Weddingbee

This is the final installment of the gorgeous wedding of Nicole & Kent! (Part I, II, III)

Engagement Photographer: Amaris Cavin– A+
Since we knew our theme was a dramatic departure from a “regular 2007 wedding,” we wanted to get our guests in the time warp mood a little early. Thus, we took our engagement portraits in vintage clothes on the Queen Mary in Long Beach. My husband is in the Navy and loves boats, ships, etc., so the Queen Mary was his idea. My friend Amaris, who was also one of my bridesmaids and is a professional photographer, took the pictures and, well, the pictures speak for themselves. She specializes in photographic storytelling using children’s portraits.

We loved the vintage backgrounds (we were wearing vintage clothing too!). Basically she is talented and SO awesome!

STD printing: Vistaprint.com, A
We used our favorite engagement shots to make our save the date/engagement announcement postcards. We printed 120 of these at vistaprint.com. We didn’t send them to everyone who got an invite, just the A-list peeps. With postage, we paid $121 total. A few people threw these away because they thought it was an advertisement from a department store!

Vistaprint gave us exactly what we asked for. Not the perfect quality I would have liked (a few of the full bleeds didn’t go all the way to the edge), but for the price, they looked super fabulous.

Front:

Back:

Engagement Portrait Album: Mypublisher.com, A++++
We bought several copies of the Deluxe Album (HUGE 30 inches wide when open) and gave them to our parents at the rehearsal dinner as thank you gifts. They LOVE them - and they match the wedding albums we made them.

Invitations
Since our theme was “Old Hollywood Glamour” and black and white, I thought these simple invitations would be perfect. A cool thing is we had a wax seal stamper custom made with my husband’s family crest (they’re English, so they actually have a crest!). We just put the fake wax into the glue gun and then squished the stamp thing into it.

Our reception card asks the guests to “Please respond via our website.” We had our guests go to our website, and click through to the free online RSVP tool from the knot. It was great because it kept track of everything for us. Another bonus, it could easily generate a batch email to all those who hadn’t yet responded, etc.  We posted a reminder about the dress code (black tie tuxedos for guys and black and white and no other colors for the ladies) on the RSVP page itself so everyone had to see it before RSVPing.

Wedding Day and Day After Photographer: James Walters — A+
After falling in love with one of his images, I spoke with James Walters on the phone. He was just so friendly and soothing that we decided we wanted him to shoot our wedding though he was based in North Carolina and we were getting married in California. He typically shoots with his wife, but they are very expensive (around $7K, I think). He gave us a GREAT deal since he was coming alone and our wedding was in the off season, and gave us a day after shoot for free!

Videographer: James Hobert A++++
He gave us the deal of the century because he’s just getting started in weddings, but he is experienced in Hollywood for non-wedding stuff. Bottom line - SO TALENTED and he’s also an amazing editor, which I think is the secret to a fantastic wedding video. He really made us look great. Please please please snap him up, he’s absolutely AMAZING!!!

Day-Of-Coordinator and Florist: Mary Bowerman – A+
Super affordable and absolutely awesome.

Big Band: Mirage Band — A++
They really made our theme wedding authentic - pricey but worth every penny.

Wedding Cake and table cakes: Villa Nueva in Coronado – A
They aren’t really in the wedding cake business, but they were willing to give us what we wanted. I wanted a frosted styrofoam cake with one real cake layer. I called several wedding cake people and they were going to charge several hundred just to frost a styrofoam cake!!! Villa Nueva gave us 18 table cakes in six different flavors AND frosted our big six layer cake for less than the lowest bid from other cake companies. Our styrofoam cake was a bit crooked, and not as smooth as I would have liked, but you can’t have everything perfect and stay within a budget. The look of the cake was not as important to me as the taste and price. Bottom line: extremely affordable, fabulously tasty, and made from scratch.

Chair Covers: Dreams Do Come True — A
Extremely affordable ($2/chair cover)

Wedding Gown and Bridesmaid gowns: Julius Bridal — A+
This is a shop in NY that has dresses custom-made in China I think - they need a bit of lead time, but you can’t beat the price - each bridesmaid dress in black polyester satin was $85 and my gown in silk satin was $550 and fit perfectly with no alterations needed.

Tuxedos for groomsmen and fathers (white tie with tails): After Hours — A
Tuxedos for guests (black tie, no tails): Men’s Wearhouse — A

Bride’s Rings: Tacori — A++
I love, love, LOVE my rings! We just felt safer going with them because they have a lifetime guarantee in case a stone falls out or there is some other problem, especially since my wedding band is all pave setting diamonds which do have tendency to come loose.

Groom’s ring: Kay Jewelers — A +

Wedding ceremony site and ceremony coordinator: Saint Paul United Methodist Church - Marcie Warmer – A+++
Great price and just beautiful - a joy to work with.

Reception site: Island Club - — C
This is hard to grade because the location was beautiful - right on the beach on Coronado Island and the price was so great, but the service was the absolute worst!! We worked with Gina and I had to fight her for everything we wanted. If you want a wedding that looks like everyone else’s then the service is probably fine, but if you want to be creative, then be prepared to work harder. This location is definitely not “customer service oriented”.

