sfgirl75's reviews

I really love all the people at Hy Studio - Frank, Annie & Hy are great to work with and the photos are amazing. We did E-pics with frank and were blown away. On the wedding day Frank had to leave early so Hy came along for the day to shoot with him and cover after he left. So, we ended up getting 2 photographers for the price of 1. Woohoo! I feel so lucky. I can’t wait to see the wedding pics...in fact, im chomping at the bit for them.

The photo booth was a total hit. It was so much fun. They were easy to work with and the attendant on the day of was super nice.

We decided to have a photo booth sans favors for the guests. It was the best money we spent and the guests are still talking about it.

Ephemera Press is a godsend. I was obsessing about letterpress but knew it was over my budget (and my budget was pretty good - $800). I searched and searched and searched for my little diamond in the rough and finally found her. Her name is Tara and she is da bomb.

I contacted her in December of 2007 about doing my invites. Come to find out that she was raising her prices come Jan so I booked her ASAP to lock in the 2007 rate. A few months later we started planning and putting ideas together. After a few proofs she hit the nail on the head. She did a fantastic job.

I can’t even tell you how beautiful the invites were and I got so many compliments on them. All in all, she was a tad over budget just because I added in matching TY notes But it was well worth it ($1200 for 140 invites, all envelopes, reply cards, direction cards and TY cards) For letterpress she is a total find. Im sure her pricing has gone up by now but im sure she is still a good deal compared to most.

Hair was a big issue for me. I have short hair and finding photos of styles was really hard. I didn’t really know what I wanted. I attempted to work with 2 other hair stylists but they kept telling me to grow my hair out for the wedding which I thought was lame. I like my short hair. It’s like they were telling me that if I didn’t have long hair I wouldn’t look like a bride.

I found Jill from Sublime Salon on Project Wedding and had a trial with her. The second I met her I knew that she understood what I wanted. The trial went great and the day of wedding even better. She did such a great job on not only me but 4 BM's and 2 Moms. Here pricing is great too. I did think her $200 travel fee was a little steep since I was in SF and she is located in SF but...oh, well. It turned out great and worth the $$ in the end.

We went to Siri in SF to try on dresses and fell in love with them. But, I didn’t love the prices at all. So I was determined to find a better alternative because I didn’t want my BM's to pay more than $200 for the dress.

I ended up ordering them from Pearls Place which I believe is the only discount online store you can buy Siri. The dresses arrive right on schedule. I didn’t have any problems. Some if the sales people don’t have the best attitudes but they were helpful and did what they promised. Plus, we saved $70 per dress (Siri price $260, PP price $190)

Sonja’s cake was so good and looked beautiful. I can’t even tell you how many people commented on it. Plus the pricing is great. Can’t beat it.

Our band Keith Johnson and the All Stars hired through Elle Music and Events was fantastic. Everyone had a great time and danced, danced, danced. I would have given them and 4 stars except they played the wrong version of our first dance song even though we gave them the CD of the song we wanted. They didn’t check to ensure that the version they had was the same as ours. We were bummed about the wrong song being played but no one noticed except us. We had cooreographed a dance to the song so when the wrong one came on we thought "Oh crap!". Keith sent me an email apologizing for it so that made me feel better.

Lighting - Elle Music and events

In addition to the band we used Elle for lighting. We had a floor wash and cake spot. Working with them was so so. I didnt feel like they were responsive at all to emails and phone calls. Leading up to the wedding I had attempted to contact Brandon several times about the lighting. Sometimes he would respond and sometimes he wouldnt. I felt like right before the wedding they should have made more effort to get back to me on important things. One other thing was that my friend Sara and I were both using them on the same day. They were getting her and I confused because we both have the same first name. I would get an email saying something was sorted out then I would respond saying...we never talked about that! Just because we have the same first name should not have caused all the confusion. I mean...we have different last names and our husbands (then fiances) have different names and we are at different locations. How confusing could it be? Brandon did apologize for it but overall I felt like it caused more stress because they were not as organized on the back end.

Also, the day before the wedding I get a call from accts payable dept telling me that I hadnt paid the final balance even though I had sent the check 2 weeks prior. It would have been nice if they had called me sooner to say they hadnt gotten it rather than waiting until the day before. It totally stressed me out because I had to pay them via CC over the phone then run to the bank and put a stop payment on the check (which cost me $30). The girl who called me said they would continue to look for the check and if it did come they wouldnt cash it. She seemed flighty so I didnt trust that they would shred it and I didnt want to have to deal with them depositing it by accident then fighting to get my money back which is why I stopped payment on it.

The lighting itself was OK. The cake spot looked nice but I didnt feel the floor wash was as good as it could have been. But, im going to reserve judgement on it until I get the pics back. It might have been better than I remember.

I gave them overall 3 stars because of the issue with first song and also the issues dealing with lighting and my payment. Those are simple things and should not have happened.

Mary Ann Goodhue is such a find! I used her for all of our calligraphy (invites, place cards and table names). She was easy to work with and the turnaround time was super fast. I still have people commenting about how beautiful everything looked.

She is located in MI so I had to ship her everything which made me nervous at first but she is a total pro. I sent it with a tracking #, she emailed when she got it, did the work and sent it back. No problems at all. The best part is that her 2008 promotion was that she would do the placecards for free. What a deal! Once we got our headcount I sent her the placecards and table names and she wipped it out then had them back to me about a week before wedding. Awesome!

Her pricing is great too. I paid $1 per invite (outer envelope only) plus got the table names and place cards done FREE. All in all it cost me about $150. NICE!.

Lisa from BV weddings was a dream to work with. She was so organized throughout the entire process and did not let one item slip through the cracks. It helps that she has a legal background because she was able to review all the vendor contracts for me to make sure everyone was doing what they agreed upon.

A few weeks before the wedding she contacted all the vendors to make sure everyone was set, reviewed contracts, put together a timeline and organized all the set up of ceremony and reception. She attended our rehearsal and did walk throughs at venues with me and caterer prior to wedding. She even kicked my butt in to gear when I was being lazy about finalizing songs and ceremony stuff.

Lisa has such great taste in design and decorating that I had total faith that whatever she did at the reception would look great. I didn’t really tell her what to do because I knew that she has good judgment and would pull it off beautifully. And she did!

She is a total gem and I can say, a good friend now. Thanks Lisa!

Lisette is such a gem. She has done the makeup for 2 of my friend’s weddings and also mine. She lives in San Jose but travels around the bay area and has the best pricing in the biz. Plus, she is such a nice person. I felt absolutely beautiful on my wedding day and it was all thanks to Lisette.