ABride's reviews

Devoto Gardens provided beautiful flowers for our wedding. We had a few communication problems ie phone calls and e-mails that were not returned quickly and a pick up time that was almost missed. Despite this we were happy with Devoto overall. They use recycled Santa Rosa city water and were only a mile away from our ceremony city which made them a green option we felt good about.

I am pretty sure that the most fun part of wedding planning was meeting with Michele. We had an idea of what we wanted but she probed us to get a bunch of different ideas. She paid attention to what I was saying instead of telling me what I wanted and what we came up with was great. Her execution of the plan was excellent and the cake looked even better than I imagined. All of my guests were in awe of the cake with is doubly impressive since we only needed about 50 servings and the cake was small. The cake was also delicious. We ended up ordering several filling flavors that we had not tasted and were very happy with how they turned out. She returned phone calls and e-mail quickly and was generally easy to work with.

This site is perfect if you are looking for a bohemian outdoor wedding. The facilities include several good areas for a ceremony and a large lawn for a reception. There are tons of flowers everywhere and lots of great spots for photos. We did have some issues with this vendor that lead to the 3 star rating. Most of the issues were communication problems. One example is the price of rentals. The information that we were first given said that chair rentals were $1 and that they had 30 chairs. We were not planning on renting chairs because they didn't have enough for our reception size. Casa Flores later purchased more chairs and then told us that they had 50 available which is what we needed. When we got the final bill for the chair rentals 30 were listed as $1 and the other 20 were listed as $2.50. We could have asked if the rental price had changed, but had no reason to believe that it had. The owner did agree after we challenged the fairness of this change agree to the original price listed. The other communication issue was secret rules, things that they seemed flexible about but later became inflexible. Music volume, end times, and other special arrangements. The most worth listing is a verbal agreement that we had to stay later on Sunday after our wedding to have a gift opening. They said that it wouldn't be a problem that no one else was scheduled to come in on that Sunday and if something came up they could ask the people coming after us to get there a little later. This seemed not to be a problem for 5+ months until early on our wedding day the owner told us that we would need to be out at 1pm which is the time when our gift opening was supposed to end. Since all of our family had been told times months before and we were going to be getting married in 3 hours there was nothing we could do but rush to get out of there on Sunday. They came in with cleaning supplies blazing at 5 min to one literally throwing our stuff out of the way, because they needed to get cleaned up for the next guests. They have an online calendar which shows that the Sunday in question was unoccupied. I can't guess why they would have told us that another group was coming in. That said, if you will drill on every possible contingency and get everything you talk about in writing (the contract is very vague) you should do well because the space is really beautiful and not like any other wedding venue I have come across. One last thing I have to say because my husband would not forgive me if I didn't mention is the bathrooms. When we arrived the toilets were not clean. They were so dirty in fact that he felt compelled to clean them himself so that none of our guests would be subject to the stale urine smell that greeted us when we arrived.

I bought my dress on-line and took it to the Arden Fair Mall in Sac to have it altered. They did it right the first time and only charged $50 for the alterations. I am very happy with my dress. When I got it I continued looking for months but couldn't find anything that suited me better. I knew if I found something I liked better I would always be able to return it. They have a good selection of informal dresses and have always provided excellent customer service.

I am very happy with the ring that I ordered from GreenKarat, but not the customer service. My ring was a special order because I wanted the ring in a width that they didn't offer. We sent the special order in and didn't hear anything from them for two weeks. We expected an e-mail that at least said we got your order you'll have it in _ weeks. We finally e-mailed them, they said they would follow up and get back to us that day. We didn't hear back from them until the ring shipped which was exactly 3 weeks after they received our order. The website says custom rings take 3 weeks. The ring is very comfortable, the right size and looks well made so I feel good recommending GreenKarat to others.