Catering: Island Club — C-
We had to use them, but we had a very hard time working with them. For example, the day before the wedding, they set up the tables wrong and the Catering Manager told me that the table design we had previously agreed on (and, by the way, paid extra to have set up) was ugly. Finally, they reset the tables according to my requests and it looked great, but it was stress that I did not need

Regrets, glad we did or didn’t do, etc. . . .

I won’t go into every detail I am glad we didn’t skimp on, or wish we would have done because as other ladies have correctly stated, the wedding day can’t be perfect and it doesn’t need to be. All the mistakes make for good stories. It’s really about two becoming one and the vows you make before God. The rest is just a celebratory PARTY!!!

That said, I am very glad we hired professional, experienced, wedding vendors for the things that were the most important to us: pictures and the big band. These were the biggest expenses (except the reception food/site, obviously) but so worth it.

The most important thing I am glad about is that we stuck to our guns on how we wanted our wedding. We had this crazy idea that our wedding would be themed (Old Hollywood Glamour / Art Deco / Black and White) and like no other wedding we had ever been to or heard of. We are a bit older (28 and 33) and have been to LOTS of weddings, so we really wanted to be unique!

We wanted our wedding to be ultra-formal, so we required our guests to wear tuxedos (or dark suit with a bow tie that we supplied - btw, we paid for about half of the tux rentals - it was a pain to work with the tux rental store, but SO WORTH IT to see everyone dressed up) and black and white only. This made all the pictures look SO GOOD - I am so glad we didn’t back down. I did have some people who were resentful of being told what to wear, but it was important to us. My Dad didn’t want to wear a tailcoat since he’s a surfer dude who didn’t even wear a suit to his own wedding, but I told him he had to and he looked really great! My grandparents from Washington didn’t come to the wedding and I think it’s partially because they didn’t like the dress code. I also think a few of the invitees said no because they didn’t want to get dressed up (OK, maybe SD is the strangest place to have an ultra-formal wedding since I have friends who have worn khaki shorts and flip flops to weddings before). Personally, I am sad they didn’t come, but we had a great time with our guests. I had a friend who told me at first she resented having to rent FIVE tuxes for her family (she didn’t know we were paying for more than half of it), but she actually cried when she saw her husband and her sons all together so dressed up.

Also, my husband and I both lament the casualization of our society in general, so we wanted our wedding to be, at least for one night, a return to a time when weddings were a big deal, worthy of getting more dressed up than for any other event.

Another part of our theme that was extreme and also controversial was our music. We asked the big band to play ONLY period music (30’s and 40’s) - no modern covers, no nothing, even if the guests requested it. My husband and I went salsa dancing on our first date and I used to take salsa and swing lessons with a bunch of my friends. We wanted only lead-follow dancing (foxtrot, swing, salsa, etc.) at our wedding and we were kind of worried that people wouldn’t dance. Especially since there was no bar, we thought they’d be too embarrassed to dance. Well, there was no reason to worry, because the large dance floor was absolutely PACKED ALL NIGHT! We couldn’t believe it! So many of our guests had secret dancing skills and they looked so good! Everyone had such a good time they all stayed to the end and wished that our reception lasted longer. We never dreamed it would be as successful as it was.

We are really glad we paid for all of our attendants’ attire. Almost all of them were out of towners and it would have been a financial burden for them. We figured we wanted a certain look, but it wasn’t fair to make them pay for it. And, it really didn’t cost as much as you might think! For the BMs: silk gowns, brooches, and gloves. For the GMs: white gloves, black silk bow ties (these were just a gift since the tuxes were white tie and the rental included it) and nice top hats to keep and also the tux rental which included shoes, etc.. We also paid for the ring bearer’s and flower girl’s clothes, so that it wasn’t a burden for their parents. Also, because we bought all these things in bullk we got MAJOR savings! I think we got two tuxes for free and the rest were like $45 each with all the discounts. We bought the guys’ gloves and hats for super cheap on the internet and the ladies opera-length gloves from a vendor who charged me like $1 over cost!

Also, I am so glad we did a photobooth guestbook. I always thought regular ones were lame, but I saw the idea somewhere else and it looked so cool.

—-Things we DID NOT do and don’t regret—–

We skipped a lot of “traditions” that most people do in weddings but didn’t have any meaning for us. We definitely did incorporate a lot of traditional things, but we didn’t do them because you are “supposed” to. Sometimes it was a time constraint, or we just thought it wouldn’t be classy. For example, no unity candle or sand ceremony; instead we took communion together as our first act as a married couple, then we kissed (we did not kiss while we were dating or engaged, it was really our first kiss). No garter toss or bouquet toss. No money dance . . . can’t think of everything, but not much mc-ing throughout the night, in general.

Also, we didn’t have a bar at all. We served red and white two buck chuck (LOVE that stuff) for which we paid $10 corkage (if it wasn’t a military location I would have refused to pay corkage, but the military won’t negotiate! We also brought in our own champagne and non-alcoholic fizzy juices for the kids. The caterers supplied water, coffee, tea, a keg of local beer (which was GOOD), and that’s it. No soda, no mixed drinks, no hard alcohol, nothing. We saved SO much money! Also we aren’t big drinkers, we didn’t want drunk guests, and we were on a budget. Don’t regret skipping the bar at all.

Bottom line, we had the storybook wedding we dreamed of, we didn’t go in debt to pay for it, and we couldn’t be happier!

Marriage is such a blessing!!!!

Thanks so much for sharing your big day with all of us Nicole!