Vendor Reviews!

Primary Vendors:

Brides By Liza
Item: Wedding Dress and Veil
Price: $2000 (dress) + $200 (veil) + Tax
Rating: 5/5

There aren't enough nice words to describe Liza, Ani and the rest of her team. Not only is she an amazing designer and seamstress, she's a wonderful, warm person and she always made me feel comfortable and beautiful as she designed and made my wedding dress. As you know, I am NOT an easy person to fit and her team really worked magic to put my gown together. Her staff was easy to work with, friendly and efficient and I would never have had a dress that fit me so perfectly if it hadn't been for her. She also has the uncanny ability to look at you and know what dress would be perfect, I went in looking for something completely different than what I walked out with and Liza was right.  She knew what I wanted better than I was able to dream or articulate and in between sharing stories of her boys and making me feel like part of the family she created my perfect dress. She also worked with my family on our budget and was able to custom make both my dress and my veil for what we could afford. Yes, she seems a little pricey compared to a budget department store wedding dress but she's not making a dress that will fit a million different women, she's making a dress that's perfect for you.

Friar Tux

Item: Groom & Groomsmen's Suits

Price: $153.60 with tax per suit

Rating: 5/5

We decided pretty early on that we wanted E and the guys to be in grey suits instead of black ones. We were having an early spring wedding and even though it was at night, black just felt too dark for our celebration. Grey suits can be tricky to find but luckily, Friar Tux had a gorgeous for purchase only grey suit available for less than the cost of their grey rental tux. We worked primarily with the West LA/Santa Monica store and would highly recommend their manager Becky. She worked with our groomsmen spread out all over the country, comped our shoe rentals and a shirt rental when one of our shirts was sold out and offered to comp our ties. Becky knew their product line well and she knew the suit well enough to let us know we needed to order a smaller size for some groomsmen than they wear in a street size suit.  The suit was nice quality and after a little tailoring looked absolutely fabulous on all our guys, regardless of their height, weight and body type. 

Wedding in a Nutshell: Saturday Morning

Saturday morning began for me and the girls with a series of phone calls. Our day of coordinator, a friend of the family, was repeatedly calling all our cell phones because she was having trouble picking up our guest shuttles. My amazing girls let me sleep through the first couple contact attempts but by the third we were all up anyway. Apparently the shuttle (should have been shuttles plural) was waiting for us on an army base and the DOC had conflicting information about how a civilian might retrieve it. While one of my girls handled the shuttle screw up, another one gave me a delicious morning massage! I now fully understand why she gets morning massages from her husband, they're definitely a decadent treat.

The Aqua Terra

Wedding in a Nutshell: Friday

Our wedding was entirely us, entirely awesome, and entirely last minute. Friday morning we were frantically packing to drive down to Fallbrook and running last minute errands. We forgot things, went back for them, and before the morning was over we were an hour behind schedule and my family was almost in Fallbrook. It wasn't long before we caught up but it made the whole day feel a bit more stressful.

The Ranch last minute. Oh boy was it a mess.

Once we got down to Fallbrook and looked around the ranch I was pretty much convinced that things would not be ready. The tent was wrong, we had no gazebo to marry under, there wasn't enough light, there weren't enough flowers, there was no place for guests to park, no staff and no shuttles. Workers were everywhere, trees were being trimmed, electrical was being run and people were making frantic trips to various stores. It was pretty much a disaster and while I knew we'd be getting married no matter what,  I was fairly sure that everything would not be done in time.