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The Great: NO required vendor lists!!!! Anyone who has been searching venues who doesn't have $100,000 to send or even $50,000 know that being able to choose your own florist, band, dj, rentals, dessert.... is a HUGE plus. Especially when you are like us and are very particular about your choices. We had our friends band play the reception! We had a friends and family do flowers! Being given a choice can also save you lots of money. Also they have their own (attractive) chairs, tables, and linens. No rentals required!! That was a huge relief.
Jessica, who is in charge of special events, and her assistant were amazing the day of!! Who needs a wedding planner with you have those two, giving you your cues and keeping you on schedule! They were really wonderful. The staff were great too! One of the waitresses even gave me some great advice before walking down the aisle! Jessica is very reassuring a calm, and just the type you want to be around on such a big day. Nothing frazzles her, she rolls with the punches. She's also adorable, and made great suggestions. The rehearsal would have been a mess without her!!
Even before the wedding, I'd also mention that the tasting was wonderful!! My mother-in-law, sister, and I were treating to wine, hors d'oeurve, and entree tasting at Cafe Absinthe with Jessica. GDS were renovating their kitchen and the two restaurants share a head chef, and it was really quite lovely. Of course we couldn't really taste the wines they would have available at the time of the wedding, which was sort of a bummer, but I didn't mind after a couple of glasses.
The food at the wedding was great as well, and I got many compliments on it not being your "typical wedding food." Jessica was also really accommodating about allowing us to have steak, chicken, fish, AND a vegan option. That was really great! The vegan option was really tasty as well! The presentation of the food was really well executed, and I really appreciated the effort.
The venue itself is really the big hit of the night. The place is just really amazing looking, and so far from the typical banquet hall. You can really use your imagination and turn the space into whatever you want! We had the ceremony in the garden, which by May had really bloomed, we used the atrium for dinner, and the club room for dancing. We opted for a real band (actually two) and took advantage of the stage, which I highly recommend.
The Bad: Most of these things could have been avoided, and I'm not a big fan of criticism, especially when we had such an incredible wedding, but I think other brides might want to be aware of these things....
The bartenders put up tip jars, not even tip jars, tip cups!! HUGE no, no in my book, and extremely tacky. Especially when in your contract with the venue it specifies that you must tip the servers when you pay for your event. Tip jars? Really? You expect people to fly to your event, get you a gift, and then tip the bartender? No, no I don't. That was terrible.
There were also little things that maybe I should have expected, being a little naive to the wedding game. Hidden costs, for valet even though they have a big open lot, and we got married on a Sunday when they were closed. The sound guy to HAVE to use, but for the most part these seemed to be the usual "catches" when I looked in to wedding venues. They also tried to make a sneaky move on us when they announced a couple months before, that they might start serving dinner on Sundays, and we would no longer have access to the foyer, and even worse there would be people, let's face it, strangers (their dinner customers) sharing the venue. This was the purpose of booking the place on a Sunday to begin with, to have the venue to ourselves. This made the cost more, in fact, and we weren't happy with the suggestion. In the end, Jessica informed us that they would no longer be entertaining this idea, which was a very good choice on their part. I don't think I was the only one to have booked the place on a Sunday, and I have a sneaking suspicion that some of those people really weren't having it. I also don't think Jessica liked the idea very much, and that it was something she was made to to by her boss.
Another weird thing. They threw away my bouquet, and either threw away or served the top of our cake (I got conflicting stories.) They were in such a rush to clean up that it felt a bit like they were cleaning up around us. Rather than leave the tables set for guests to sit and enjoy a chat while others we dancing, they clearing all of the centerpieces away within minutes. I had left my bouquet at my seat, and it was gone when I went back, and no where to be found. Also we had 10 vases custom made for the centerpieces and by the end of the night I had one left. I'm not in implying that the people at the venue took them, but the manner of which they were piling things together on the bar to get the tables cleared, may have encouraged guests to take them, thinking they were left for trash. They could have at least put my things, in one designated place behind the bar. Including my bouquet.
One last thing I should mention, while the food overall was great, the first tables to get their steaks, got them rare, and I mean really rare. Something I hadn't noticed, because I don't eat meat, but got the pleasure of seeing a rather purple looking steak in a friends photo, and later heard stories of people sending their food back.
There is the good and the bad of it. Overall, we had a really great experience, our wedding was amazing, and our guests had a lot of fun!! I heard many times that we had the best wedding ever!!
