Wedding Vendor Reviews from Our Wedding

We wanted to give back to future brides and grooms planning their wedding as this forum was of great help to us, particularly as we were planning our wedding from out of state. We had a great time at our wedding and it is thanks to many of our vendors below that it went so seamlessly, thank you!


Ceremony: East Beach
Reception Venue: Cabrillo Arts Pavillion
Photographer: Kacie Jean Photography (kaciejeanphotography.com and kaciejeanphotographyblog.com)
DJ: Bonnie of DJ by Bonnie (musicbybonnie.com)
Florist: Karen Fox of A Smiling Garden (asmilinggarden.com)
Caterer: Pure Joy (purejoycatering.com)
Dessert: Crumbs (sbcrumbs.com)
Hair: Tawni Jones at 19 Blue Salon
Invitations: mygatsby.com
Wedding Dress: La Soie Bridal

East Beach: Great beach location if you want to have your ceremony on the sand. Paired with the Cabrillo, it is far and away the most reasonably priced beach location (and supports the city). Our ceremony was later in the afternoon so not too many people on the beach. Pure Joy set up the chairs and angled it just right so our guests did not have to look into the sun!  If you are planning your wedding from out of state and don't spend much time at the beach something to think about is that even on the most clear, blue sky day, there is a breeze, so mention to your guests that they might consider bringing a light jacket. Secondly, spend the extra money to have your DJ set up audio and a microphone that clips to your officiants outfit, otherwise the sea breeze and gentle crashing of waves will wash out your voices. DJ Bonnie made this recommendation and we are definitely glad we listened as every guest in the back row said they could hear the ceremony!

Cabrillo Arts Pavillion: The Cabrillo is a great venue, reasonable and true to the SB Spanish style architecture! If one of the things you are interested in for your budget is to provide your own caterer and alcohol, check out the Cabrillo. The inside is set up perfectly for a reception. The main area for tables and dancing, and sits a generous amount of people comfortably. Behind the arcade provides a nice architectural break from the reception area for socializing, bar and cake display, as well as access to the patio, which has great views. The caterers know the set up of the kitchen, no need to rent an oven or any extra kitchen items for the caterer. The bathrooms are clean and tucked away. They have tables, chairs (albeit a bit conference in feel, but comfortable), dance floor, and screen (for projecting a slideshow) all included in the rental fee. They have cheat sheets to help you in how you want the room organized and they have an on-site staff member the day of your wedding, helping to set up! If you have a lot of small children there is a small conference room off the entrance with a dvd/tv set up, great for them to go to if they are getting tired and their parents want to keep dancing. You just need to make sure that if you plan on having the kids stay there through the evening and not participate in the reception, you need to have a baby sitter present in the room. The lighting is great, and the chandeliers are of architectural interest, so additional lighting is not particularly necessary, though we did have friends string up LED lit paper lanterns for extra ambiance. Oh the other, the art, the art rotates by the week, and you can find out a few months in advance what will be on the walls. If you are concerned about this, I would say don't be. It's a nice element and really is off in the background.  One other thing to say is that they have an 8 hour rental time. This has it's pluses and minuses. You can only get in a few hours before your wedding, so if you wanted to set something up the day before or the morning of, you are not able to, so you will want to coordinate with friends or family to have your alcohol and any decorations dropped off at the beginning of your 8 hour rental. Because everything has to be cleaned up by the end of your rental time, you will want to coordinate with friends or family, or if you have a day of coordinator to make sure that you have this planned ahead. The plus side is that when you wake up the next morning, everything is already out of the venue and you don't have to go back and clean up, we've helped at friend's weddings and though it was nice to leave at the end of the night, cleaning up for hours the next day was not. So depending on your interest, it's a plus or a minus!

