Cinegirl's reviews

Pre-wedding Grade: 4 stars
Wedding Day Grade: 2 stars

Unfortunately, I didn't have the same great experience with My Wedding Blooms that other people have had. Everything was fine leading up to the wedding -- Kerim was very responsive to e-mails and calls and had great ideas -- but the execution was lacking on the actual wedding day.

The flowers arrived close to the promised time of 8:30 a.m., but there was a major problem: the mothers' corsages and the gardenias for my hair were missing. There was a box for the corsages that was filled with packing material, but the corsages themselves were missing. The employee who delivered the flowers promised to return with the missing ones in 15 minutes.

Forty-five minutes later, we had to leave for the church and ran into the employee in the hallway with the missing flowers. Once we arrived at the church, we discovered that no pins had been provided for the corsages or the boutonnieres and had to ask our coordinator to bring some to us. All of the waiting made us late for our pictures, which ended up being more rushed than we wanted. The men have no flowers in at least half of the pictures.

The aisle arrangements were stuck onto the chairs with double-sided tape but kept falling off -- only about half of them were still on when I walked down the aisle. The flowers that my mom had put in my hair (because they arrived after the makeup artist had left) kept falling out. Eventually, we ended up putting one of the magnolias from the back of the cake in my hair because we couldn't get the gardenias to stay!

I had a very small wedding (two bouquets, four boutonnieres, six aisle arrangements, five centerpieces, an aisle runner, and a cake stand) so it was even more frustrating that things went wrong. So, unfortunately, I can only recommend Kerim if you really stay on top of him and make sure that he delivers everything he's supposed to. Everything looked nice, but it was so frustrating having to wait around for it that it really diminished my enjoyment of the flowers and added unnecessary stress to our wedding day.

Also, looking at the pictures, the centerpieces we ended up with look a lot less lush than our samples were, though it's possible it was due to a miscommunication.

DH and I had a small wedding (40 guests) so it was difficult to find a place in Pasadena to have a luncheon reception that was private and could take a small group. We finally settled on Cafe Santorini as giving us the most bang for our buck since their private room is actually downstairs from the main restaurant and has its own entrance from the street.

I was very stressed out by the decision, though, because I didn't like their coordinator and was very worried about how the day would go. She seemed very detached and uninterested in our wedding. In fact, I was so concerned that we ended up hiring a day-of coordinator (the fabulous Heather Ryon from Martinis & Bliss).

Luckily, that particular person at Rococo quit a couple of months before our wedding and we ended up working with Natalia, the new coordinator, who turned out to be very nice and enthusiastic. She was willing to answer all of our questions, worked with Heather very smoothly, and even called a few days after the reception to make sure we were happy with our experience there.

The Rococo Room came with a lot of items that you have to pay extra for at other locations, like chiavari chairs. Their prices were extremely reasonable -- the luncheon was less than $25 per person, and that included salad, entree, nonalcoholic drinks, and dessert. They have a cake cutting fee of $1.25 per person, but they waive it if you choose to serve your cake as dessert instead of their dessert. The food was simple but delicious. Yes, I got to eat at my wedding!

G. and I both love the Craftsman style of architecture, so we knew the minute we pulled up to Neighborhood Unitarian Church that we were going to get married there.

The grounds of the church are beautiful, with mature redwood trees and a tiny garden. There's an authentic Greene & Greene house in the middle of the church campus that's absolutely gorgeous (assuming, like us, you love Craftsman style!)

Neighborhood Church has both a large sanctuary and a smaller chapel that can be used. We had a very small (40 guest) wedding, so we used the Ross Chapel. They were very accomodating to all of our needs (which weren't very complicated) and had plenty of free parking for our guests.

We hired our own coordinator (mostly because we were worried about our reception venue) who worked really well with Jacqueline Fox, the church's coordinator. Jacqueline was very flexible and accommodating for everything we needed and was very willing to work with our coordinator.

