Our Vendors

In efforts of getting the majority of our wedding planning done as soon as possible (both to give us a sense of where our budget stands as well as to make things easier on us in the long run) Zac and I have been working to book all of our major vendors. For the last few weeks we have called several vendors, compared prices, and set up appointments. Attending the Premier Bridal Showplace Bridal Fair last Sunday was a great opportunity for us to meet vendors, see sample work, and get price listings. As of Friday, we now have all of our major vendors booked and can now focus on the smaller details of the wedding, like table decorations, ceremony programs, etc.

So here's a little roundup of the vendors we've booked. We're happy with our selections and we're excited to be working with all of these amazing people.

Venue: Wolf Lakes Park

Earlier this year Zac and I picked our date and chose a venue. Wolf Lakes Park is a beautiful venue with a view of the lake and well manicured landscaping. In addition to the atmosphere, the location also takes care of the set up and clean up, offers catering, and provides help with questions and planning as well as a coordinator the day of the event. After we reserved our date, Wolf Lakes provided us with a list of vendors that proved to be helpful in our planning process.

Photographer: Van's Photography

Before we selected a venue, we had decided on our photographer. Van's photography does amazing work, and having been in two weddings in which Van and Tess have taken photos, we felt comfortable with our decision to book them for our own big day. After seeing our engagement photos we're excited to see what images these two photographers will capture at our wedding.

 

DJ: Haro's Entertainment

As I mentioned just recently in this post, we hired Haro Entertainment to dj at our wedding. Adam Haro has great reviews and having worked with our venue on many occassions we are confident that he will help keep our wedding running smoothly and make the night a fun one for our guests. Planning the music for the evening has been fun and we look forward to dancing the night away after saying 'I do'.

Florist: Brown Bunny Flowers

Originally we weren't planning on having a florist take care of our flowers. For Sarah and Donnie's fall wedding we got sunflowers from the grocery store and created some beautiful bouquets with black ribbon and pearl pins. Since our wedding is in the spring we were sure that we could find some flowers in our color scheme and make bouquets for all the girls. My mom was less than enthusiastic about the idea. She was a little worried that we were leaving this detail to chance too close to the wedding and we wouldn't be able to find the right flowers in time. We started looking around for florists and Brown Bunny Flowers came highly recommended. After talking with the owner, Amy, we could see why. She is such a sweet lady. We emailed back and forth for a little while before meeting in person at the Premier Bride Showplace. After going over our color scheme, and our favorite flowers, Amy came up with a few different bouquets. I'm looking forward to see how they turn out.

Bakery: Barb's Cakery

 Zac and I really want to have variety for our guests when it comes to cake and dessert. We thought that the perfect way to have this would be to create a dessert table with several flavors of cupcakes, brownies, cookies, etc. We found a place that would be able to create a dessert table for our guests with the variety we were looking for but unfortunately not for the price we were hoping for. So, we're planning on creating the table ourselves with help from family and friends. In addition to the dessert buffet, we wanted to have a little something for the traditional cake cutting. At first we were thinking that we would pick up a 7" Red Velvet Cake Cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory and call it a day. We both love that cake, I get an employee discount, and our guests will have plenty of other dessert options with the table of treats. According to some people however, "a wedding cake is not a wedding cake unless it has more than one tier". So, Zac and I started looking for a bakery to get ourselves a "wedding cake". We didn't have to look far. Both Sarah and Donnie as well as Scott and Amy used Barb's Cakery for their weddings and we loved the way their cakes looked (Sarah and Donnie's cake is pictured on the left, Scott and Amy's on the right), and even more importantly how they tasted. I started looking at pictures of wedding cake designs with our color scheme and found something that I really liked. On Friday, my mom and I went to Barb's Cakery to talk details and put a deposit down on the cake.

Hair and Makeup: Hair and Makeup By Emily Johnson

The Premier Bridal Showplace was a great way of seeing what hair and makup artists are out there. Our vendor list from Wolf Lakes included a few hair and makeup artists on it's list, but nothing like what we saw on the vendor list for the bridal show. After walking around and picking up fliers here and there, we came across Emily Johnson's hair and makeup booth. After looking over her price listing and checking out photos of her work via her Facebook page, we booked Emily to do my hair and makeup the day of the wedding.

