Tilliea's biography
Welcome to our Planning Bio/POst Married Bio. We met on April 16, 1995 and got engaged in December of 2008.
Some of the pages on this bio are restricted to friends only to prevent guests from peaking prematurely in places where they shouldn't be. Yes, hello there!
If you are a bonafide bride, looking for ideas please send me a request and I will add you to my friends list. Please note that I have posted my fitting pictures and my gown a few times, but as of November 1st, 2009 I have chosen to take them down for personal reasons.
Post Married: I decided to go ahead and turn the pre-married bio into a post married bio. Some of the posts are already here. The difference between the premarried and the post married bio is that the post married will be in bold.
Originally I figured it was easier for our attendants and other people who are planning their wedding to see our color choices so there is no confusion. Later on I ended up changing my mind. It's not because I want my girls to wear colors they hate, they can pick any style in a David's Bridal Wisteria. If any of them cannot find a style they like I am happy to assist.
Before proceeding further here is a little rant: I don't know who the heck makes sycophantic wedding color trends, but it really ticks me off that after having decided on my palette a year ago while most brides went super crazy for light tourqoise blue aka tiffany blue(yeah I absolutely hate that color), all of a sudden the new trend is purple???!!!
Seriously! My main color is purple. I didn't do it to be hip, trendy or do what the people the magazines are now saying. I chose it because I love the color almost as much as I love dark red. If you are bride considering choosing your colors based off what the magazines are saying you need to grow a brain and come up with your own colors and ideas. Don't go with trends, go with colors that truly evoke a sense of warmth and emotion in you and your FI.
Post Wedding: If you like a certain color and you get fixed on it don't shy away from it. I had all the girls on my knot forum tell me not to go with feusha for our sweetheart table. But in the end I am so glad I did. It gave us the pop we needed and it looked awesome. Stick to your guns on colors and trust your instincts.
Our ceremony will take place at Canoga Park Lutheran Church approximately 5pm where we met.
My one of my regrets is that I had not moved up the service to 4:30. This would have bought more time. This was a pretty formal wedding ceremony and I wanted it to be clear at the time. Thanks to ettiquette we had no time to mingle among our guests. Don't do what I did. Damn ettiquette and do whatever the heck you want to do. It's your day!
Our reception will follow our ceremony with dinner and dancing at the Odyssey Restaurant in Granada Hills.
Review: Overall, their level of service was impeccable. Here are the things they did right:
1. They worked with us to get the room we wanted. Once we assured them we would have
the minimum amount to secure the room, they were fine with us having a slightly lower occupancy.
2. Value: we got a 3 entree buffet, with dessert and our cake, a 3 hour bar, champagne toast and a dessert bar for under $70 per
person(not including gratuity--that's pretty darn competitive for Los Angeles).
3. They were willing to set up the special linens that I had ordered for the event. They were also willing to work with me and let me fold their napkins and
have them placed on my chargers so that the staff would only have to place the chargers with the napkins already folded on them(so they didn't have to work twice).
4. When it turned out that the candy for my candy buffet would melt if
stored in my coordinator's car, I was able to call them and they let my MOH and Fiancee(at the time) set up the candy buffet early the morning of the wedding.
5. They augmented our decor with additional buffet linens and lighting which
made the room look even more spectacular with the uplighting I ordered along with the gobo projection on the dance floor.
6. Hospitality. They greeted our wedding party with champagne and hors d'oeuvres upon arrival. We had two
waiters filling our plates when my husband and I went up to the buffet and they could trip over themselves fast enough to make us feel comfortable.
7. The food was excellent. Period.
Here are the things that they really need
to work on:
1. They didn't cut our wedding cake to be served to our guests!!!! This really ticked me off. I went with the bakery that they told me to go with, and I paid $11 per slice over what was included in the package for this
spectacular-looking cake that few or none of my guests even tried because no one bothered to cut it! And this was a service that was supposedly included in the package! Not only that it they ended up wasting over 40 hours of hard work I could
have put in elsewhere other than my DIYed menus when I added in a diagram of my cake so my guests could know which flavor each tier was so they could tell the server which flavor they wanted. All of this work was wasted because they didn't cut my
cake and serve it!
