Dave Arwood is a mastermind at reading a party. He knows to keep the music mellow while people are eating, crank up some older music when people first start dancing to get the grannies on the floor, and play the club music later in the night when people are REALLY ready to party. He’s great at knowing when to revert back to something more tame and calm everyone down and when to put on a really popular tune to get everyone up and moving. He isn’t a microphone hog who loves to hear himself talk, but if you need him to make an announcement for anything, he’s well-spoken and pleasant. He sends you a pretty extensive set of worksheets prior to your wedding for you to fill out so that he knows what you definitely want played, what you want to avoid, what special elements you want when (such as the father/daughter dance, etc), so you get a completely comprehensive outline of your entire reception beforehand. He also did our ceremony music for us, which is something he hadn’t done before at our venue, but he was great with figuring out their sound system and following the cues during the ceremony.

Our cakes were YUMMY. The bride’s cake looked a little different from what we had originally discussed, but it was still beautiful, it tasted amazing, and I was so distracted by how tasty it was that I didn’t even realize it didn’t look like the original plan until several weeks AFTER the wedding! The groom’s cake looked exactly like what we had talked about, and my husband loved it. This was seriously the best tasting wedding cake I have ever had, and the prices were much lower than I found anywhere else!

Another truly delightful vendor experience! The coordinator from the catering company at the time we were planning our wedding was Leslie Patton, and she was great! Super organized, very sweet, and she met with us a number of times to finalize menus. Every time we ate at one of Tulla’s restaurants, Leslie would recommend things on the menu that we hadn’t tried and order a variety of dishes for us to taste. We never paid for anything any of the times we met with her because she insisted on covering it herself, and even on a couple of occasions where we went in just to eat without a meeting with Leslie, the servers recognized us and insisted on giving us a free dessert or appetizer. This group of restaurants is HIGHLY involved with making sure that all your experiences with them are positive ones, and they make you feel like part of a large, well-fed family. Tulla himself came over to our table one night when we were meeting with Leslie and sat down at our table to chat for several minutes. Our guest list included a number of Jewish people, diabetics, and vegetarians, so we had a variety of dietary needs that we wanted to respect—Leslie and Tulla both were outstanding with helping us create a menu that would work for everyone. The whole night, guests kept coming up to us and raving about how wonderful the food was and what an incredibly sweet girl Leslie was. It was by far the best food I’ve ever had at a wedding, and I’ve been to a LOT of weddings! Leslie even packed to-go boxes for me, my husband, my mom, my dad and stepmother, and my husband’s parents!

I’ve already recommended Stephanie to every person I know getting married, having a baby, or anything else where someone might want a picture taken, and will continue to do so. Stephanie has a great sense of humor, and working with her is a really fun, relaxed, laid back experience. Our pictures turned out beyond our wildest dreams. She has an amazing eye, and she really knows how to bring the best out of people. I loved that she was unobtrusive, so she got some great candid shots when people didn’t know they were being photographed, but she was also great at joking around and making people laugh—there weren’t any fake, forced smiles in our photographs! I have a huge, confusing family tree, and she did an amazing job of figuring out who was who and avoiding any awkward moments while photographing family portraits involving a motley crew of divorcees! I couldn’t possibly recommend her more highly!

I cannot possibly gush enough about Kim Nelson’s work. Flowers were the one element of the wedding where I was very high-maintenance. I knew exactly what I wanted and walked into Kim’s studio armed with a silly amount of pictures, fabric swatches, photocopies of the invitations, on and on and on! She completely got what aesthetic I wanted, made samples, sent me pictures of things she thought I might like, and was just wonderful. There were a few décor elements where I didn’t have a set concept in mind and told her to be creative and have fun with it. Those wound up being some of my favorite parts! She is a creative genius, and she really loves her work. The pride she takes in it is evident in the quality and execution of her designs, and her passion makes working with her a really enjoyable experience.

As we do not have any specific religious affiliations, we found our wedding officiant through an organization on the internet (I can’t remember which one). We had a very customized wedding ceremony, and Rev. Larmore was EXTREMELY flexible and helped us so much with writing the ceremony so that we felt it was true to us. She came in from out of town, and she was very friendly and personable, which was nice since we met her for the first time at the rehearsal! The only problem we had with her was that, during the actual ceremony, she didn’t know the ceremony wording we had decided upon very well, and I don’t think she had ever been wired with a lapel microphone before because she didn’t realize that everyone there could hear comments she thought were being made only to me and my husband. Part of this was our fault, too, as we never got her to go over the entire ceremony with a microphone at the rehearsal; had we done so, the experience would’ve probably been better for all of us. She was also very efficient with filing the paperwork for us after the ceremony, and she responded to email extremely quickly, even on a few occasions where I emailed her several times on the same day.

The morning of the wedding, we had a bride, 6 bridesmaids, and 2 mothers crowding the salon needing everything from updos to highlight touchups, and that was just my wedding (there were two other wedding parties in the salon that morning, too). Serendipity did hair and makeup for all of us and got us in and out of there in two hours. They even let one of the bridesmaids (who had been called in to work and been there all night the night before the wedding!) take a nap in the back room. Everyone was really happy with their hair, which held up on a windy day during an outdoor wedding with no problems, and they helped me a lot with figuring out how much everything would cost, how long it’d take, etc. in advance.

The sales associate at MW Tux was organized, took measurements and filed all the paperwork quickly, and we got our tuxes in early. They were also very helpful with helping us match colors to the bridesmaid dresses, wedding dress, etc. (and if you’ve ever seen a man trying to decide what works for formalwear, you know how much they can need the assistance!).

Kristy Rice’s work is truly beautiful, and she is a joy to work with. We were so happy with our invitations, and she was very flexible.

Taiye has a very fun personality, and he really makes standing around in a hot, heavy dress having pins stuck all over the place a fun experience. His prices are GREAT, and he does good work. My only complaint is that he is bad about forgetting when he told you to come back in for your next fitting, but as long as you call a day or two in advance and remind him, he’s ready for you. However, if you don’t call and remind him, chances are pretty good that you’ll walk in the door, and he’ll go “Uh-oh!” His prices make this worth dealing with, though!