jlb's reviews

Words cannot begin to describe how incredibly disappointed we are with the photos taken by John Griffin. We thought we were going with a higher-end photographer based on his price. He never took a picture of “the bride”, the groom with his mother, or the majority of our guests (just to mention a few “forgotten” ones). Please read the list below to understand the quality of the photographs we received.

We also had a video made of the wedding… the video shows numerous instances where John is not even looking through the camera lens while taking pictures… he is holding the camera at his chest or waist and just snapping pictures… this may be the reason why so many out of focus, not centered, and have people cut off.

We partially blame ourselves for hiring John because when we first met him, we asked why some of his pictures had large areas of blue sky, and many had the sky completely washed out at the same venue… his answer was “I don’t know… it just happens”…. He said he’s had no formal education in photography, has picked it up as he has gone along, and doesn’t use an assistant.

The only good thing is when we asked for 100% of our money back, he refunded our money immediately without any dispute. When we asked him what happened he could not provide an explanation and simply said, “I’m sorry you didn’t like the pictures. I did the best I could”.

Here are just a few problems with the photos he gave us:
1) CEREMONY
- We wanted formal portraits of bride, groom, family and special friends (we gave him a specific list as requested). He never took a picture of just the bride…he did take one of the groom solo (although it was awful).
- The traditional picture of the bride/groom with both families has the groom’s parents still wearing their sunglasses from the outdoor ceremony. John didn’t notice and when it was pointed out he didn’t take another picture.
- The picture with the 2nd bridesmaid has her hair going straight across her face.
- Over half of the ceremony pictures have the bride, groom, officiate or maid of honor with their eyes closed
- The beautiful green background of the mountains is completely washed out into a gray and the cloudless blue sky is white in the middle of the picture and only blue in the corners. The few amateur pictures our friends took have green background and blue sky.
- He has people walking or standing in the background of formal pictures
- The picture of my grandmother has the woman behind her picking her teeth
- One picture is of a man pulling up his pants next to a water spigot in dead grass
- John never adjusted my hair, my dress, my veil or directed how people pose…
- The location of the portraits doesn’t show the beauty of the background… I had to specifically ask him to please take a picture of us with the beautiful mountains in the background… my dress is all crumpled up off to the side which he never fixed or noticed.
- The only picture John took of the officiate walking down the aisle has a guest’s blurry head covering the bottom half of the officiate
- We do not have one picture of the entire wedding party at the alter… he cut off the far right groomsmen on the one shot that was from the back of the area
- In several of the ceremony pictures, he cut off portions of the groom or bride
- The picture of the vows has ½ of the groom’s body cut off
- All of the pictures of the recessional are out of focus
- Many of the ceremony pictures are out of focus
- Many formal portraits have sun ray glares coming across the pictures
- The pictures of the ring bearer are blurry and he didn’t take any pictures of the ring bearer up at the alter handing the pillow to the best man…
- Most ceremony pictures have people’s feet cut off.

2) RECEPTION
- 92 % of them are out of focus or blurry.
- Every single picture of the dancing is at an angle (which we explicitly said we didn’t want), completely out of focus, and washed out the beauty of the ballroom.
- Every picture of the first dance is out of focus and with the background of where the servers enter the room instead of the guests or ballroom décor.
- The cake picture had the cake cut off the bottom
- The picture of the guest book signing table is so blurry you wouldn’t even know what it is
- He never went around the room taking pictures of our guests at their tables
- He never took pictures of our guests dancing (we had a packed dancefloor until the lights came on)…
- Every picture he took of the bridal party dancing (during 2nd dance) is completely out of focus, mouths open, during a moment of looking down…

Mary Alice O'Connor officiated what most attendees described as the most beautiful wedding ceremony they had ever seen. She is a warm and loving person who believes very strongly in the importance of capturing the feelings shared by two people in love, and weaving those feelings into the wedding ceremony. Mary Alice was quick to reply to our email, invited us into her home twice to get to know us and helped us shape the type of ceremony we wanted. She had very useful suggestions and was totally easy to work with. Our concerns about having a ceremony that was too formal or more religious than we wanted were quickly put to rest as she guided us through the many available options. She is extremely flexible and could probably do whatever type of ceremony you wanted! If we had it to do over again we wouldn't change a single thing. She was early to the ceremony and looked very professional. She was absolutely wonderful and we can't recommend her highly enough!!!

They showed up on time and the limo was what we had ordered. The limo driver wouldn't let us put some of our flowers in the back of the limo even though it was a 18 person limo and only 13 people riding. He said "he carries people not flowers".

