Sand21a's reviews

I ordered my bridesmaids dresses from Alfred Angelo in Beverly Hills. I had four girls in my bridal party - three of them live in Boston, and the fourth is here in L.A. To make it "easier," I decided to just give the store the style number of the dress I wanted, so that the girls would just have to call in with their size and their address. Then the dress would just be shipped to them directly. I wouldn't have to worry about them accidentally ordering the wrong dress by giving the wrong style number or something.

The dresses were all strapless, tea length, with a sash around the waist and a little bit of material peeking out under the hem. The bridesmaids were going to have cherry red dresses (including the sash and the material on the bottom), and the MOH would have a cherry red dress with a rose sash and material on the bottom.

When the girls got their dresses, I assumed everything was fine because they all said the dresses looked great, they were strapless, red, etc. The MOH said hers had the pink sash. I never thought to ask all four if they had a TEA LENGTH dress. I mean, Alfred Angelo had the style number in their system, the girls got strapless cherry red dresses, so what could be wrong?

Two days before my wedding the girls from Boston fly to L.A. for the dress rehearsal. I visit one of the girls in her hotel room and I see this bright cherry red dress hanging in her hotel closet. It's floor length (like a ball gown), strapless, no sash, with some sort of criss-cross material over the bust. It's the wrong dress. All the other girls had the right dress except for this one girl, who somehow got an entirely different dress, and just didn't know it.

(Playing devil's advocate: I had sent all of the girls a photo of the dress months before, but I'm sure they glanced at it, thought, "ok, it's a bridesmaids dress, I'll wear whatever she sends me", and then went about their day. The point still is: Alfred Angelo had the style number in their system and still sent out the wrong dress.)

So I called Al Angelo and told them the situation. It started out very calm: it's two days before my wedding, my bridesmaid has the wrong dress, can you help? They said they'd call back. An hour went by, and no phone call. I called again, and they said they were working on it. A few minutes later, a girl called, sounding a bit stressed. She admitted that she was the one who sent the dresses out, it was her fault, and she just doesn't know what happened. She has all the correct style numbers in the system, but somehow she screwed up. So I asked if they could get me the correct dress. They couldn't. Did they have a similar dress in-house that we could have instead? No, not in cherry red. Finally I asked if I could have my bridesmaid just come by and have the dress cut down in length; if it could be made to be tea length, it wouldn't look all that different from the other dresses. At first, she said that would be fine and their seamstress would take care of it. My bridesmaid could come by the next afternoon.

Then she called back - the seamstress doesn't have a sewing machine in-house and she'd have to bring it home, and she might not have it back in time for the wedding. At this point I just started yelling that we ordered the correct dress, we paid for the correct dress, and they sent us the wrong dress. They should help us figure out a way to fix the problem. She said she'd see what she could do and would call me back. I had to get to my dress rehearsal, so I turned my cell phone off. When the dress rehearsal was over, I called Al Angelo to find out what the status was, and the girl who I'd been speaking to had gone home for the day! She'd never called back as promised, and no one else at the store seemed to know anything about what had happened.

My bridesmaid finally just took her dress to a local seamstress the next morning, who cut the dress down to tea length and in the end, no one could tell that her dress was any different from the other girls'. But it was such a stressful experience and I couldn't believe how horrible their customer service was. All they had to do was offer to help me find a local seamstress, and it would've made me feel as though they were sorry about the mix-up. But because of the way everything was handled, I'd really encourage anyone to stay away from that store. Not worth the stress.

I don't think I can say enough great things about Michael. I found out about him while getting references for our photographer. A woman I emailed for a reference said, "oh, by the way, definitely use our DJ. He was amazing!" I emailed Michael and sure enough, he turned out to be the best vendor we had. Throughout our wedding planning process he stayed in touch with my fiance and me to make sure we had everything we needed. He met with both of us together twice - once as an introductory meeting, and once as a formal "let's go through the entire wedding step-by-step" deal. He also went to Calamigos Equestrian Center (the wedding site) with my fiance to check the place out, because he'd never been there before and he wanted to get the lay of the land. THEN he called us the weekend before the wedding to go over all the details - every major song, the timeline of the night, the pronunciation of the groomsmen and bridesmaids' names, etc. He also provided us with microphones and speakers for the ceremony, and recommended the amazing guitar player we hired for our ceremony. Throughout everything he was so sweet and truly professional. And not at all expensive. (He gives free quotes through his website, too.) Definitely someone I'd recommend to anyone looking for a great DJ.

Isabel was great! Because we were on a budget, we decided to hire her to shoot, but not edit, our wedding. (We got the tapes at the end of the night, and we'll edit the footage ourselves.) Isabel's work was great. She caught great moments on video, and most of the time I wasn't even aware that she was there. She was incredibly professional, and she's definitely a sweetheart. I'm so glad we hired her. I'd definitely recommend her.

I love Kate! She was such a gem throughout the entire wedding planning process. During our first meeting, my fiance and I explained that we were on a tight budget and were paying for our entire wedding ourselves. Kate managed to work around our budget so that we paid what we were hoping to pay and still got absolutely beautiful flowers. Our centerpieces were gorgeous (we gave them away at the end of the wedding, and I had friends who were trying to take more than one home!), and our ceremony photos are stunning, thanks to her work. She was the first vendor at the ceremony site, and was there setting up before anyone else even arrived. I would highly recommend her.