UPDATE: I WAS RECENTLY CONTACTED BY THE ACTUAL OWNER OF EDEN WEST WEDDINGS, MICHAEL. APPARENTLY, GARRETT NO LONGER WORKS AT THIS COMPANY, AND HE WAS NEVER THE OWNER.

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Although Eden West Weddings offers a number of services, we hired them to simply set up chairs at our beach wedding in Carmel. The chairs were delivered and set up on-time as promised.

However, they're not very customer-centric. Although the owner, Garrett, is a very nice person, I felt he never listened:

1) I'd asked him if he had any clear tarp to place down the aisle on the beach so that my train would not get dirty/drag lots of sand. He said that he didn't and tried to convince me that the tarp was not necessary. That part was fine -- what I didn't appreciate was that when I did end up finding clear tarp for the aisle, he was going to ask his staff to pull out the tarp in the middle of the ceremony so that everything would "look better for photos." (You can't just pull out a heavy plastic tarp in the middle of a ceremony!) About 20 min before the ceremony began, I had to put a kabosh on those plans.

2) It looked like it was going to rain about 1-2 hours before the ceremony. He tried selling us these overhangs so that we would stay dry. At first, I appreciated his thoughtfulness, but I later found out that after I said the overhangs wouldn't be necessary, he called my husband to try to sell the same thing to him. When my husband said no, he called my father to try to sell him the same thing...

3) He called my husband to tell him they had an emergency with the beach setup and that he had to get down to the beach ASAP. My husband, who really did think it was an emergency, had to finish dressing and arrive at the beach an hour before originally planned. The only emergency was that Garrett wanted to sell him those overhangs I mentioned in #2.

All in all, this company delivered what they said they would. But, they caused way too much ruckus and stress for us right before the wedding ceremony.

Steve is a talented guitarist and DJ. My wedding was at a beach, where we were concerned wind would prevent people from hearing the ceremony. He placed mics appropriately and was great on his guitar. I was pleasantly very surprised and pleased how the sound turned out at the beach.

Rick does great things with flowers. I would give him 5 stars for that. I told him what my budget was, and he verbally promised me that he could provide flowers at that price. I naively believed him and didn't have any of this in writing, nor specifics regarding what exactly he would provide.

Months later, as the wedding drew near, he said that it would actually be 1.5x what we discussed. After lots of back and forth about how he couldn't provide flowers at that price or could but would require us to set up all the centerpieces, it finally took my wedding coordinator to "make him" honor his original commitment. Although the flowers turned out beautifully, I don't trust him and would not hire him again.

I chose Kim because of the raving reviews on this website. And, she was great! I was extremely happy with my hair.

I highly recommend doing a trial run -- at the trial run, we didn't get it perfect the first time, but by the time I left the trial, it was great. She replicated that to the T on the big day, and the up-do lasted from about 9am to 2am (and my wedding ceremony was at a beach outside) -- I was very impressed. I highly recommend Kim!

Randy was great! I spoke with a number of photographers in the Monterey area, and Randy really differentiated himself in a couple of ways:

1) His photos are simply really good. It was particularly important to find a high-quality photographer, because my reception was at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where it's extremely dark and difficult to take pictures. I was extremely pleased with how all the photos came out, but pleasantly surprised that he managed to get great photos next to the tanks as well.

2) He doesn't do albums. Although this may be important to other people, I found that the bulk of the cost of a photographer comes from their hard labor placed into creating a wedding album. But, with a variety of online album-making websites available these days, all I really wanted was just tons of quality photos in digital format.

3) Lastly, Randy was flexible. My wedding ceremony was for an hour in the morning, and the reception was at night. Although most photographers told me they would charge me for all the downtime in between, Randy was willing to spend 8 hours split between the morning and evening at a reasonable price. He did not charge me for the hours in between.

I received 8 hours-worth of digital image files + 200 physical prints. He is a talented photographer and a really nice person as well. His wife, his manager, is extremely organized and was a pleasure to work with--knows how to keep a bride sane!

If I had to think of a complaint, it would be that I wish he took a lot more random, action shots. But all in all, I'm very pleased with the photos and highly recommend Randy.