I can't say enough wonderful things about our dessert table & wedding cake from Nate & Elaine of Fritz. I'm certain that if you ask any of our guests what they remember most about our wedding, dessert would be one of the 1st things they mention. People couldn't get enough of the Snickers parfait, the mini brownies, & the colorful macarons!! Not to mention the cake was incredible!! Our wedding coordinator said it was the first wedding she'd done where there wasn't a single slice left. Elaine came to the venue herself to set up the table, and the presentation was wonderful as well. Whenever we visit Chicago we head back to Fritz to try whatever new amazing treat they have in the case, and we're never disappointed. They are simply a joy to work with, & on a day when so many things can go wrong, and at least one thing always does (Eh hmm, the quartet forgot the sheet music to one of my songs) it was a comfort to see (and taste) that our desserts were absolutely perfect.
Review Date: 10/09/2009 Services Used: Ceremony Music
4.8 out of 5.0
Quality of Service:
(5.0/5.0)
Responsiveness:
(5.0/5.0)
Professionalism:
(4.0/5.0)
Value For Cost:
(5.0/5.0)
Flexibility:
(5.0/5.0)
Thomas Yang was very helpful, and the musicians were very talented. He didn't have two of the songs I wanted in his repertoire, but I was able to have the arrangements done by a family friend, and the quartet played them as though they had been playing them for years! The only little screw up was that he hadn't brought one of these pieces I had asked for. I don't really know how it happened, but when they quartet showed up they didn't have the music to "One Hand, One Heart" which I had requested, and has been played at all of my siblings weddings. Luckily crisis was averted when our singers had shown up with the sheet music, so I didn't see the point in bringing it up with Mr. Yang, but my advice would be to double, and triple check your musical choices with him a week before. The best part? A couple of our friends surprised us by singing, playing guitar, and kazoos during our recessional to All You Need Is Love an homage to my favorite movie "Love Actually" and our quartet went along with it perfectly!
p.s. A member of our quartet looked just like George Lucas, and our guests got a serious kick out of that!
I can only say great things about Hello Lucky!, which might seem obvious with the 5 stars and all, but really they were amazing. When I say "they" I should probably just say Lia, because she was the one that took my calls more than once a day, for about 3 weeks!! And did she ever sound sick and tired of me? No.
When I needed samples she sent them, when I needed advice she had it, and when I really just needed her opinion she gave it to me. We decided to use our own artwork for our wedding invitations, so we were using Hello Lucky! for printing, but there were many times I wondered why I hadn't just used one of their amazing designs! Actually if they had included a "Visit Chicago" in their city Lab Partners series I probably would have.
I should also mention that I completely over shot my numbers initially, and though Lia had already put in the order, and I had approved it, she still changed it for me without any penalty. A mistake that almost cost me $600!! Thanks to Lia, I was saved from this costly almost mishap.
The Invites, RSVPs, and Envelopes looked incredible when I got them, and I felt like a kid on Christmas. They even sent the Envelopes to my calligrapher and saved me the trouble of having them shipped to me in LA, just to have them shipped to NY, and back again. I've already gotten so many compliments from my friends and family on them.
What else can I say? I feel like I was taken care of, and the end product was well worth a big smile, and a sigh from me. I'd be surprised if Lia didn't memorize my phone number in the mean time.
I decided to look into Circa Ceramics after receiving a gift from them from my sister-in-law. She has sent me two ceramic tile trivets with old cameras screened on them, that were just too amazing not to check out what else this company made. What did I find? A treasure trove of an Etsy store. I immediately gravitated towards their magnets. They were the perfect size for a cute favor, and not your typical candied almonds, also they were in our budget! I wrote to them inquiring about custom designs, and what followed was a series of messages back and forth between me and the most pleasant and obliging couple to work with ever!! Nancy and Andy worked with me to make the most wonderful custom magnets for our guests with ten different designs on ten different colors. I supplied the artwork that they were more than happy to use, and they even printed our names and date of our wedding on the backs of each magnet. Many of our guests were flying in from out of town, so it was important to us that our favors were made in Chicago, and they said so! In the end they were so wonderful that we ended up making corresponding tabs and vases to differentiate the tables, so each table had a different color and design, rather than just your average number. It turned out better than I could have imagine, and would recommend them to anyone looking for a more personal favor.
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