Transportation: Royal Coach Limos

Back in April, Zac and I went to check out a car to take us from the wedding to our hotel at the end of the night. We found a 1961 Jaguar at Royal Coach Limos that we loved. I'm planning on having a bridesmaid sleepover at my house the night before the wedding. In the morning, the car will come to pick me and my bridesmaids up and take us to the venue to begin setting up and get ready. At the end of the night the car will return and Zac and I will have a few pictures with the car before taking off to our hotel.

So there you have it! We are relieved to have our major vendors decided on and booked. It's nice to know that these details are taken care of and we can focus our attention on the smaller details. The next project will be working on our save the dates. I just received a reminder from Project Wedding (the host of our wedding website) saying that the save the dates should be going out by the beginning of October. I already have a design in mind for these announcements so hopefully it won't be too difficult to create. More details later...

We Have Music!

Zac and I have realized that time is going by very quickly. As of August 14th we have already been engaged for 7 months! We still have a little less than 9 months until the big day but Zac and I have decided that we should take care of our larger expenses (more specifically our vendors) as soon as we can. There are a few reasons for this:

- Now that we have less than a year until the big day, we are likely to find that vendors are booked for our wedding day. May is a busy month for wedding vendors which may make booking these vendors more difficult the longer we wait.

- Talking to vendors now will give us a better understanding of the money we will be spending in the longrun. This will definitely help us with our budgeting and monthly saving.

- Getting more done sooner than later will relieve the stress later on. We hope to have as much done as we can before the new year. Ideally we'd love to relax for the last two months before the wedding but we know that won't happen.

So, on Monday we had an appointment with one of the djs from our venue's list of approved vendors. We met up with Adam Haro of Haro entertainment at 10am and by 10:15 we had signed a contract and paid a deposit. Adam was actually the dj for Scott and Amy's wedding last September, so Zac and I have already seen how he works. We had a great time at Scott and Amy's wedding and we knew that Adam could do an amazing job for us as well. He has done numerous weddings at our venue and is after all on the list of approved djs for that location. To top it off, Adam has a really fun personality that is easy to get along with. He's also very professional and having already seen his work we knew we couldn't find anyone better to dj our wedding than him. It was an easy decision to make.

It was a great relief to hire Adam as our dj and have one of our major vendors taken care of. A dj can make or break your wedding and we have full confidence that having Adam in control of the announcements and music that our wedding will run smoothly and be a fun event. As an added bonus, Adam gave us a fantastic discount from his normal rate because we met with and booked him so close to the Premier Bride Showplace (a large bridal show hosted by Premier Bride taking place on Sunday, August 21). Haro Entertainment will have a booth at the event and they are offering a discount to those that book at the event. Zac and I were grateful for the discount not only because it was a great deal but also because it put us under budget for a service we anticipated spending more on.

Haro Entertainment also offers videography services and a photobooth. Zac and I definitely thought about these two services when we first started planning our wedding. The photobooth would make the reception fun for our guests and give us some silly photos that wouldn't be captured by our photographer. As I mentioned in a previous post (found here) getting video of the day (though less fun for our guests) would be a great way for us to remember the day for years to come. Though both would be a great addition to our wedding, so would about a hundred other things, and we have to be realistic. We're pretty solid on our budget right now and don't anticipate having any additional money to add these services to our dj package. Maybe as the wedding day gets closer we'll find some room in our budget to add one of these services to our list. (Though honestly, if we end up with some room in the budget it will probably go towards a nice relaxing honeymoon!) For now we're just going to concentrate on our list of "must haves" before thinking of any additional services. It's nice to know that if things change we can easily get these services taken care of with our dj rather than having to hire another vendor at what would certainly be a higher cost.

In addition to the discount, Adam also offered us free tickets to the Premier Bridal Showplace. This was fantastic because we had already planned on heading downtown for the big event. Thanks to Adam we also saved money on tickets for the bridal show. There are going to be quite a few vendors at this event and Zac and I are hoping to cross a few more vendors off of our list including a florist and bakery. (Wish us luck!) For now we have a dj and we couldn't be happier! Things are coming together.