I actually have to have this cake served to my guests at my church one week later(no thanks to them).
And yes, if I wanted to be a complete witch about it, I could sue them for contract breach because they didn't cut and serve my cake as stated in our contract--I have witnesses and I have pictures too, so if
you're from the Odyssey and you're reading this review don't even think about calling me up to change it. More than likely you're going to make me mad enough to actually be a witch about it and carry through with the thought in the above
sentence.
2. Communication. They should have told me when I booked(almost a year beforehand, May 2, 2009) that the Garden Room's wiring was not up to code to handle the uplighting I had ordered. It was a "little detail" they left out of
their documentation until they finally dropped it on me like a ton of bricks one month before the wedding when I met with them to finalize everything(and yes, my coordinator was there when they told me, so I wasn't the only one who heard it).
It actually took two weeks me nagging and waiting after that for them to give me and my DJ a straight answer as to whether I would need a generator or not along with where to put said generator.
This left me scrambling the last week to
let my lighting person know to get a generator which cost me an additional $120 to rent. This leaves us to issue #3
3. Building maintenance. Now I may be a clueless bride that doesn't know anything, but my darling husband and I bought
a house two months prior to our wedding and last I looked in to the way real estate works, it is the responsibility of the owner of a building to maintain the wiring up to code. It's really a shameful they have neglected to do that on such a
beautiful location! Seriously, this is a matter of pride and common sense.
Would I book another event with them? Yes, absolutely. But I would seriously watch my banquet manager like a hawk and insist that they cut the freaking cake
like there were supposed to have done on the basis of our contract(yeah watching them was my my coordinator's job which I will go into detail later)! And I would insist on them telling me upfront on whether or not the wiring can handle extra
stuff like lighting.
The second issue is extremely important to know so you don't end up scrambling at the last minute trying to throw more money into an already expensive event. On my rating system they get a
9/10--minus one point for not serving my freaking cake. Come on people it's a wedding cake. Wedding cakes are served at weddings! What a concept!!!
Okay so I did get a little giddy with the purple color scheme. But that is the point of having an inspiration board to organize ideas are inspiring--what a concept!?! Anyway, I'll be posting more of these pretty soon. I should have put a picture of Barney in there and see if anyone could find it! Oh well, something to do next time :)
When it came to our cake choice, I was looking for something off the beaten path. The local grocery store chain, Jons, has a bakery that decorates their cakes with ladyfingers, and I have been getting my birthday cakes surrounded by ladyfingers from them for the past 6 years. I tried to order our cake from them, but after about 40 minutes of explaining what I wanted AND getting a blank and clueless stare from their head baker similar to this OO, I got frustrated enough to pull my hair out!
Thankfully, our venue includes the cake in their wedding package. So when I interviewed Moishe at Helena Wirth and showed him this picture as inspiration,
he quickly got the vision of what I wanted. I already had the idea for our cake in my mind, but having a baker on the internet having a similar idea helped tremendously! For the sake of legality, this
particular cake picture is the property of Wedding Cakes by Michael in Washington DC (I would have gotten my cake from them if they were not so far away!) I e-mailed them a request to use their picture in my bio and they have not gotten back to me. Their
website was back up and sadly they went down again. If you are in the DC area and want a cake like this one look up Wedding Cakes by Michael via google. I hope their website www.weddingcakesbymichael.com goes back up again soon. Alot of
small businesses are getting hit hard by the recession, and as a bride I try to give them as much exposure as possible :(
It should be noted that we did pay an upgrade fee for our cake and our cake even though somewhat like the picture will be different. Like this cake it will have 4 tiers and will be surrounded by ladyfingers. But
instead of an all tiramisu wedding cake we'll have 4 different flavors! Our embellishments will also be different. I'll post our flavors after the wedding, but if you want to have a extra scoop of information I have that available for those on my
friends list.
