I regret hiring her. No doubt about it. I was somewhat worried when she told me she had never done the site before, but I thought that a detail oriented go-getter would make use of all information available on the extensive website, make certain she was up on the restrictions of the site, and WRITE everything down at our planning meetings. Boy, was I wrong. A few examples follow.

Having coordinated (weeks in advance) a walk through of the site (a vendor dress rehearsal with my caterer, my florist, the Lakewold site person, and my day-of-coordinator) at 10AM, I receive a call at 9:15 AM as I am walking out the door that the coordinator needs to cancel because she is sick and has a doctor's appointment. But, as she brightly assures me, "it'll be OK" and she doesn't need to be there or see the site, because she'll just talk to me about it the following week. Instead of calling all the other vendors herself to cancel with them, she asks me to call. My caterer expresses concern that with the complexity of my wedding, my coordinator won't be there at the walk through. I try to call the coordinator back. She then calls me and says that she CAN make the walk through. I have to call the vendors back and tell them to come, and then get in the car and drive the forty five minutes to the site, where of course everything starts late. During the walk through, my coordinator demonstrates a complete lack of knowledge of the planned day's events, such that the caterer has to take charge and lead the walk through. The caterer, florist, and site supervisor ask appropriate questions regarding placement, timing etc. However, when questions come up regarding coordination for the day, such as where do the lion dancers check in, when do certain vendors arrive, etc, the coordinator's stock is answer is, we'll work something out. I can see the glances that my other vendors are exchanging with each other. At our planning meetings, she constantly asks questions that she has been told the answer to at previous meetings, she disregards my concerns that the decorations are not going to fit in her car until a few days before the wedding when she actually sees the pile of decorations herself, I am forced to send her a formal email expressing my concerns regarding her knowledge of the plan, she never takes over the contracts as she is supposed to do, and finally, the day of the wedding, I constantly have to ask my DH for the time, find the coordinator, and tell her to start this or that event, particularly the sparkler send off because she didn't remember/write down that everyone had to be out of the site by 10PM and cleanup done by 10:30PM. I didn't get to relax for a moment.

So sorry for this rather long post, and as a new business owner I realize that everyone has to start somewhere, but I also realize that RELIABILITY, RESPONSIBILITY, and ATTENTION TO DETAILS are essential, especially if you are relatively inexperienced..

I heartily suggest that if you are trying to put on an inexpensive, delicious, interesting rehearsal dinner, try a Chinese restaurant. I was able to revise the table number down until the day before the dinner, and when I had 9 tables instead of ten show up, the restaurant offered to give me the extra table in restaurant credit or to take home the extra food. Given that the whole dinner was extremely affordable, and they didn’t charge me a room rental fee, I declined. We also were able to provide our own alcohol.

The hotel is very nice. The lobby is very nice. The service is deplorable. Prior to the wedding, as our guests tried to make reservations online and via telephone, they kept getting told that our block was full, even though it was not. We were constantly chasing this down with our contacts at the hotel and sorting out reservations, which was incredibly annoying. Even though we had negotiated huge amounts of "shoulder dates" they were unable to accomodate simple changes to existing reservations (i.e. add a day at either end of an existing reservation) which caused some of our guests to actually have to stay in other hotels for part of their stay. From top to bottom, the W infrastructure is simply terrible. The very expensive guest baskets I put together and gave to the hotel to distribute to our guests upon arrival sat in a closet until after some of the guests had gone home, despite extensive discussions with our hotel contact. When we tried to track down the baskets, we kept getting shunted from one department to another, none of which took any responsibility. My advice is to not spend a ton on the hotel, or the wedding night suite, as you’ll be too exhausted to enjoy it anyway. That being said, our suite was immense and lovely, and I took the little Bliss toiletries on my honeymoon.

Some of the light bulbs came broken, but otherwise no problems.

They were the cheapest online (about fifty cents each), the sparklers were the 3 foot variety and lasted about 5 minutes. They were a bit difficult to light, but all the info I had read suggested lighting one sparkler and then lighting all the rest of the sparklers with that one, and that seemed to work.

We ordered a swan at the Wedding Show and got an ice punchbowl for free

She is impossible to get hold of, but she really knows her cake. Our top and bottom layers were white cake with traditional buttercream frosting, with fresh strawberry and Bavarian cream filling. The center layer was chocolate cake with strawberry and raspberry mousse filling. Our problem was that cake delivery was over 2 hours late, and the cake required extensive set up (the decorations were elaborate cherry blossom branches and hand painted white chocolate fans). So the cake was still being set up as guests were arriving. Also, there were fewer strawberries in the cake than there were in the samples that I had tried. But I still managed to eat three pieces of cake. And with the elaborate decorations, the cake was still extremely affordable.

We had two flutes, a cello, and a trumpet. They played for our ceremony and we paid extra for the cocktail hour. They have a beautiful, classy sound. And who hasn’t dreamed of walking down to the aisle to a trumpet fanfare? My DH’s mother sang Ave Maria with accompaniment and it sounded ethereal and amazingly professional. But, then again, she has sung for the pope :-)

Joe played piano during dinner (Lakewold has their own piano), and he DJ’d our extremely short dance session (<2 hrs). He did exactly what we asked, provided amplification for our outdoor ceremony, and was thorough, professional, and friendly. He’s great.

I agree with all the positive things that have been said about Lindsay Anderson’s photography (formerly Lindseywedding). Her email is LAphotography@gmail.com and her cell is 206-229-5160. Gorgeous photos and an unbeatable price.