We worked mainly with Julie. She was great and did everything that we asked her to do, and did it well. She handled nearly everything for me the day-of, and she was amazing with working with Karen at the reception site and all of Karen's screw-ups and craziness. Dealing with all of that in the few weeks before was not in the contract, and she stepped up and handled it for me, no questions asked. I could not imagine what I would have done without her in that situation.
The only reason I gave a 4 (1/2) star rating instead of a 5, is that I wish she would have asked me for more information ahead of time. She did everything I asked, and used all of the info I had given her, but on the day-of there was info that she didn't have that would have helped that I had never thought to give her. It would have been helpful for me if early in the process we could have gone over the whole day step by step, and if she could have given me a list of what info it would be helpful for her to have/know. As I said, anything that was a bit hectic the day of was because of info I hadn't given her, but I haven't been through a wedding before, and didn't necessarily know what they would need. I think that this will come with more experience.
All in all working with Julie was awesome, and the day would not have worked nearly as well without her!

They were a little hard to get a hold of at times, but on the day of, our videographers were very professional and unobtrusive. We recieved our video at the end of September after an inordinate amount of hassle trying to pay them, and them losing my credit card number several times. The video is wonderful to watch and is a great memory of our day. The videographer did not always film from the most logical vantage point, and the editing isn't the greatest in the world. But, it serves our purpose of having a record of the day. Could it have been better? Yes. But we looked for cheap, and for cheap we recieved good quality video that could have been a bit better. OK.

Save-The-Dates: They're through the post office, you upload your pictures and your mailing list, and they print and mail them for you. Super easy! They were really good quality and everyone loved them. for 50-99 postcards it's 97 cents each (for the normal postcard size which we used) which includes postage. The more you are sending the less it is. For us it was so no hassle, and turned out great.

When we booked the Chelsea Comfort Inn in June of 2007, we did so for two reasons. 1) I wanted an all vegetarian wedding, and Chef John was really flexible, easy to work with, and had some great ideas. 2) April, the coordinator had a great, bubbly personality, while still having great attention to detail, and we really clicked.

By October 2007 Chef John was gone. The new Chef was not hired until December 2007. In March 2008 there was a change of owners and management companies and April (since she worked for the management company) was gone. She called me herself to tell me (within 24 hrs of finding out herself) and did everything she could to make it easy for me. Enter Dana. We met with Dana April 1st, and things seemed to be going ok. I had to re-go-over everything that I had done with April (since I wanted everything set before I student taught in January, including the trial of how they were to set up the room.) It was a PIA, but I made it work. Less than 2 weeks later, Dana was no longer the head coordinator, and in enters Karen.

Karen previously worked for VCCI, and was very knowledgeable about timelines and such but it was her way or the high way. I did not want to go with when she recommended we do the cake cutting, it was wrong on every time line she ever sent me (a total of 8) wrong the day of, and once I corrected it the day of, they still screwed it up. She took notes during our meeting on everything we wanted. She said she would e-mail it to us in writing later that week. We did not get it for 2 weeks, and when we did, over half the information was wrong. I sent it back to her, CCing Julie my DOC. Over 8 versions were sent back and forth, none were completely right. She was not flexible on making the food vegan friendly, which I was assured would happen. Some things that were promised in our Banquet event order still never happened. The worst part was, she refused to work with Julie, our DOC. Julie would e-mail her about an issue I was having, and Karen would respond to me rather than Julie. I would then respond back to both of them, but still it seemed that Karen would only work with me, not Julie - not what I wanted to be doing the 2 weeks before my wedding, which is why I hired Julie! I ended up never signing a Banquet event order, because they were never right.

April had said that when I went to drop off stuff for them to set up the day before the wedding, she would be there to work out any last-minute details. I found out that week that Karen would not. When I got there, they had set things up wrong, and I was late for a pre-wedding function that night because I was trying to deal with it, and because at that point, I didn't trust them to do their job.


Several other things that went wrong were :

We were promised that a box of our food would be sent up to our room so that we could not worry about making sure we had time to eat at dinner, and would still get food. The box was cheese and crackers - not our food.
When they cut the cake, they brought it out as they cut it, with the smallest layer first, rather than all at once. This meant that people did not know that there were different flavors, and did not get to choose.
The food that we had was good but - The balsamic green beans were plain, and there was no side of Parmesan for the risotto peppers like there was supposed to be - I believe the fault lies with Karen not telling the chef what I wanted, not with the chef.

The wait staff was really very good for most of the evening. The person assigned to the head table was very attentive and helpful and fun. However, they were very quick to collect the glasses, and break down the tables and chairs. The reception wasn't over until 12, and they started taking down some tables at 11 - What the heck?! I have no idea why they did this. But it made people think it was time to leave.

All in all I would not recommend the Village conference center at Chelsea Comfort Inn. The facility is beautiful, but right now it is not worth dealing with Karen, and since the hotel went to great lengths to hire her back, my guess is she will be there for a long time. Should that change, I would consider recommending them.

