Oh look, it's us, just hanging out under my veil :)
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Photo taken by Tiffany Brubaker Photography www.tiffanybrubaker.com |
Today's Topic - Vendors
Enthusiastically Recommend:
These are the vendors that exceeded our expectations.
Tiffany Brubaker Photography
Tiffany was a dream to work with. We first met her right after we got engaged, and knew she was the photographer for us. She is just so nice and really quick to respond to any question you have. She did a wonderful job with our engagement photos in the Fall of 2010 and our wedding photos are amazing. We had a really hard time narrowing them down for prints and our wedding album - which is a good problem to have! The day of the wedding she was 23 weeks pregnant, but that didn't have any effect on how many photos she took or her attention to detail. Her second shooter, Steph Neprud was awesome as well.
Tiffany had our photos edited and ready freakishly quick. We were still on our honeymoon when the proofing gallery was ready! We love her photography style. She has a great eye and is really easy to work with. We just can't say enough about how much we love Tiffany and her work!
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| Tiffany and Steph helping me down the stairs at my parent's house Photo taken by my mom |
Jan and Cathy are a husband-wife team making up Artistic Video Productions. They are just really friendly people who do an excellent job of capturing your wedding day. They may seem expensive, but you get what you pay for. Our wedding was shot in HD, and we received a Blu-ray copy of our video in addition to DVD copies. They also let us come over and put the original files on an external hard drive. What an awesome benefit to offer your customers!
The day of the wedding they had 3 cameras to capture everything. They kept in the background though, so we barely even noticed they were there. But they got so many moments on film that I missed or wouldn't have remembered. We received a edited "highlight" movie that's around 35 minutes. It's set to music that we were allowed to pick (Bright Eyes anyone?), but also includes some voiceovers from the day. We also received a version with the whole ceremony, speeches, grand march, first dance, father-daughter dance and mother-son dance. We've only watched the long version in it's entirety a few times, but it's great to have. Often I skip through and just watch a few parts of it that are my favorite - like the beautiful music from the ceremony. Our wedding video is simply beautiful. I could watch it over and over again, and I do (just ask Adam).
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| Here you can see Kathy and Jan recording as we got into the cars outside the Cathedral Photo taken by my Aunt Ahna |
Crescendo String Quartet
The Crescendo String Quartet is made up of 4 members of the La Crosse Symphony Orchestra. There are two violins, a viola, and a cello. They were great to work with, especially on such short notice (there was major organ drama with our Church, resulting in them being booked just 2 months before the wedding). They played our musical choices beautifully at the ceremony, and then played both classical and fun music during cocktail hour at our reception. When we arrived at the reception, they were playing "Octopus's Garden" by The Beatles (<3). They were very professional, and made me not so sad about the lack of an organ for our wedding.
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| String Quartet at the Reception
Photo taken by Tiffany Brubaker Photography www.tiffanybrubaker.com |
Recommend:
These are the some of the other vendors I would recommend.
Wedding Cakes Plus by Margaret Ann (Jerome)
Margaret is just a really nice person. When we met her for our tasting, she impressed us by sending home a mini-sheetcake with three different cake flavors covered in buttercream. While she doesn't offer the largest selection of flavors or fillings, we aren't really cake people so that wasn't a big deal to us. More important was her wonderful artistic ability. The cake turned out exactly as I had envisioned (well, except the aqua ribbon and pile of fondant beads on top) and matched our invitation design wonderfully. She also offered kitchen sheet cakes to cut down on the cost. While we didn't take advantage of that as I wanted a huge cake, it's a nice option. Last year she only made one cake per weekend, and our florist said he heard she wasn't doing cakes this year. I'm not sure if that's true or not, but if it is, that's the La Crosse wedding cake industry's loss!
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Photo taken by Tiffany Brubaker Photography
www.tiffanybrubaker.com |
Monet Floral
I really enjoyed our floral consults at Monet Floral. Ben was really fun to work with and had good ideas. I'm sure you could get flowers done much cheaper in La Crosse, but Monet does really great work. I thought it was a little ridiculous that they charged a $50 deposit/consult fee that wasn't refunded towards your final bill. It was just for meeting with them. I also appreciated how accommodating and creative they were about my scent issue (migraines from strong floral scents) and allergies (pollen). I really felt like Ben listened to what I wanted and made it happen (even if he didn't always agree, like his thought that a bride's bouquet should be all white, and my insistence on pinks and lavenders).
There were a few little problems like the aisle runner being too short (Aunt Ahna saved the day running across the street right before the wedding for another one to add), tossing bouquet being forgotten (we repurposed one of the centerpieces for this), feathers for the large escort card vase missing, and the centerpiece vases being clear and square instead of white, round, and footed. None were a huge deal though, more just disappointing. However, I absolutely LOVED how my bouquet turned out, and thought the bridesmaid bouquets were beautiful as well. I also really liked the corsages. Most importantly, all the flowers held up even though it was a hot day (probably because they had a water source in the base which made them a little heavy).
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Photo taken by Tiffany Brubaker Photography
www.tiffanybrubaker.com |
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Photo taken by Tiffany Brubaker Photography
www.tiffanybrubaker.com |
The Waterfront, Cargill Ballroom
I think this is the nicest reception location La Crosse has to offer. It's a beautiful, new facility located on the Mississippi River. I loved that they had non-hideous chairs, so that chair covers weren't necessary (I'm not a huge fan of the covers). They set everything up for us, so we didn't have to worry about being there the night before or day of. The ballroom also has a really nice patio that can be utilized for cocktail hour. I thought the food was great as well. We had a private tasting in February, where we were able to meet the chef who would be working at our wedding and select menu items to try. They were willing to work with us so that we could have a duet of steak and Mahi Mahi, instead of steak and red snapper as their catering menu offers. I thought the food service the day of the wedding went really smoothly, and they kept us on schedule. Though I did think it was a little silly they charged extra for the dance floor rental. How often does a wedding not have a dance?!?
Our only complaint was with the beer. We wanted Spotted Cow on tap because it's Adam's favorite, along with a regular light beer (I don't even remember what we decided on). They were supposed to have 2 kegs of Spotted Cow, but messed up and only had one. Okay, that wouldn't have been a big deal except they messed up again and put the Spotted Cow out on the patio as the only beer selection for cocktail hour. Well guess what, by the time we arrived to the reception and settled in, they were closing the patio bar and moving everything inside. And then we discovered they were out of the Spotted Cow. Adam never even got a glass.
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| Here you can get an idea of what the room looked like set-up before dinner Photo taken by my mom |
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Photo taken by Tiffany Brubaker Photography
www.tiffanybrubaker.com |
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