I love this small bridal shop in Old Town and they have a great selection of Mother of the Bride dresses, much better than any of the other bridal shops in Old Town. My mom ordered hers just a few weeks before the wedding and I was kind of worried about it getting altered on time, but it did and the dress was absolutely gorgeous!!!

Our rehearsal dinner was held at Las Tapas in Alexandria. We love this restaurant. They have a room upstairs that overlooks the bar of the restaurant that makes it a little more private. We picked several tapas dishes beforehand and had everything served family style. We actually realized midway through the dinner that we had ordered way too much food and asked to reduce our order which they had no problem with.

We booked it before it opened and got a great deal. The venue is gorgeous, with high ceilings, a pretty staircase, nice lighting and a simple/modern feel. The chairs and flatware they provide are really pretty (in case you care about this type of detail). When we walked into the reception hall the day of and saw it all decorated, I got so emotional because it was truly perfect!!! And Sandy, the coordinator is amazing. She is super organized, and on top of that genuinely cares and is excited about your event. All the little details we discussed (putting out favors, coordinating the flowers/cake/DJ, timing of dinner and dancing, etc) were perfect the day of. We didn’t even need to hire a day-of wedding coordinator because Sandy had it all covered. Also, the food was delicious. People were commenting on how good it was all night and after the wedding!!!!!

Honeymoon night: The rooms are simple and nice. We stayed in the “executive suite” which was a larger room. There were chocolate covered strawberries waiting for us in the room after the reception which was a nice touch!

Cassidy took some amazing photos that really told the story of our wedding day. The candid photos were especially gorgeous. He brings an assistant with him for the whole day. We asked them to make sure every guest was in at least one photo which they accomplished! The only thing is he did not take as many posed pictures, so if this is what you are looking for make sure you make this clear. There were so many good pictures to remember the day by that we are having a hard time deciding which ones to display in our home/include in our album! The website that the pictures are displayed on is also easy to navigate.

Everyone’s tuxes were the correct size/style and arrived on time. We changed the groomsmen’s style of tux and pick-up location close to the date, and there were no problems. Everyone looked great!

Flami was great!!!!! She came to my house and did the whole bridal party, everyone loved her. Our makeup looked amazing and stayed looking flawless all night. She is also affordable. She shaped my eyebrows a month before the wedding for $25 too which looked great.

I did my own invitations, but got the paper at Paper Source. They have all types of paper and stamps. The people at the store are very helpful. It can get expensive if you want to do something fancy, but if you keep it simple by getting plain paper and choosing just a couple things to accent the invite with, you can make a gorgeous invitation for only a couple of dollars per invite. For example, we chose a stamp that we used as a theme for all the wedding paper – save the date, menu, place cards etc. We got tons of compliments on the invitations.

I had a bunch of trials at different places but Diane was the best and she is affordable. She came to my house with some assistants and did my whole bridal party the day of the wedding (updos or half up for everyone), and everyone looked great. Plus the hairstyles actually lasted all night.

People were dancing all night and lots of people commented how much they liked our DJ. In fact I’ve been asked for his info from future brides that were guests at our wedding. He was also very organized (made sure things like the first dance and slideshow were on schedule) and got things started again quickly when the power momentarily shut off (!!). I thought he did such a good job with this. But he didn't play all of the songs on our play list (which wasn't long). It wasn't that big of a deal, but just FYI for those brides who really want specific songs, you should probably stress that.

We loved our cake so much. Everything about it was perfect. They matched the shade of pink icing we wanted exactly to a piece of fabric we provided them. Plus, it tasted great! They have a lot of options for flavors but we went with a simple, yellow cake with strawberry buttercream filling.