We rented a photobooth to be at the reception immediately following the ceremony to be available for our guests from 4pm to 8pm. Having the photobooth totally made the wedding. It was so fun for everyone. Just about all the guests got in it at one point or another, including my husbands grandmother. There was an attendant with the booth the entire time who helped guests assemble their photos into a guestbook, which we LOVE looking through now that the wedding is over. The attendant was incredibly fun and friendly, and agreed to stay for an extra hour at 8pm when our guests were still lining up for pictures. After the wedding I received a disk with all the pictures from the booth on it too. The photobooth was the single best thing we spent money on for the whole event and was so worth it!

We had the entire event (ceremony and reception) at this bed and breakfast in Albuquerque that has an amazing central courtyard and can accomodate events up to about 150. The venue is fairly expensive. But about half of our guests were able to stay on site at the B&B and their garden courtyard is unmatched in its beauty. it's also really centrally located, right next to Old Town and the Biopark, so our guests could easily get to some of the attractions without needing to rent a car. The Casas De Suenos people set up all the chairs for the ceremony, and then switched the space over to tables for dinner during the cocktail reception. They also handled all the clean up and coordination with the other vendors. The whole event was beautiful, but we got incredibly lucky on the weather. For our weekend it was 80 degrees and sunny the entire time, but the weekend prior it had snowed and the weekend after it rained. Casas de Suenos cannot do indoor events, only outdoors, so you have to take your chances with the weather. Overall, though it was a pricey choice, we are happy we had our wedding there.

Since our wedding was just a little bit 'western' we decided that my husband should wear a 3 piece black corduroy suit. We had a devil of a time finding anything close to this anywhere in Albuquerque, so we decided to take a chance with makeyourownjeans.com. When you place an order with them it takes about 4 weeks to receive it so when we ordered it we still had time for a plan B if the suit wasn't right. The price was great - $200 for a 3 piece suit that fit absolutely perfectly and required no extra tailoring. My husband looked great in it and can actually wear the pieces to other events, unlike a tuxedo which you can rarely find an occasion for. (especially in Albuquerque.)

Our invitations were custom designed by Paper Source and featured a really neat cactus illustration, since were getting married in New Mexico. They were really beautiful and high quality, and I got lots of compliments on them.

My hairdresser from Chicago- Irene Castro- came out to Albuquerque to do my hair for the wedding, and as usual she did an incredible job. She did the whole thing in about 20 minutes so I wasn't rushed for time the day of the wedding. It was a beautiful, stayed in place the whole night, and looked great in the pictures.

My mom is skilled at arrangements and bouquets, so we bought the flowers from a 'wholesale to the public' place and assembled them ourselves. We bought roses, hydrangeas, freesia, and greens from Savon and the quality was incredible and the whole lot to do the tables, wreaths, bouquets, corsages and boutonniers cost less than $250. Their service was really good too. On Saturday morning we ended up having to get a few extras, and they had them ready for us within 15 minutes. My mother, who knows her flowers very well, could not believe how high quality what we got was for the price.

We did tastings at about 3 caterers in New Mexico, and they were all similarly priced but the quality really varied. Peas n Pod was the most expensive of the places we tasted, but the difference in price was only about $400 and the quality was MUCH higher than the others. So we went with them. We got their BBQ menu which was really tasty and worked well for buffet service. We didn't try all the sides and the salad before the event, and they were a little less than perfect. The salad was the pre-mixed kind that comes in a bag. No big deal though, and overall the dinner was really delicious, though pretty pricey.

After dress shopping all weekend in the Twin Cities I didn't expect to find anything at this little dress shop in Rochester, MN, and while most of their dresses were totally covered in tulle and sequins we found the perfect dress at a much better price than anything we had looked at in the TC. Their service is also the best of any of the shops we went to, and my dress arrived in only 6 weeks, though they had told me it could take up to 3 months.

This is my favorite restaurant I've ever been to. They accomodated my bachelorette party of 12 on a warm spring night on their patio where we spent about 4 hours eating, drinking, and having a great time. The food is fantastic and reasonably priced and the service is wonderful. We had such a good time.

Sunny did a great job on the hem of my wedding dress and completed it fairly quickly as well. When I dropped the dress off we did a fitting and it was ready for pick up 2 weeks later. She charged exactly what she had estimated up front, and recommended not putting in a bustle, but just pinning the back up with safety pins the night of the wedding. This worked just fine and saved me the money of extra alterations.