slow songs and just helped keep the party going. I can't say enough great things about our experience with Matt. He always returned my e-mails within a day and we had an initial meeting and a planning meeting for all the music selections and he also came to the rehearsal to get a sense of the day. He came on time and made sure he had extra set up help for the quick turn around between the ceremony and the reception which was about hour. We felt totally comfortable in his hands. Highly recommend!!!
Angelina of La Femme Cinema has been great. She came to our walk through at the Courthouse and Arts and Letters to get a sense of the day. Then she came to the rehearsal the day before the wedding for the same purpose. I didn't expect that but I love that she did. We could hardly tell that she and her second shooter were there. She did a great job coordinating with our photographer on position so they didn't get in each others way. We have yet to see our video but her presence was very calming and she has a sweet nature about her. She is pretty good about returning e-mail. Sometimes I've had to e-mail twice to get a response but never more than that. We can't wait to see the video!
Update: 4/6/10
We got our video a couple of months ago and it's fantastic. We actually watched it on Valentines Day which was fun. Angelina and her second shooter got some amazing footage and was in places I didn't even realize till I saw the video. We are SO happy with how it all turned out!
Kris Dukes was fantastic. She started doing make-up for TV so she is very familiar with sticking to a schedule. She always returned my e-mails within a day. We did our make-up trial 2 months before the wedding and she took notes of everything that we did so she could remember for the wedding day. There were 5 of us getting our make-up done for the day and Kris set a schedule of 45 minutes for the 4 other ladies and 1 hour for me. She showed up 10 minutes early to set up and started on time. We were all done on time and I was able to take my time getting my dress on and taking care of the details. She also gave me a touch up kit with a blister of lipstick/gloss, a little brush for application as well as blotting pads to get rid of any oil on my face. She also gave blisters of lipstick/gloss to the other 4 ladies which was unexpected. She was great. My wedding make-up looked just like the trial if not even better and lasted all day long! I am so happy we went with Kris! Highly recommend!!!