Kacie Jean Photography: Kacie is just wonderful, you are lucky if you get to have her as your photographer. Her photography is gorgeous, she has a great eye, check out her blog or website (links above). Not only was Kacie our photographer, but she was of such great help in planning the wedding, she had suggestions for different vendors, suggestions for the order/scheduling of the day, suggestions for the schedule that we would have never thought of and this made the day run so smoothly . When our schedule got off at the wedding she was willing to stay past our contracted time to capture photos of our first dance and the parent dances and some of the guests dancing. Our interest was to get to spend as much time with our guests as possible and not be gone after the ceremony for a couple of hours. Kacie suggested doing a "first look". This would mean we would see one another before the ceremony and take the majority of our wedding party and wedding couple photos ahead of time at another location. We are so glad we did this. As the bride, I will never forget this moment, it was so personal to the two of us and the photos are so wonderful (and then gave me as the bride a chance to see some of our guests as I walked down the aisle, which was nice to be able to do. After our ceremony all we had to do was take our big group photo and then family photos and Kacie had them done quickly, had us do some photos on the beach to capture the sunset and in about 20-30 minutes after the ceremony we were up enjoying the cocktail with our guests, which was so nice to get to spend more time mingling with guests. Another thing, she got our engagement and wedding photos back to us so quickly, a few days after our ceremony, Kacie had a slideshow of 150 or so photos from the day sinked up with music for us and our family and friends to enjoy. Leaving on our honeymoon having already seen photos of the day was so great, it was a chance to relive it so soon.  I think I could go on and on about Kacie, but I'll stop her and say thank you.

DJ Bonnie: I could go on about her as I did about Kacie. All the things I wrote about her being so helpful with suggestions we would have never thought about that made the day go seamlessly, especially the reception, ditto for Bonnie. She is so organized, thoughtful, professional, helpful, and easy to work with. We met with her and it didn't take us long (a few minutes after our meeting) to book her. She did a wonderful job with the music and keeping the schedule of the evening going. We got slightly off with the schedule, which was going to affect one of the contracted schedules we had with a vendor, and Bonnie made a few adjustments and had it all worked out, because of this we were able to just keep on enjoying the party.  A week or two before our wedding we spoke with Bonnie on the phone to coordinate the music for the wedding. We have to say, it was like she was our wedding coordinator. This meeting solidified the schedule for the day and helped us to decide how the music would work for the evening. There is so much flexibility with DJ Bonnie, you can either have her pick all the music, you can give her your music taste and then she'll pick it, you can give her all the music you want played for the ceremony, cocktail hour and reception, you can choose to not have anything requested and stick to your and her ideas, allow requests to occur, disallow certain requests. Her music choices were fantastic, she has the ability to send music to you through email, so if you are need of help, she can email you suggestions, her website is also chalk-full of choices. We were not interested in a loud, in your face DJ  and Bonnie in your meeting will gently share this with you that she is not a loud , in your face DJ but rather one that keeps the party going, keeps the schedule going such that thankfully the DJ is not the center of attention, rather you two are and the party!  Our guests have told us in the last few weeks that they just had such a good time on the dance floor and so did we, it felt like only 10 songs were played, but we were on the dance floor for 2 hours. Bonnie, thank you!

Karen (A Smiling Garden): Karen and her flower designs were fantastic. Our bouquets, boutonnieres, ceremony flowers were all just gorgeous, I as the bride, did not want to put my bouquet down all night.  Karen was great to work with, really easy to communicate with, had great suggestions about how to work with a budget and was very considerate of our budget. One suggestion she had was how to reuse flowers between the ceremony and reception, this was fantastic. I was not a bride who had the exact picture or idea of what I wanted, I only loosely knew, and Karen created a beautiful set of arrangements. She works with a lot of local vendors as well so it is nice because this way you are supporting the local growers. If you are or not someone who is especially attune to detail, Karen is a great person to work with for various reasons, she caught some details that I would have never noticed, and this was greatly appreciated as it really helped tie everything together (between our decorations, color choices for the wedding, girls dresses, etc). She is not just a florist for your bouquets, she has some elegant and modern options to create a lovely setting for a ceremony as well. We were blown away by how beautiful our ceremony site, as if the beach isn't fantastic enough, Karen just stepped it up a notch.

