dkriz's reviews

I decided to make the wedding favors myself so after some shopping around I decided to use Martha Steward brand favor boxes sold at any Michael's craft stores. The part that saved me the most money were the coupons they send you in the Sunday paper or even in their e-mail newsletters. I went a couple times a week and every time I would buy one box with my 40% off coupon.
If you don't have time to go as often as I did, just print out a coupon a few times and get a few of your friends together and have each of them buy one box for you so you can get lots of them at once.

After becoming engaged, I decided I wanted to make my own wedding invitations to help cut down the cost of the whole wedding. It took some reseach to ultimately decide the style of the invitation I wanted to make but after I decided on the colors I went to MyGatsby.Com. They had all different colors and cuts of paper that worked perfectly to make wedding invitations. I ordered paper and envelopes for 200 invitations for about $300, I know I saved myself at least $500 if I would have ordered them made from somewhere else. I did all the printing myself on my laptop printer and add some embossing to each invitation to give it some depth. I can honestly say that having done my invitations saved my lots of money and they even look better than some of the ones I have seen online.

I bought my wedding gown from Shelly's Bridal in West Dundee, IL. It was really a stress-free experience, all the girls there are very helpful and know what they are doing when it comes to measuring and providing opinions. I received individualized attention and the same girl worked with me every time I went. Since the dress I wanted was fairly new they didn't have the exact one in the store so I had to trust them that they would get all my measurements right without the dress to try one, when I got the dress everything was perfect! I only needed minor alterations in the end. I can't recommend Shelly's Bridal more, they did an amazing job helping me get my wedding dress!

I decided on David's Bridal for purchasing bridesmaid dresses. I went with them because they work with Men's Warehouse in order to coordinate the groomsmen tuxes. The day I went with my bridesmaids to try on dresses for the wedding was not so memorable, it was not a relaxing experience at all. When I arrived they had a dj playing music but it was so loud the receptionist had a hard time taking down my information because she couldn't hear over the music. After we met with our dress coordinator she informed us that she was still working with 3 other girls besides my 3 girls and they only had one dressing room for us. All 3 of my girls had to take turns trying on different dresses which was rather time consuming, not to mention the fact that their whole dressing room area only had one mirror! There were about 8 different girls trying to share one full-length mirror. To top it off, they had no where for us to sit, my family and I stood the whole time while the girls took their turns trying on the dresses.
Besides this experience nothing has gone terribly wrong, I'm just crossing my fingers that my girls will get their dresses in time.

Since I became engaged, I knew much of the planning would have to be done by myself. We wanted a decent sized wedding, we are planning on 200 people. As a began visiting reception sites my #1 concern became the size of the dance floor. Too many sites had inadequate dance floors. As soon as I visited D'Andrea's in Crystal Lake, IL I knew right away that I wanted my wedding there! Their prices were the cheapest, meaning I got the most for my money including a wedding cake and chair covers, and they had the biggest dance floor of all the venues. The wedding coordinator has been nothing but helpful and she is always on top of things, I have never left neglected or forgotten considering that I have been working with them for over a year on planning my wedding. If you are looking for a great wedding with all the extras at a decent price you should really look into D'Andrea's.