Jill was amazing! By far one of my favorite vendors. I still stalk her blog and comment because I love her and her work. Our pictures are everything I could have imagined, and more. Jill was wonderful to work with. She is really up-beat and has great ideas and energy. She responded to e-mail faster than I could even hope for. Jill did two shoots for us, both our engagement pictures and our wedding pictures. Our engagement pictures were fabulous, and a lot of fun to do. Jill has a great eye for pictures and our wedding pictures were fabulous. She's also good about doing spot color, or editing out things you don't want. Somehow one of my favorite "putting on the dress" pictures had a hot pink bra laying in the background - not something you want to show your grandmother! I e-mailed Jill, and in just a few days, she e-mailed me a new picture with the offending bra gone! Jill does lots of great little touches like personalizing the label on your high-res photo CD with a picture from the shoot. She includes a high-res CD and a release with all shoots so that you can get prints anywhere. I'm still in the process of getting her my picture choices for our album, but from the samples I've seen, I know that will be fabulous to!

On the day of Jill was great - never in the way, and always had great ideas. She got lost on the way to our ceremony, and was a few minutes late (less than 10 I think) but she said she would stay past the time she was supposed to leave to make up for it. I also loved that before she left, she asked if there were any other shots that I wanted her to get. This allowed me to pull my brother up onto the dance floor so I could have pictures of him dancing with me. Moral of the story - Book Jill!

Miriam is a little pricey, but she was wonderful to work with. We met with her twice, and she really made an effort to get to know us. We were also late for one of our meeting (over an hour!) due to an accident on 275 (we literally went half a mile in 20 minutes!), and she worked with it, and it wasn’t an issue.

She really personalized our ceremony, getting a friend to translate something into Hebrew for us. She’s super laid back which was nice. She also has tons of options for your ceremony. She has a thick booklet of probably 15-20 different possible elements for your ceremony, with at least 3 options for each, and you choose which elements you want, and which version. She’ll also modify and combine any if you like one but it’s not quite right. She also has supplemental booklets for every ethnicity, faith or possibly traditions. Jewish, Buddhist, Filipino, African America – just to name a few!

The one quirky thing is she will not say G-d in any language – but she will modify any prayer, etc to be human-centric. We had one Hebrew prayer that we really wanted the traditional wording for, so we had my brother say it, which also added a nice element to the ceremony. So if you have a specific reading/prayer with G-d mentioned in it that you really want used in the original form, think about having someone close to you read it instead of her, it is a nice way to include it and them.

Also, she does not do rehearsals. She will write out detailed instructions for you to do your own (which we did, and it was a bit chaotic at first, but it worked out and the day of was great) or, you can hire her husband to do it (for $100), knowing that he has discussed it with her in depth. Another alternative is to have your DOC or someone come with you to your final meeting, and she will go through it with them for them to run your rehearsal.

She also rolled with the punches the day of for us. Our DJ was supposed to have a microphone for her and didn’t, but she just went with it. Also, the glass we were suppose to do our unity cup with blew over and broke before the ceremony, and she said, no problem, I have a silver cup in my car, we’ll use that, and it worked fine. Again, she was wonderful!

All in all our experience w/ President Tuxedo was pretty good. Dan and Chris (Best Man) went into pick out the tuxes during my shower. Everything was good, except that the time they gave us to pick up the tuxes was the time of our rehearsal/rehearsal dinner. (So no one would be available to do so). I called a few days later to try to change that. It was prom season, and things were a little hectic, and I was told I would be called back within the hour. An hour and a half later - no call. I call back and am told they will call before 7pm. 7pm comes and goes with no call. I call again and they finally talk to me, and say that that's just the earliest that the tuxes can be picked up, it will be fine if they pick them up Friday morning, and they will still have time to fix any problems.
I eventually realized that that won't work because my brother is in High school, and can't pick his up Friday morning. I go in to see the vests (with my BM Marisa who used to work at President Tuxedo), and while I'm there I mention the situation again, and the guy changes our pick-up to Wednesday night - no questions asked. Why this couldn't be done in the first place - I have no idea.
When everyone went to pick up the Tuxes there were a few minor issues, but they sent those pieces back and got us new ones by Friday. So all in all it worked out pretty well.

Jessica has been the only person allowed to touch my hair (including every Homecoming and Prom in High School) since I was 12. She did a fabulous job! Towards the end of the night, my hair still looked great, and I actually got several compliments about how amazing it was that it still looked perfect! I loved the hair she did for my BM’s too. Jessica came on location for us, and worked with our interesting facilities.

Best prices I found, and easy to work with. We ordered the mini gerbera daisies (pink), and the jumbo white hydrangeas for our centerpieces. I had an issue with my CC company when I ordered (they put a hold on my account – apparently using a CC that I average maybe $300 a month to spend over $800 at 2 florists in 1 day was suspicious!) When I called the flower exchange on the phone to deal with the CC issue, they were very nice and accommodating. Great customer service!! The flowers came in 2 boxes the morning of the day they were supposed to. Each had a little vial of water on it, and all of the daisies had little mesh covers on the heads so that the petals wouldn’t get crushed. Couldn’t be happier!

They were a good price and easy to work with, but I wasn’t thrilled with my flowers. They do very tight bouquets, which for me meant that instead of having my daisies and tulips a little loose, but flush in a ball, the daisies were flush in a ball, and the tulips were poking out the top. Not quite what I envisioned, but I didn’t specify differently, so I can’t entirely blame them. I would recommend them, but I would recommend giving them pictures, and having a very detailed description of how you want it to look.