ngarey's biography
Vendor Reviews
For the most part, our vendors (the few that we had) were great - super flexible, professional, and, with the exception of a couple of hiccups, responsive - with one glaring exception. Even with one extremely disappointing vendor, we had a wonderful wedding, and I would happily recommend all but the one vendor to other brides and grooms.
Caterer
Bakery
Photography
Officiant
Invitations
Music
Calligraphy
Favors
Day of Coordinator
Florist
Rating: Highly Recommended
The Positives: We fell in love with Woodlawn the moment we saw it - and without even going inside. We knew that we wanted to do everything outdoors, and because that was the most important element for us, having our wedding at Woodlawn was an easy decision. Woodlawn was absolutely perfect for us - beautiful lawns and foliage, blooming flowers, and lots of friendly (and healthy) bugs helping to keep the flowers blooming. We couldn't have asked for a better setting for our wedding. The staff at Woodlawn were all incredibly nice and helpful, particularly on the day of the wedding, and the communication with our other vendors seemed to be great.
The Negatives: The main house is small, so if you'll have more than 50 people and are planning a seated reception, you'll need a really good Plan B in case of rain. Also, not that many outdoor electrical outlets, so we ended up needing lots of extension cords for any lighting or music equipment.
Rating: Highly Recommended
The Positives: The food was great! We chose BasiKneads for the quality of the food - the food at the tasting was definitely restaurant quality. While I wasn't able to eat anything at the wedding (too many nerves), my husband said the food was great and we received a lot of compliments from our guests. BasiKneads also took care of all of the rentals - tables, linens, chairs, etc. - and when they weren't able to find a company that could rent us the market umbrellas that we wanted to use and we had to buy our own, they helped us with storage and transport to the wedding venue. They also took care of most of the reception-related set-up, including placecards and favors, which helped free up our DOC to focus on other things.
The Negatives: We had been warned in advance that the owner/head chef has a reputation for being a bit difficult to work with and that other couples had received some inaccurate estimates while finalizing the menu and details. We felt that the quality of the food outweighed any potential personality problems and were ultimately really satisfied with the quality of their food and service. I would still recommend their services, but just advise other brides to pay close attention to detail with the proposals and to make sure that you raise and resolve any issues as soon as possible.
CakeLove - U Street Bakery
Rating: VERY Highly Recommended
The Positives: Everything at CakeLove is a "positive"! Just one bite from a CakeLove cake or cupcake and you will completely understand. We didn't even think of using anyone else for our wedding cake, and both in terms of cost and taste it was totally the right decision.
Rating: VERY Highly Recommended
The Positives: Everything. I can't say enough about the amazingly talented Punam Bean. Photography was our top priority, and we both knew that we wanted a photographer from the photojournalism school of wedding photography. We couldn't have been happier with the result, and Punam (and her lovely husband Andrew) were a pleasure to work with. One of the best decisions we made, hands down.
Back in December, after we first hired Punam as our wedding photographer, we went up to New York to meet her and for an engagement session. Here is a collage of our favorite photos from that session: 
Jan Morrison - Columbia Jewish Congregation
Rating: Highly Recommended
The Positives: Cantor Morrison performed an absolutely beautiful ceremony for our wedding! We probably received more comments from our guests regarding the ceremony than any other aspect of the wedding, with many saying that it was one of the most personal and touching ceremonies they had ever witnessed. The ceremony turned out to be one of my favorite parts of the wedding, which is ironic since it wasn't something that I put a whole lot of thought into until the very end. Cantor Morrison was absolutely wonderful, and flexible in working with us to accommodate our different religious backgrounds and concerns. We ultimately agreed on a ceremony that incorporated elements from different cultures, such as a blessing from the Sufi poet Rumi, poems from ee cummings and Persian poet Hafiz instead of traditional ring vows, and personalized marriage vows, but that revolved around the key components of a Jewish marriage ceremony. Andrew also got to break the glass at the end of the ceremony - he did a great job! I would highly recommend Cantor Morrison for any Jewish or interfaith weddings in the DC or suburban Maryland area.
The Negatives: There were some communication problems in the first few months after we hired Cantor Morrison for our wedding. A couple of e-mails never received a response, in one case dragging on for a couple of months. Ultimately, I don't think it was a huge problem and Cantor Morrison seems to have improved her electronic communication methods since then, so I would still highly recommend her services. My only advice would be to keep track of the communication flow and don't be shy about sending several e-mails in order to get a response.
Rating: Recommended
The Positives: The price! Cricket Press definitely offered the best value for the kind of invitation package that we were looking to do, particularly using letterpress. As a paper junkie, I really, really wanted letterpress, but didn't have a huge budget. All the other companies that I contacted were easily twice or three times more expensive. Ultimately, I think we ended up with a truly unique, beautiful, and wonderful product that both suited our wedding style and represented us as a couple.
