TheSwan's reviews

Maria makes custom veils, restores antique and vintage veils, and sells handmade veils on eBay. I had been unable to find a veil that was what I wanted, so when I saw her beautiful work on eBay, I immediately emailed her to find out if she could make me what I wanted. I already had the headpiece, and just needed a veil that would go with it and match the unusual color and design of my dress. Maria went shopping, sent me fabric squares so that I could choose what I wanted to veil to be made out of, and ultimately made me exactly what I was looking for! In addition to being able to capture what I described to her, via email no less, the quality of her workmanship was excellent. I couldn’t have been more pleased!

My husband and I spent the greatest portion of our honeymoon at Skytop, a resort in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania. This is a beautiful, timeless, bur pricey resort that my family used to visit every summer when I was a kid, so it was only natural that I would want to spend my honeymoon there too. As it turned out, we stayed there during the off season, so we were one of only a few groups staying there at the time. This meant that we had the entire place practically to ourselves, which was perfect for a romantic honeymoon! The resort is primarily thought of as a golf resort, but there was plenty else for us to do: hiking and mountain biking on miles and miles of trails, swimming, playing games in the game room, relaxing on the porch and in the gardens, plenty of good food, and of course spending lots of time together in our room!

We spent our wedding night (and a couple of days leading up to the wedding) in a local bed and breakfast, The Inn at Weston Landing. The couple who own the B&B are extremely nice and accommodating, and the rooms are absolutely beautiful. There are four rooms, all decorated in a different theme with beautiful antiques for a picturesque end result – in fact, we even had our wedding photographs taken there! The breakfasts are amazing, and the B&B even houses an antique store on the main floor, which was fun. My husband and I liked it so much that we hated to leave the next day to go on the REAL honeymoon, and as a result we went back 8 months later to stay the night again.

I had a difficult time finding the wedding favors I wanted. Since our wedding was 1920s themed, I wanted to have fans as favors, but I was having a difficult time finding what I wanted but staying within our budget. WeddingFAVORites.com was a good source and did have fans that worked for our favors. They were extremely nice and helpful, responded to emails quickly, and allowed me to buy samples of a couple of different styles of fans so that I could see what they looked like. I did think the quality was rather cheap, but I went with their fans because they came in little boxes that I was able to personalize with our names and wedding date.

The Vineyards is a 5-star restaurant located right across the street from Pirtle’s Winery, where we had our wedding ceremony and reception. Since we couldn’t get any more convenient than that, we had them do they catering for our wedding. They literally took care of everything, from the food to the tables, chairs, linens, and our cake. The chef was very friendly and helpful, listened to what we wanted, and made suggestions when needed. And the food – I can’t even begin to describe how good it was! The chef worked with me to come up with several selections that would suit us (mainly vegetarian) as well as our guests – a tall order, I can tell you! Our wedding cake – which was non-traditional as a carrot cake – also turned out to be exquisite.

This vendor happens to be the only one we were NOT satisfied with. We paid a lot of money and all we got was a single DVD with unedited video footage. To boot, you can’t even hear any of the ceremony on the video! It was basically a waste of money. I suppose I should be understanding, because the guy was a photographer mainly, and didn’t normally even do video – but he said he used to, so I think he misrepresented what we were going to get. On top of that, he behaved rather unprofessionally at the wedding, by asking someone – WHILE THE TAPE WAS ROLLING, no less; we have it on the DVD! – whether our photographers actually knew what they were doing, and claiming they were doing it all wrong. Sore because we already had photographers and didn’t hire him for the job, I guess? (Our photography was all done by professional photographers who were family friends.) In any case, that was several hundred dollars we should have saved, as our photographers’ DVD slide show was worth far more than the footage our videographer took!

There is quite possibly no nicer person than Susan Hoskins. She is sweet and just the kind of person I wanted officiating our wedding! She listened to what my husband and I wanted, and wrote a ceremony that was nothing short of perfect. On our request, she performed a non-religious ceremony for us, created a ceremony that didn’t require us to say our own vows (something I really did NOT want to do), and omitted some of the traditional wording that I didn’t want. She also pre-approved the ceremony with us via email, and made some corrections as needed. The result was a warm, loving, and welcoming ceremony that everyone was able to appreciate. Both of my bridesmaids cried, so I know hubby and I weren’t the only ones who loved it!

Our wedding ceremony and reception were held at Pirtle Winery, which is housed in an old church building that was built in the 1860s. It was a small venue, but that was perfect for us because our wedding was small and had a special 1920s theme. We had the ceremony outside in their little courtyard, surrounded by grape vines, and the reception was inside. The manager and staff were all exceptionally friendly, and did a lot of work to arrange everything. Plus, the price was almost too good to be true – and of course, their wine was excellent! If I had to do it again, the only thing I would have done differently would have been to be more insistent about them taking down some of the winery decorations (such as tourist-y T-shirts on the walls), and I would have asked them to have their staff dress up – they were dressed rather casually!

All I knew about The Men’s Warehouse was what I had seen in the corny commercials when I was growing up, but we decided to use them for tuxedo rentals for our wedding, and they proved to be very helpful and decently priced. In the store we were able to look over a book with pictures of all their tux styles, which was extremely helpful because we hadn’t known yet what style we wanted. They also had many styles to choose from, and there was a nice variety of vest colors and styles too. The salesmen were exceptionally nice, helpful, and efficient. We also found it extremely convenient that there are so many Men’s Warehouse stores around, since we were having our wedding out of town – my husband and all of the groomsmen were able to get fitted at their local stores, and then everyone’s tuxes were picked up at the store nearest where the wedding was being held.

My husband and I decided to design and make our own wedding invitations, but in order to ensure they looked as nice as possible, we had to order the correct envelopes. In this regard LCI Paper was a lifesaver. They had a great selection and great prices, and were one of the few places I found where we could order the kind of formal wedding invitation envelopes we wanted without also buying invitations. My only complaint was that their product pages didn’t offer color samples so that we could see what colors we were ordering. Luckily there were only a couple of choices, so we went with the safest ones (white with pearl lining) and it turned out fine!