The BIG problem was when he took the bridal party from the ceremony to the reception. He went a way that took us right in front of ATT Park as a Giant's game was getting out. We were gridlocked in traffic for over an hour. The rest of the guests went the way I recommended and it took them 25 min (it took us 1 hour, 15 min). When I asked the driver why we didn't take 6th St exit, he replied "he already passed it". Later (30 min later) he told me that he couldn't go any other way except the way he was going. That was B.S. He had even told some of my guests (with regular cars) "his directions"... thank god they didn't listen to him.

We ended up missing our entire cocktail hour because of our driver's directions. I asked some other limo agencies and they said, "There is NEVER just one way you can get from one side of SF to the other". Turns out the way we wen't was actually harder and with steeper turns than many other ways that didn't require us to get stuck in the Giant's Game.

Overall - this company CLEARLY does not look at traffic reports or has a good sense of directions. If everything is normal, this company would be just fine... but if there's a traffic issue, don't plan on this company being flexible or getting you to where you need to be on time!

We LOVED our cake from Gerhard Michler Bakery. We worked with Mary in the planning. She is SUPER friendly, helpful and extremely patient as we thumbed through books and ideas. They can do pretty much anything you'd like. Her office where you meet in the main bakery part where you see them making everything. The bakery is huge (based on my very limited bakery experience). There are many people working in the bakery and the thing that I noticed the most was that everybody was smiling and talking and friendly and seemed like they really enjoy what they do.

During the tasting, she had samples of icings, cakes and fillings and gave us 4 small cakes to take home and enjoy.

The day I brought our flowers for the cake, I met with the lady who was going to ice and decorate it. She was extremely friendly and wanted to make sure I was getting exactly what I wanted.

The cake itself was beautiful and exactly what we asked for. We had 3 tiers, each with different cake, fillings and fresh berries. It was DELICIOUS!!!

We also had a creampuff tree for the Groom's Cake which stood 2 feet tall and looked amazing with chocolate covered strawberries and powdered sugar here and there...

Overall, I would give Gerhard Michler my highest recommendation. The prices are very reasonable (for the Bay Area), the cake is delicious and the service is terrific!

We can not say enough wonderful things about Terry and Peter!!!! They were 100% AWESOME in every way. We got married Aug 10th, 2008 at the Marine Memorial Club who highly recommended "The Spinheads" to us for our DJ. We interviewed 3 DJs and hands down Peter and Terry came out waaaayyyy on top! They are incredibly friendly, organized and professional... exactly what every bride would want for her wedding!

We met with Peter months before the event. Right away, we realized that he was not only our "DJ", but he's a really really good person who we enjoyed just getting to know. It was very clear that he wanted to do WHATEVER he could to make our wedding EXACTLY what we wanted. He was able to get every song we requested (some very old) and offered suggestions that really made our wedding unique.

We met again with Peter a week before the wedding to go over the program. It was so nice to have complete confidence that the DJ was on the exact same page as we were.

The wedding itself went off without a hitch. Terry and Peter both attended and worked so very well together. They were professional, friendly, open and extremely approachable. Our guests even commented on how great our DJs were!!! (that's pretty rare). The song selection was PERFECT. Thier introductions were PERFECT. They were on-time, well-prepared, and flexible during the evening to change things as the situations changed. They read the guests and played song sets that kept everyone dancing.... seriously, people danced until the lights came on at the end of the night.

I CAN'T RECOMMEND THESE GUYS HIGHLY ENOUGH!!! THEY ARE TRULY AMAZING!!!!! Look on Yelp.com for many more reviews...

I had my wedding ceremony there on Aug 10, 2008.

Beware...the cost is $2000 for JUST a ceremony... then they add $400 for a service charge (even though there isn't any service) and $200 tax. Sooooo... it ends up you pay $2600 for just them putting chairs out on a lawn and a portable mike... nothing else at all...

It's a nice location and luckily we had gorgeous weather. There is ample parking but all Wedgewood does put out a cheesy sign that says "Wedding Ceremony", sets up chairs and a mike. The parking is on dirt so everytime a car went by to park, it created a dust storm for the guests in their nice clothing. We almost didn't do it there because $2600 is pretty expensive for just borrowing a lawn and chairs for an hour.

The staff was overall nice but there were several errors in our contracts (so read the fine print).

We met with Bala (the owner and chef of "Cake Maker"). He is very friendly and has a small bakery where he bakes all of his cakes. We liked the fact that we'd be working on a very personal level with someone who owns the bakery and does all of the baking and icing himself. In addition, he came highly recommended by our reception venue, the Marine Memorial Club in SF.

Bala prepared 5 different cakes/fillings of our request for the tasting and they were all delicious. His albums of his cakes are beautiful. We were very impressed with the design of his cakes. I actually fell in love with several of them. For rolled frosting with patterns, it cost $6 slice which was very reasonable compared to everywhere else we looked. In the long run, we decided to go with a more affordable cake for our budget, but I wanted to put in a review for the Cake Maker, because his cakes and the price were terrific!!!