I had a bit of an issue a month before our wedding: we had to cancel with the photographer we'd booked. I was a little freaked out, so I called every well-respected photographer I could think of. Jennifer Kloss answered on the first ring and was SO wonderful. I didn't book with Jen initially because she was out of our budget...and unfortunately a month before our wedding, our budget was even tighter. I thought that Jen, being so amazing, might know of another photographer who was more in our price range but was still super talented. Lucky for me, Jen's assistant, Kim, fit this criteria perfectly.

Kim was SO amazing to work with. My husband and I felt totally comfortable with her right away. She is calm, funny and kind: just the kind of person we'd want with us on our wedding day. Because Kim hadn't done many weddings on her own before, she and Jen wanted to make sure that we knew she was capable, so they offered us a free engagement shoot. We met Kim in Chinatown and had a great time taking pictures. Being models isn't something we're used to, so we felt awkward at first, but Kim definitely put us at ease. And when we got our photos back? Holy crap! They were awesome!! She has such an eye for photography--we were so impressed. We had absolutely NO doubts about Kim going into our wedding day.

Sure enough, Kim was amazing during our wedding. There were times during the day when people freaked out for various reasons, and she did a great job of calming them down--not a job I would have expected from a photographer! She seemed to be everywhere at once, catching all of the important and not-so-important moments, and all the details I'd worked so hard on. When we got our photos back, we were blown away. She caught everything we'd hoped for and more. Firing our former photographer was the best thing we ever could have done. Kim was fantastic.

Anne is seriously awesome. I got a recommendation for her through theknot.com's northern california message boards, so I decided to check her out. Her prices are inSANE. Anne, you seriously should charge more. Her work is awesome and her attention to detail is fantastic. She altered my dress in the bust, hem, middle, put in a unique and beautiful 5-point bustle (I told Anne, "I didn't even know what a bustle WAS before I met you, and now I get why people care!") and covered buttons up the back--all for $150. I think I had four fittings total. She told me to try the dress on a few weeks before the wedding to make sure it still fits. We'll see!!

The other great thing about Anne is her attention to detail. The bustle buttons/elastic loops were all color coded to make putting it together as simple as possible for my friends and family on the day of. She also even hid some safety pins under the dress, just in case someone needs them!

HIGHLY recommended.

The quality of my letterpress order was great, so I really didn't want to give them a not-so-hot review. However, I recently discovered that someone else had the same problem as I did, which leads me to believe that this is an actual problem, not just a fluke.

I would also like to say that I fully intended to use Mercurio Brothers for printing for my business, so I was really disappointed with my experience there.

On their website, they say single pieces will take 2-3 weeks, and that people should call for a specific delivery date. After two weeks, I decided to call to get an exact time estimate. Turns out they lost my order. The guy on the phone was totally condescending, asking me why I placed the entire order online and why I wouldn't have called to make sure everything went through. I had to explain several times that I'd had an email exchange with one of their employees and didn't think I needed to call. Initially he told me that I would need to pay a $50 rush order fee in order to have them done by the end of the month (two weeks late), and if I wasn't willing to pay the $50, they would be done mid-June (my invites were supposed to go out at the beginning of June, and I still had to do some assembly once I got the letterpress). Needless to say, I was rather upset about the situation, because it isn't my fault that they lost my order, and I shouldn't have to pay a rush fee in order to have them done later than they should have been done in the first place.

Long story a teeny bit shorter, I had to read him several statements off of their website and all of the emails I had received before he agreed to talk to the "big boss" and get my order moved up. He gave me a delivery date. I called on that delivery date before I drove all the way over there, and it STILL wasn't done! They had written a delivery date of over a week later! I explained the situation AGAIN and was told they would be done the next day. Luckily, they were. As I said, the quality is really good, but their customer service SUCKS. I never received so much as an apology! I don't really care how busy they are--once I found out they lost another person's order, I decided to post the review. Losing orders is NOT a good thing, and neither is talking down to customers.

Long story short: IF YOU ORDER FROM MERCURIO BROTHERS, MAKE SURE TO CALL AND MAKE SURE THAT THEY ARE INDEED GOING TO PRINT IT. Again, I am not the only person whom this has happened to.