Pure Joy: Just like our other vendors, working with Pure Joy is like having another wedding coordinator in the picture. You don't need a wedding coordinator with our team of vendors. Pure Joy was great, they are so embedded in the community that they have a great rapport with other vendors (photographers, djs, etc). We did not get to do a tasting with them and just selected off the menu. We had a bit of a goof up with our vegetarian choice, our two vegetarians ended up being allergic to a main ingredient in our choice, but other guests had also selected the veggie dish, so we had to keep it, and Pure Joy was willing to cook these two a seperate dish so they could enjoy dinner. I have to say we can't comment on the dinner, our appetizers and drinks were delicious, but we got so wrapped up in the night we didn't really touch our plates, but to be honest, I was not that hungry after the appetizers and just excited to be with our guests (and that's saying alot because we aren't ones to pass up a good dinner).

Elke and Jessica owners of SB Crumbs: Our desserts were delicious, just delicious. I suppose we could stop right there. I would recommend them a thousand times over. They are up in Goleta and should be your stop for desserts. Elke and Jessica's training is superb and they are great to work with as well. We did not go with a traditional american wedding cake, so we can not comment on the cake, but we will say what we saw at the store, in the photos and have heard from acquaintances is that it's quite tasty. We went a different route, a croquembouche (piece montee, a french tradition) and various tarts. WOW, were we blown away, the dessert was not a primary focus of ours at all going into the wedding planning, and I have to say if we lived in Santa Barbara, I would always go to Crumbs for desserts for every party. Everyone loved the desserts, there was nearly nothing left at the end of the night. We had a handful of guests who were either celiac or gluten intolerant, and they were willing to make a separate tart just for those guests. We never met with Elke or Jessica ahead of the week of the wedding, only over the phone, they made it so easy and simple. We popped into to meet them before our wedding and finalize the choices for the tarts, they delivered everything on time and in one piece, which is a lot since we had a tall croquembouche. They had quite a bit of extra cream puffs for the croquembouche and though we had not paid for the extra included them, which we thought was very generous and thoughtful.

Tawni Jones (Hair): Just as everything else, we chose our vendors without getting to do much in the way of a test run, and hair was just the same. Kacie, our photographer, emailed me photos of various bride's hair. After seeing a few of Tawni's I decided to go with her. One heads up before I keep writing, if you are getting married in SB on a Sunday, expect to have to hire a stylist by the hour as few salons are open on Sundays, so the up-do cost does not apply, rather a price per hour will, which is typically much much more. We did a trial a few days before the wedding and Tawni was really great with suggestions, great at seeing the shape of your face and suggesting styles in that regards, during the trial if there was something you were not sure about, she made you very comfortable to speak up. She has knack for up-do's and make-up, I felt like I wasn't wearing make-up, my hair did not budge, only great things to say about Tawni!

Invitations: We did our invitations through an online company, mygatsby.com. Be sure to check them out. They are REALLY reasonable for very lovely invitations. They have a wide variety of papers, fonts, invitation styles, and also do thermography (raised print included in the base price). We received numerous compliments on our invitations. The turn around time from the order was supposed to be something like two weeks and we got it back much quicker.

La Soie Bridal: They are located in the LA Basin, they have two locations. Check them out. My mom and I had the best time at their salon trying on dresses. They are not pushy, they are reasonable in price, are sensitive to one's budget. The salon was modern and full of bright light and great choices in dresses. Their stylists have a great eye and suggestions. We found our dress on the first visit (and it was our first time looking).

We hope these reviews have been helpful, these vendors really helped to make a special night for us and our guests, we hope you have the same experience! Good luck with all your planning.

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