Sara was a life saver. She worked with me from about 6 months before the wedding and ran the rehersal and did all the set up, day of duties, and clean up. She was great and sensing what I liked and made great suggestions. We ran out of red wine and she had her assistant run out and get more. She was on top of things and made the day so much less stressful.

Early on, while looking online for letterpressed invitation ideas I ran across an letterpressed invitation with a calligraphy font. That inspired my all calligraphy invitation. While looking for calligraphers I knew I wanted someone who could duplicate the beautiful calligraphy I had seen on that invitation so many months before. When I saw Debi's website I was excited because her style was georgeous and didn't look like just fancy handwriting so I emailed her the link to that invitation and asked if she could copy that style for my envelopes. Unbeknowst to me, that calligraphy was done by Debi! She was more expensive than most but worth it because her style is truly special.

I am mildly obsessed with paper, stationary, cards and the like so I knew I wanted a letterpressed invitation which I knew would cost a lot. Mike Coughlin gave me the lowest quote for my invitations but when I added a second ink color and wanted the return address letterpressed and all was said and done it got very expensive. I do love how the invitation turned out and got many compliments on them. Mike had a quick turn around and he got back to me quickly when I had a question.

We booked Macio on the spot when we attended a Denon and Doyle showcase. I was so impressed with this company, they seemed so professional. They weren't the least expensive company out there but Macio was well worth it, he was fantastic! I was amazed at how hardly anyone was sitting down the entire night. People would come up to us toward the end of the night and start to say good-bye and then Macio would play a song and they would say, "I love this song! We'll stay for this one last song." All of those people were there until the very end of the night.

I liked Jennifer Toce right from the start. She let us taste many different cake and frosting combinations and was very friendly and professional. She worked with us to produce the cake we wanted for the price we wanted. I was stunned when I first saw the cake at how beautiful it was. There were 2 layers of chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting filling and one layer of chocolate cake with mocha filling covered with ganach. The cake got rave reviews for appearance and taste.

Laura runs a custom sewing and embroidery business out of her home in American Canyon in Napa County. She embroidered our monogram on the sweetheart table runner. She does the embroidery by computer so she was able to embroider the monogram in the special font I bought for the invitations. I got quotes for two other companies for custom digitized embroidery and they were literally five times more than what Laura charged me. She also embroidred each bridesmaids monogram on the pashminas I gave them for a gift.

Barb and Penny were the contacts at PCH and they were both a delightful to work with. PCH is a community owned property so it is was less expensive that most other places we looked at. This location is very a la carte. That was a plus for me since I didn't like the "package" approach that other places offered. I enjoyed finding my own caterer and cake baker. The downside of this is that there is a lot more work to do. A day-of coordinator is a necessity at this location. The PCH books out approximately 14 months in advance.

Tracy has a very relaxed style and is easy to work with. Her cost was very resonable and it included an engagement session. We ended up choosing her because of her photojournalistic style. I liked that she didn't have many posed photographs in her portfolio. I am very pleased with how the pictures turned out. Some of my favorite pictures have the top of my head cut off or have people walking in the background which is not ideal but overall we have tons of great pictures.

Earlier in her career, my mother was a professional musician so she was in charge of the quartet. We chose to use a string trio plus trumpet. An Elegant Touch of Strings was very affordable and they played beautifully. The trumpet player was pitch perfect.

Gary's had a lot of specials that we took advantage of. The grooms and the father of the bride's tux were "free" (there was a minimal charge for accessories and shoes). One of the groomsmen had a problem because his tux wasn't ready until the day of the wedding.