We chose to have our wedding ceremony at the West Bluff Amphitheater (right next to the Warming Hut).

The logistics of this have been heinous. It is impossible to get ahold of ANYONE in the national park service and it took them FOREVER to send me the permit. Furthermore, they raised the prices after I sent in the money for my permit, and they tried to make me pay the raised price! Not cool.

I think it's somewhere around $650 to get married here now. This is kind of annoying, because you can get a permit to have a picnic in this area for only $53. You get absolutely nothing for the added price--there is no one there to "police" the area, no bathrooms, etc. If Crissy Field didn't have such personal significance for us, I'm not sure it would be worth the headaches.

The day of the wedding was a bit of a logistical nightmare. Parking is a huge issue, so we decided to have trolleys bus our guests into the ceremony site. I'm not entirely sure what was going on with the trolleys, but the situation with all the people, all the cars...it was kind of hard to handle. I'm not sure that I'd recommend it to others, unless you have personal feelings about the place. It was an absolutely gorgeous place to get married, I will say that. It was fun to have all the strangers watching our wedding, and holy moly, the view! Peeing in that bathroom in your wedding dress, though?! Yucky.

I cannot tell a lie: I expected a lot from Dana. I know I'm not supposed to have high expectations, but I did. After working with Dana for over a year, I got to know her. I learned what kind of person she is (kind, funny, extremely organized, dedicated, and intelligent) and what kind of work she does (she strives for perfection). After seeing the chart she'd made of our reception napkins to make sure they looked awesome (they were all different colors), my expectations were really high. It didn't even worry me, though. I knew Dana would deliver.

And damn, did Dana deliver. Actually Dana did not just deliver. Holy crap. I cannot even begin to tell you how amazing our wedding was. It was AMAZING.

Yes, I am incredibly organized and a lot of why it looked awesome were the details I spent hours crafting. But you know what? All that organization and detail-obsessing is totally useless if it's not executed correctly. It's true! I am happy to say that not only were my details executed perfectly, but they added their own amazing touches to the reception that I couldn't even have dreamed up if I tried. They created a BEAUTIFUL bar with flowers and martini glasses and glass blocks. Our yellow signature cocktails had YELLOW sugar on the rims. Our soup was poured hot out of a kettle-like-thing in front of each of our guests. It is this attention to detail that separates Dana and Thomas John Events from the rest.

Our wedding was so classy. Dana and the rest of the TJE staff were SO professional. There was thought put into every detail, and none of it was lost on me. From the water and hors d'oeuvres set aside for us after the ceremony to the take-home bag they'd prepared for us (complete with a doggy bag of each of our entrees, hors d'oeuvres, a bottle of champagne, plastic champagne glasses and flatware and boxes of our dessert), they truly thought of everything. Words cannot possibly express how perfect everything was, so I uploaded a few pictures of our event in the photos section. Check it out. :)

Thank you so much, TJE!

PS--the food was great too (obviously)!

This band ROCKS. About five years ago, they played at my cousin's bar mitzvah and quickly became one of my favorite memories of that night. They even had my DAD dancing, which at the time he simply didn't do. When I got engaged a year and a half ago, the one thing I knew for sure was that we HAD to have Martini Straight Up. They were the first vendor I booked!

They were SO worth every penny. Usually people leave a wedding reception early. Hardly anyone left ours. Pretty much everyone was dancing until it was time to go.

The band also learned two songs for us. Our first dance song, "My First, My Last, My Everything," by Barry White has never sounded so good--their horn section made the song super cute. We loved it. They also learned "I Loved Her First," which is a country song by Heartland, for my dad and I. Neither of us are into country, so the band made it into more of a ballad, and it was amazing.

Rich Martini is a really awesome guy, I learned. He was so accommodating and understanding. The band really made our night!

I was BLOWN AWAY by Leanne. Blown away. The flowers were amazing. Words cannot even express. The tall centerpieces remain one of my favorite things about the reception.