Because we were getting married at Neighborhood Unitarian, we were able to shoot our formal pictures next door in the backyard of the Gamble House as long as we were done by noon (not a problem, since our ceremony started at 11:00 a.m.), which gave us even more of the architecture that we love. It could potentially have been a pain to be having the pictures there since it is a bit of a walk to the church, but our coordinator and her assistant were on top of things and had walkie-talkies to stay in contact. (See more on our coordinator below.)

The assistant minister of the church, Rev. Kathleen Owens, was our officiant, though you can bring in your own officiant if you prefer. We absolutely loved Rev. Owens and were happy to have her. She was so warm and welcoming even though we were not church members.

Neighborhood Church is a Unitarian Universalist church, so you don't need to join in order to be married there. They're also a very liberal denomination (which was important to both of us fallen-away Catholics) and are happy to do commitment ceremonies for gay and lesbian couples.

Like so many, we also went to Icing on the Ring during one of their 20% off/free stainless steel groom's band promotions.

I went in knowing that I wanted a custom band that would be engraved to coordinate with my grandmother's engagement ring, and that was quick and easy to set up. I e-mailed Vic a close-up or two of the scrolls on my grandmother's ring and they custom-made a platinum band that fits perfectly around the e-ring and complements it really well.

DH took forever to pick his ring out (he went all metro on me that day! :D ) but the salesgirl was VERY patient. It was at least an hour before she gently said, "Okay, now we have to start narrowing things down from what you've already picked."

Definitely recommended.

We ran short of invitations for DH's co-workers and didn't want to have to go back to our horrible invitations vendor (reviewed below, An Occasion to Celebrate), so I DIYed six invites using items from Paper Source.

They turned out quite nice, but at Paper Source prices, you're not going to save much money over having a vendor do it for you.

Online favor vendor with good selection, decent prices, and frequent sales.

I was extremely picky about the cake boxes I chose because most of them seemed to be these tiny 1/2" tall ones that would only fit a sliver of cake. Instead I opted for the giant cake boxes in kraft from WeddingThings.com. (I also got some frosted favor bags that turned out to be too small, but it wasn't the vendor's fault.) I received the items in good condition about a week after I placed the order.

I bought some glassine envelopes from another online vendor that turned out to be too small for what I needed, so, in a panic, I decided to try Papermart since they're local and could get the order to me the next day.

I found little muslin bags (about 4"x7") that were not only the perfect size to hold our favors, but fit our garden theme perfectly at around $1.50 per bag.

We got the special wedding show deal from Men's Wearhouse (I went to the zoo at the Universal Hilton just to get it) where you put $10 down and get any tux between $59.99 and $99.99 for $59.99, including shoes, cufflinks, etc.

We worked David with the Glendale location and had a problem only in retrospect -- looking at the pictures, my husband's coat sleeves are a little too short and you can see his shirt cuffs. Other than that, there were no problems, even though both the best man and my dad were in from out of town.

We wanted a string trio with a different sound, so we chose La Folia, which has a violin, a flute, and a classical guitar.

We had several communication problems with Jerry even though we did almost everything through e-mail and I saved all of the backup. I asked for two custom songs, but he only remembered one and told me three days before the wedding that he couldn't play the song I had requested for my walk down the aisle. Between myself and my coordinator, we finally got him to agree to do it (for an extra fee that had NOT been discussed) after she threatened to have her musician husband play it instead.

They did a good job on the day of (or so I've been told), but Jerry caused a lot of stress and drama by not remembering e-mails and conversations about what we wanted.

I got my wedding corset at Wizard of Bras. They were wonderful and efficient -- the second one that the fitter brought me fit perfectly and I was out of there very quickly. It was comfortable all day at both of my receptions and I never felt like I was being squished, just held in.

It's completely different from a Victoria's Secret-type place. Instead of browsing, you sign in and the fitter takes you to the back where you explain what you're looking for. She measures you and then brings you what you need so you never end up with something that doesn't fit right.