octbride's reviews

STAY AWAY!

we were lucky and actually got what we were promised, but boy was it stressful to get there!

preston promises the world and encourages you to pay in full up front (you get a discount that way), but his organization is just not there at all. i had already paid in full before i started hearing stories of him being late, bringing dirty chair covers, etc.

i asked for an updated contract and a sample sash MONTHS before the wedding, and repeatedly called and emailed to get updates on the status of these things every week, and even everyday at a certain point...and was disappointed time and time again. countless "meetings" were cancelled last minute, and i was given endless excuses and lots of "i don't know what happened" when he once again failed to get me these two things. i made every effort, offered to meet him whenever and whereever, and it just never happened.

i also talked to numerous venues and brides who had used him before and apparently his services are very hit/miss. some had no problems, but many venues actually said that they now refuse to work with him anymore due to him being late, providing dirty chair covers, etc.

luckily, our venue allowed us to begin setup as early as 8am, so i asked him to come at 8am and everything was beautiful. unfortunately, i knew of another bride who had booked him for the same day and he showed up late, so she never got her chair covers =(

and lastly, because i paid in full in advance and ended up not needing as many as i had anticipated (the contract says they will refund if the actual numbers are lower than estimated, but cannot add to the count if the actual numbers are higher than estimated), i was supposed to get a refund. well, what a surprise, none of my emails and none of my phone calls are being answered. i'm thinking it's just not worth the effort...

these guys were the cheapest photobooth vendors i could find, and their pricing even includes a CD of all the pictures from the night which i thought was nice.

our guests looooved the photobooth and had tons of fun, so we're really glad we did it.

that being said, we've had several problems with their service, which i am inclined to think is not "normal", and that we just had bad luck...

-first, the photobooth was about an hour late in getting set up. there were wires everywhere and was just a big mess when i arrived at our venue and the operator was no where to be seen.

-then our photobooth operator decided to close the booth temporarily and eat dinner with the other vendors instead of manning the booth the whole time and eating dinner beforehand like the contract clearly states. i complained about this and received a partial refund, but would obviously would've liked her to be there the whole time instead of getting a small chunk of money back.

-about half, possibly more, of our photos were "lost" and weren't uploaded on the website, nor were they on the CD they sent me. i had to call and email a bunch of times over a period of about a month before they finally tracked down the "missing" pictures and finally uploaded everything on the web. they blamed this on lack of "training" for the staff in our area.

-i have yet to receive the CD of the previously missing photos. i have called and emailed repeatedly and have been told "it just went out yestserday", "we'll send it out this afternoon", "i can get it out to you tomorrow" and STILL have nothing (it's now Jan 14, 2008 and my wedding was Oct 20, 2007). at the moment, they're claiming to have them overnighted to me mid-week. we'll see...

but like i said, i believe that the problems we ran into are not typical and though it's taking a long time to resolve these problems, they're good about responding to emails and phone calls in a timely manner, just not fixing them in a timely manner. given all this, they are trying their "best" to resolve the issues. they did refund me some money for the time lost due to the late setup, apologized for their operator's taking a dinner break, eventually found my missing photos and are in the process of sending me a new CD of pictures, it's just taken more time and effort than i would've liked to deliver what was promised...

april did a beautiful job at our wedding!

she was professional, friendly, easy to work with, and has the best rates out there! she was also very helpful when i was having trouble picking songs. i have nothing but wonderful things to say about her and highly recommend her!

LOTS of choices at a great price. I don't really know about ribbon "quality" but the brands were the same as the ones I got at Michael's and JoAnn's and the quality was the same too (just waaay cheaper).

The ribbon takes a loong time to arrive, so order EARLY!

terrible.

it was nice that we were able to try on the tuxes when ordering instead of just flipping through a catalog and it's nice that they were able to make some necessary changes and alterations while we waited, but overall, the experience was bad.

we had to go back 3 times to finally get everyone properly dressed. buttons were loose. belts were broken. sizes were wrong. and they forgot one person's entire tuxedo! service was extremely slow on pickup day (they really need to hire more help on pickup days) and the sales ladies would disappear in back for looong periods of times.

everything turned out fine in the end, but it was really more hassle, headache, stress and trips back and forth than it should've been.

i do NOT recommend going there.

delicious and gorgeous!

bijan was so easy to work with and gave us a stress-free beautiful cake. they have so many wonderful flavors to pick from and it's all made fresh, so your cake is gauranteed to be moist and delicious the day of. the cakes are not overly sweet or artificial tasting and the fondant is the softest and best tasting i've seen. they're also full-service and provide the decorations for you too!

they are very accomodating and will work with you to make sure you get exactly what you want!

amazing.

mike did such a wonderful job with the photos for our wedding, i couldn't have asked for anything more. he really knows what he's doing as our venue had extremely poor lighting, but he was able to pull it off beautifully. mike and his crew were professional, friendly, inconspicuous, accomodating, efficient, helpful, thoughtful...i could go on and on. the results were incredible, who knew we could look that good?!?!

and he does it all for a great price too! i definitely recommend him with no reservations whatsoever!

i just noticed there's no link to his website. it's pretty minimal, so you'll have to contact him to see all his gorgeous work - www.mikedanen.com

ps - he does videos too!

i got my embosser from here. it's great becuase they let you send in a sample of your paper and they'll emboss it for you in a design similar to what you want and send it back before purchasing! i thought my paper might be too thick (according to the specifications on their website), so i sent my paper in and it turned out great!

great product, great service.