If you got one of these you should feel pretty special. The reason is I made these myself using the template from a Valentine's Day card I designed for my fiance years ago. Not only did I design it, but I printed them out, put them together, individually typesett each address on these envelopes in the same font our invitations will have.
And it was not easy. Upon starting to print out envelopes my HP C7280 printer, which is usually a reliable and dependable work horse, turned into a stubborn and ravenous envelope-chomping ass. For every 10 envelopes I printed out, it ate 3 of them. And after I went through all the trouble of addressing each envelope, when I printed the return address it did the same thing again! Were it not for the fact I would have had to buy another printer and that it had been reliable in the past, I would have taken it out back and had it shot.
By the time I realized I didn't have enough envelopes due to a hungry HP printer, I was unable to find envelopes that matched the ones I originally started with. So, some guests are getting cream-colored envelopes and others are getting white colored envelopes. C'est la vie.
If you are a guest that feels offended over this please call Hewlett Packard Customer Support and give them a piece of your mind. I wash my hands of it!
Right now I am in the process of figuring out how to keep the pocket in my pocketfold together. But here is a mock up. It's not final by any means. More pictures will come in January after the holiday madness.
Update: I finally got these things done. Now unlike the picture above it is final.
These will be mailed out February 16, 2010.
;
& nbsp; *Photography*
Ali and Noel were prompt, extremely curtious, non-obtrusive and did their best to make both our family and friends as comfortable as possible. They also did everything they could to take every shot on our list. We have yet to see our photos, but based upon their level of concern and effort to give us the time we needed together they are 10/10. We can't wait to see the pictures!
& nbsp; *Videography*
&nbs p; Los Angeles Wedding and Event
Terry Hanson was our videographer. Like Ali and Noel, he was also extremely curteous, helpful and non-obtrusive. He also worked with our Photographers, augmenting light and offering back up for shots whenever needed. Since we had our ceremony in a house of worship, Terry was limited in the way he could shoot our wedding, but he did the best he could and was very respectful. He also went above and beyond the call of duty by filming some of the grounds at UCLA for our videography. Again, we can't wait to see his work. 10/10 so far.
After having received our videography, I am very happy to say that I would recommend LA-Event.com to any bride. The video was awesome! The sound editing was great. They were worth every penney!
*Reception Music &
Lighting* &nbs
p; Afterdark Entertainment Afterdark came highly recommended to me by other brides on theknot.com. What was really awesome was that they also do lighting effects(uplighting and gobo projection). There was no room for guessing or misunderstanding with the online forms they provide online. My fiancee and I were able to pick out our playlist very easily, along with a do not play list, and "play if
possible list." This helped tremendously, especially since I had a long-distance engagement. The last 3 weeks leading up to my wedding, John(our DJ) and I were in constant contact due to a power issue with our venue. It turned out we needed a generator for our lighting(which they provided at a very
affordable price). There were times that I felt like I gave John to much information and to much detail with what I wanted him to do. For example, at my wedding I really wanted the Wedding party to be introduced with their
significant others rather than be paired up with other bridal part members. John did that and did an amazing job. We also wanted to do an anniversary song(a song for all the married couples that were our guests, John did it too). I was also able to
design my own gobo projection, submit it to him in PDF format, and then they actually projected it on our dance floor. It was awesome :) Even with pressure from guests to play requests(which he eventually did, but not before getting the okay from both of us), John stuck like glue to our predetermined play list. He and his wife, Haydee, were
a pleasure to work with: approachable, attentive and genuinely concerned with making sure our wedding was not just a success but memorable for many years go come. They are your best bet for a worry-free wedding. I would hire them again in a heartbeat! A grade of 10/10 or an A+ on all accounts. *Event Coordinator* &n
bsp; Christina Molina It has taken me about 3 months of solid reflection to try to post a review over this. According to most brides on LA forums on theknot.com she can do no wrong. Well. Maybe the reason she can't do anything wrong is because she
