Gayle offers fantastic, FREE wedding planning advice. She hooks you up with the vendors you need for the price you need. She's not out to nickel and dime you- she makes her money by businesses paying her to advertise for them because she consults SO many brides. She also has a massive collection of wedding decor and other items for your wedding that she rents out or lets you use. When two or three brides need to order a bunch of the same things she places a bulk order so it is cheaper for them all. She does everything she can to help you spend less, IF that is your goal, yet she has the most expensive-looking taste. She is super flexible, though, and makes sure you know it's about what YOU want and what is important to YOU and helps you achieve your dream. It's great, whether you're spending $2,000 on your wedding or $30,000. I think she's done it all, from the humblest weddings to the most fancy. Mine was pretty humble but she has helped me be very, very satisfied. I thought I'd have to rent pillars at $30 apiece but she found me a vendor who could rent them out for $9. She has some pictures at her website: http://www.thecottageplace.com

Karen is catering for our 200-300 guests for just over $900. That price included nuts, mints, fruit and dip, and crackers and cheese, plus her staying during the reception. She will also be doing some flower arrangements for the reception and we will rent tablecloths, but have not gotten the pricing for that back yet. It's all sort of last minute and she has been great even under that kind of pressure. She has EVERYTHING, pillars, punch bowls, you name it, so it costs less to rent these items from her. She has some examples of her food and floral arrangements here: http://www.myspace.com/kahkakes

I got my bridal gown, bustier, and petticoat here. I got the gown altered a little to fit my small chest. When the gown came in the first time, they had to replace one of the cap sleeves because the embroidery was incomplete. My bridesmaids also got their outfits here and had no trouble. It was busy when we went but they did their best and took care of us. It's nice that David's Bridal has a fairly wide range of styles and prices.
The curtains covering the dressing rooms in the alterations department were too small. There was an approximately 5 inch gap on either side of each curtain! However, the dressing rooms in the rest of the store are very nice.

The service for My Cabin Vacation has been good so far. Their prices are reasonable and we liked the look of the cabins. It's a great place to get away in the Smoky Mountains (we chose a cabin in the woods with privacy!) and yet be close to the local attractions. They have many pictures of a variety of cabins. http://www.mycabinvacation.com/

Hobby Lobby has some excellent blowout sales. Go during a sale! went while they were having a 50% off sale on wedding things and got our guest book and guest book pen for $5 apiece, bridesmaid bouquets for $10 apiece, plus a a birdcage for our cards and a flower girl basket to match the guest book. They have various matching themes of wedding items that would probably suit most any taste.
We cleaned them out and bought ALL of our plates and cups here. They have some very pretty items even though they are inexpensive, like plastic plates with elegant, lacy designs. We liked that we could get a lot of basic wedding things without going over our small budget.

Got a lot of items from Target for the bachelorette party. One thing good about Target is that the clothes (such as lingerie) are pretty good and yet not too expensive. We like that we can easily afford Target's chic stuff yet enjoy its quality. They are pretty consistent and we appreciate that.

Men's Wearhouse drove us crazy with misleading advertisements and high prices but it was a place we couldn't live without as we really didn't have any other choice. Since we have wedding party guys coming from all over the place, we needed somewhere that was ubiquitous so they could all get fitted at their convenience in their own cities. It just ended up costing a lot more than we feel it should have. Later we realized we could almost have bought tuxes for the price we paid. Getting one tux thrown in free softened the blow, but Men's Wearhouse is probably not for the budget without wiggle room.

Overall, this is a very useful stop if you are making your own invitations. Trying to save money, we printed off our self-designed invitations here and then copied them on the color copier. However, the printer did not do a very crisp job and the copies from it were a very slight step down from that.
My advice is to print your invitations on a quality printer and then come to Kinko's to use the copier.
If you have invitations or something else that needs to be cut, some locations have a pneumatic paper cutter that can cut hundreds of papers precisely how you want them in a couple of minutes. Our location had that and it probably saved us HOURS.

We got some wedding decorations here, such as glass beads, silk flowers, and garlands for our wedding arch. We are also planning on getting fake rose petals here.
But watch out: If you need a lot of one kind of silk flower, get it all while you can. If you wait too long, it may go out of season. They may be silk, but they aren't all stocked year-round! That happened with our garlands.

My advice: SIGN UP FOR THEIR WEEKLY EMAILS. They send you coupons every week so you don't have to get ANYTHING for the full price! You can use one coupon per customer per day, so go with someone else and print off the coupon twice. Or go more than once a week on separate days. It's totally worth it.

This little bakery near Chattanooga had just what we needed for my wedding cake. With non-fondue icing it cost about $2 per guest. We spent around $400 total and got the red blossom design with branches. They have a website with lots of pictures of their creative cakes. http://pacbakery.blogspot.com/
They also have a small album filled with photos of their cakes if you drop by their location and always have a few examples around. The only downside is that we had hoped they could sweeten the cake with something besides sucrose since I am allergic, but they couldn't. For the price, though, it's the best place around. They'll do whatever you want within reason. Good service.