Our color scheme was "lots of color." I gave Leanne some inspiration photos, specifically for my bouquet, and we talked a little bit about what I was looking for. Over the course of the next year, I changed my mind about the tall centerpieces, and Leanne was totally understanding and awesome about it. She came up with her own creative spin on things, which turned out FANTASTIC. For example, I am an illustrator and illustrated our table numbers--she asked if I could create little tags out of the drawings so we could hang them from the centerpieces. I wasn't sure how it would end up looking, but it was AWESOME.

Leanne is truly an artist. I am so thrilled with what she did for our wedding!

I would definitely recommend Elle & Co to my friends, and here's why:

They are inexpensive and Brandon Cruz is really, really nice.

I found Elle & Co because they represent the band we wanted to play at our wedding. Said band, Martini Straight Up, played at my cousin's bar mitzvah, and they rocked it. Despite the fact that the band was expensive, the other things Elle provides (such as lighting) were pretty inexpensive. We also got a discount for ordering multiple services through them.

I'm not sure that they are as creative as Got Light?, but they are MUCH less expensive. I already knew what I wanted for lighting, so I gave Elle a picture and they were able to duplicate it. I think Got Light? is very artistic and you definitely get what you pay for, but our room looked fantastic and I'm not all that picky about lighting...so in our case, I didn't think Got Light? was priority enough to take up that much of our budget.

Brandon always new my name and my fiancé's name when I called to talk to him. He is very friendly and I really liked him. I talked to him about hiring a string quartet for ceremony, and he was totally honest with me: he told me that he didn't think we needed a quartet for our ceremony venue, and that a trio would save us money. I told him I was considering hiring students (which I eventually did), and he told me the things to ask them to make sure our ceremony went smoothly. I really appreciated his honesty.

So why only 4 stars instead of 5? I sometimes felt like I didn't get a call back from them when I needed it. There was a bit of feedback on the sound system during toasts. I'm not sure why this happened, but I felt like it shouldn't have. Also, we ordered a cake spotlight (in addition to uplights and a floor wash), and we didn't get it. I called Brandon about this a few weeks after the wedding, though, and he promptly refunded it. :)

Our wedding was three weeks ago, and it was spectacular. The staff at the Green Room were totally nice and even kept an eye on the card box for us. They were super helpful for our guests, directing them to the bathrooms and such. I really liked them. :)

The room. was. gorgeous. If you choose to have your wedding here and have an issue with the "greenness," get some uplighting. We had amber uplighting (I'll post our professional pictures later), and it totally didn't look green. This doesn't have to cost you a ton of money--check out Elle & Co for lighting.

Other tips for decorating--the ceilings are high, which means that tall centerpieces will look much better than low centerpieces. If you've got a big budget, go with all tall centerpieces. We saved money by having half tall and half low.

The indoor bar is really classy, but you will most likely have a bar on the patio for your cocktail hour. Get some decorations for this--it's worth it.

I loved the Green Room. I am SO glad that we decided to have our reception here. We originally wanted to have our wedding in September, and moved things around in order to have it at the Green Room (they only have weddings in July and August). Way worth it.

We hired four trolleys through Cable Car Charters to manage the transportation of our guests for our wedding. We were really, really excited about this, and our guests loved it.

I worked with Kris to organize all the details. He. is. awesome. He let me come in to measure the trolleys so we could put signs on the sides of them. We had some issues trying to figure out where the trolleys could drive at our ceremony venue, Crissy Field (this is because management at Crissy Field was totally crappy), and they went above and beyond by sending a trolley OUT THERE to see where they could go. I had to call Kris about 400 times because the people at Blick Art supplies were jerks about cutting down the board for our signs, and he was totally nice to me even though I must have been annoying the crap out of him.

I had to knock off a star though. The trolleys drove where they said they couldn't, which kind of messed up the plan we had for the guests entering into the ceremony site. Granted, our day-of-coordinators were NOT helpful and didn't give them proper instructions, but I felt like the trolley drivers could have taken more initiative to know what was going on. I think 5-stars requires exceptional service, and this wasn't really exceptional. My husband had to manage them before the day-of-coordinators did, and he said it was kind of difficult.