hardly does anything at all. Yes, I hired her for Month of Wedding Coordination, yes at the time I paid a lower fee before she increased her fees. And she while she was great at mentioning how she had to hire someone else out for all the
wedding details I had chosen, when crunch time came most of what she told me was what she couldn't do. The week of, I needed someone to drop off my linens at the Odyssey. My Month-of-Wedding coordinator who I had hired to "take over the reigns" so to speak had a "prior appointment." The week of my wedding, I had vendors checking in with me instead of her, even though it was part of her job description to take the load off. The day of my wedding she got lost on the way to my house. So you brides know, in the wedding industry that is EXTREMELY unprofessional: my floral design teacher who is still working in the industry after 35 years warned us "always drive
to the place ahead of time--know where the heck it is!" I had hired her almost a year out, but she didn't have the time to figure out the way to my house on one of the most important days of my life??? Hello??? Anyone listening? The day of the wedding she couldn't take my candy buffet candy in her car because it was going to sit in the hot sun. So I had to call the Odyssey and ask them nicely if we could set up that morning. It turned out also that her job was made easy that week because the Odyssey had not booked the timeslot ahead of ours so she had an addition 2 hours to set up. The one thing she did do was to help me decorate the church the day before the wedding. That night, because I had to deal with so many other details she should have dealt with, I was up until 3 am in the morning working on centerpieces
that should have been already done, had she helped me in the way she said she would when I originally booked her. She did set up my chair sashes as requested. She did give her insight as to how the cake should be displayed. But it would have been nice if she had actually watched my back and insisted that the Odyssey had done their job: which was cut my Freaking CAKE! I wouldn't have posted half the things she had done wrong if my cake had been served. I would have let most of that go. But the cake thing I couldn't let go of. In retrospect I would hire her for a dog's birthday party, and I don't like dogs.
; *Stationery* DIYed Save-the-Dates done with supplies from: &n
bsp; Hobby Lobby &n
bsp; Target &n
bsp; Paper Direct &n
bsp; Linotype Font Foundry &n
bsp; Digital Juice Media
Pocket Fold Invitations (A work in Progress): Main inserts printed by The American
Wedding
Outer pockets made with supplies from Paper
Papers Rubber stamps were made by West Valley Rubber Stamps Rhinestone buckles were ordered from Jablonex Navelour Velvet Ribbon was ordered from Artistic
Ribbon
*Bridal Hair and Make Up *Additional Reception
Linens* &n
bsp; CV Imports *Wedding Cake* &n
bsp; Helena Wirth
Okay so I had a couple of little birds, more like harpies really, from my floral design class tell me I couldn't possibly manage to do my own wedding flowers. I hope some of these pictures send those little birdies flying for cover, feathers and all!
Here's my inspiration from Martha Stewart Weddings:
And here is my interpretation! Drum roll please!
The inspiration looks cleaner because they actually ripped out some of the petals to make it look less busy. I kept my flowers intact so I could play with them more. These could probably last a week since they are in floral tubes filled with water inside the arrangement. I love cymbidiums! It's so hard to actually pick a favorite flower since there are so many beautiful flowers out there. If I had to choose one flower to be my favorite it would be them, a close second would be plumerias(but they are a pain in the rear to get outside of Hawaii)
You can probably figure out by now that I have some mad skill with graphic design programs. I finalized our monogram today and I have already ordered rubber stamps to be made for our invitations.
Now, to be clear the blue should be a dark purple not a blue, something with the way Imageshack interpreted the jpeg doesn't quite work.
We're going to have this monogram everywhere, it's going to be on our invites, our dance floor, and our aisle runner.
After the very hectic month of December I am pleased to announce, I've ordered our additional decorative table linens! And I was even happier that I not only saved roughly $25.00 on them but I also got free shipping too!
So our reception venue is providing standard ivory table linens. But I wanted just a little more color. Originally I was thinking a dark burgandy tablecloths with lavender overlays and dark purple sashes. I compromised a little, but I am happy with having the lavender overlays.
and the plum/purple chair sashes
