Our wedding had a grape theme since my new last name meant "grapes" in Albanian. I searched high and low for something simple but pretty and affordable. I found that with Invitations of Love. I had nearly 25 font styles to choose from and about a dozen font colors. They ended up costing $200 for 150 invitations, envelopes (+extras) and response cards. They sent me proofs via email so I could double check spelling and general appearance (not color). I received them quickly and they were gorgeous! A bonus is that they were able to tell me exactly what font they used for them so I could match it on the programs and other invitation inserts, everything ended up coordinating beautifully.

I didn't pick out my girl's dresses. I just told them I wanted them to wear dark purple. They all ended up going to David's Bridal, unbeknown to me and each other! They all chose different dresses, so they all got something they loved, looked great in and yet matched. They all looked wonderful ;) I don't know anything about the service or prices they got, but I didn't hear anything bad, so I assume it was fine.

I had 3 trials with Jaime before the wedding so I knew she would do good work. A week before the wedding I told her that 5 of us needed her services and that we needed to be ready by 1 pm so we could start taking pictures. She said no problem, we had to start at 8 am in order to do that. She showed up right on time and got to work right away, she did all the hair first then started in on makeup around 11. Well by the time 1 came around she still had two bridesmaids to go! We ended up being two hours late getting to the hall and completely missing out on taking a ton of pictures. To Jaime*s credit, my MOH was a pain to deal with-had Jaime re-do her hair and “fix” her make-up like twice so that added time on to the whole process but still, it didn’t add two hours worth. Jaime is a sweet girl and does really wonderful work and I was very happy with how I looked and all of my girls came out looking stellar BUT she could’ve started earlier or sped up the process. At one point it became very clear that we were late and that didn*t seem to get Jaime to speed up at all. I’m very sad that she took so long and I missed out on taking a lot of pictures.

My parents bought us lessons for Christmas last year and we had some much fun taking them! We got one group lesson and five private lessons and all of them ended up being with Christina. She was SO damn sweet! She worked with us on having lessons on Sunday afternoons since we were only in Sac on weekends and she was so great about it. She’s a really good teacher and is very patient about everything. She’s also really cute and funny! We had such a blast doing this and I think we ended up looking pretty good during our first dance, we didn’t have to do the clutch and sway!

We worked with the manager in San Mateo and got all the guy’s measurements to her and she sent it on to Sacramento since that’s where they were going to get picked up. When the guys went to pick them up they were told that if they needed alterations they needed to have picked up the tuxes three days earlier yet the day they picked them up was the first day the tuxes were available! Luckily everything fit and everything was accounted for. My MIL did lose one of the ties so we had to pay for that but oh well.

We worked with the manager in San Mateo and got all the guy’s measurements to her and she sent it on to Sacramento since that’s where they were going to get picked up. When the guys went to pick them up they were told that if they needed alterations they needed to have picked up the tuxes three days earlier yet the day they picked them up was the first day the tuxes were available! Luckily everything fit and everything was accounted for. My MIL did lose one of the ties so we had to pay for that but oh well.

I was very happy with the service I got at HOF, from beginning to end they were wonderful to work with. I paid a bit more than I wanted to for my dress but no one else carried my dress online so I had to get it at HOF. The alterations were perfect the first time around and were pretty reasonably priced to boot.

Some people may be slightly afraid of it*s not so nice location (in South Sac next door to a laundromat) you cannot argue with the food! We decided at the last minute to invite all of Adrian*s family from out of town to join us for dinner on Saturday night before the wedding and so it ended up being nearly 50 people when we had planned on only 20! They handled the extra people wonderfully and made sure there was always a waitress circulating the room in case we needed anything. The food came super fast and everyone was super pleased with it all. It is a family tradition to eat here for any celebration so it was totally fitting to have a big family dinner here. And the bill for food, beer, soda, salad and tip for 50 people was just under $300-WOW!!

What a steal this cake was, a three tier, three different flavored cake that was absolutely gorgeous for only $350! It was exactly what we wanted it and was just delicious! The fondant was a little hard to cut through but we managed just fine. If you haven’t decided where to get your cake yet, at least do a tasting with Ettore’s, it is so much fun and you get tons of free cake!

We wanted to have live musicians during our cocktail and dinner hours. We were going for an Italian theme with the wedding so we wanted some Italian sounding musicians and boy did we get it with Tony & Sal! They played the mandolin, guitar and accordion while they strolled through the reception area. Sal sings in English and Italian too! Everyone loved them, they even took requests. They played the Itsy Bitsy Spider for one of my friends little girls, it was so cute :D