The Negatives: Because Cricket Press doesn't do a lot of wedding invitations (although it looks like they're starting to do more these days), they don't necessarily bring the same ability of an experienced wedding invitation design company to translate the client's guidance into a coherent wedding invitation. I'm sure this will change and improve as they gain additional experience in the realm of wedding invitations, but in the meantime it might just take a bit more effort to get to the desired end product.
Ceremony - our friend Mark!
The Positives: We love free! Mark did a really great job - just as good if not better than any string quartet that we could have hired, and the guitar probably suited our music choices better anyway. Plus, having a good friend play the music added an additional personal element to our ceremony.
Reception - iPod!
The Positives: We didn't have the budget for a live band, but are total music snobs and couldn't fathom the idea of relinquishing control to a DJ. Andy isn't much of a dancer, so we planned our wedding as more of a big, fun dinner party and not a traditional wedding where everyone dances after the cake is served. We put together a playlist with a mixture of jazz, soul, some Beatles, 80s, and modern indie and pop music the night before the wedding, with songs that people could dance to if they wanted. We bought a Bose speaker unit that plays music from your iPod and just hooked it up and let it play throughout the reception. We think it worked out really well.
Rating: VERY Highly Recommended
The Positives: Laura's work is amazing, and I absolutely loved the place cards that she calligraphed for us. I thought calligraphy was going to be prohibitively expensive, but her rates are quite reasonable - she also provided the card stock for the place cards, which was great since it was one less thing that we had to worry about. I only wish that I'd known about her when we were sending out our invitations, or I would have used her services to address the envelopes as well. Laura was incredibly personable, professional, and responsive - our place cards were in our hands only three days later!
Rating: Recommended
The Positives: We used favor boxes from I Need a Favor from Kate and chocolate truffles from Whole Foods as our favors. We loved the selection of paper patterns and box patterns, and Kate herself was incredibly responsive and even checked with me when she found out that our paper pattern was on backorder. The chocolates from Whole Foods were incredibly yummy, not too expensive, and we were able to pick them up the week before our wedding and then keep them in the fridge until the day of. Favors weren't a huge priority for us, but we were able to find something relatively inexpensive that proved to be a fun element in our wedding.
The Negatives: Unfortunately, because the paper patterns only come in a certain size ream, Kate is only able to offer favor boxes in packages of 24. We had exactly 50 guests, so this left us in the difficult position of either having 22 more or 2 less favor boxes than we needed. We ended up buying a different style favor box to make up the difference, rather than purchasing an additional package of 24 favor boxes from Kate.
Jasmine Smith
jasmine.r.smith at gmail dot com
Rating: Very Highly Recommended
The Positives: Jasmine was a complete lifesaver on the day of our wedding. With so many DIY aspects of the wedding, we really needed a DOC to pull the whole thing off. In retrospect, we're not even really sure how we could have done it without her! We had pretty much planned everything beforehand, so we just had a couple of sessions with Jasmine to tell her how we wanted things to look or go, and she did the rest! She was totally on top of everything on the day of the wedding, arrived before any of the vendors and made sure all of our decorations were set up, ran the processional of the ceremony, and organized the breakdown (and return transport of all of our wedding items) at the end of the evening. I only wish that I had sent more with her in advance (which she could have then set up in our absence) so that we would have had more time to make sure that all the little details were set up correctly before the ceremony began. Jasmine only provides day-of and wedding rehearsal coordination, but I would strongly recommend her for any DC brides and grooms looking for peace of mind on your wedding day.
Rating: NOT Recommended
The Positives: My bouquet was pretty.
The Negatives: Just about every aspect of my experience with a wedding florist was a negative. Finding and working with a florist in the DC area was my worst experience during the entire wedding planning process, which is ironic, since I love flowers, know a little bit more about them than most brides, and had really clear ideas of what I wanted for both our personal flowers and reception centerpieces. At first, I did a lot of research on DC-area florists and asked a few friends (one of whom is friends with a former DC-area florist) for recommendations. I found and fell in love with the work of one particular florist, who told me that, because of my floral budget, I would have to wait until January before they would meet with me. When I dutifully contacted them in January and told them our wedding venue, they essentially refused to work with me because our venue was outside the beltway - even though I offered to have someone pick up the arrangements! They in turn referred me to a Maryland-area florist, who sent me a proposal that was twice my budget and refused to do a line item estimate of each floral element (bouquet, centerpieces, boutonnieres, corsages, etc.) so that I could trim the proposal. Ugh.
Anyway, I ultimately settled with Amaryllis, but I had misgivings the entire time - which proved to be justified in the result and my entire experience with Amaryllis was extremely disappointing. I would NOT recommend Amaryllis to any other DC-area brides. Please e-mail me for a more detailed review of Amaryllis.
All photographs by Punam Bean. For a full slideshow of photos from our wedding, please click here.
My e-mail is nole dot garey at gmail dot com if you have any questions - thanks for looking!
