Happy #WeddingWednesday! Today I’m talking all about our wedding vendors and how we chose each one! Choosing all your wedding vendors is no easy task and honestly, it was one of the more difficult parts of wedding planning for me.
Venue – Wyndridge Farm
I already did a full blog post last week on our wedding venue, Wyndridge Farm, so I’m not going to go in depth here but I’ll link the full post on it here in case you missed it!
Save the Date & Invitations – Minted
We used Minted for all our wedding stationary & website. They had so many options to choose from and you can make custom changes to just about anything! I had a very clear vision of what I wanted for the invitations and I knew I wanted the colors to be black & white with a greenery accent. I found an invitation on Minted’s website and they were able to re-design it to the size I needed. I also wanted black envelopes, however, that was more difficult when it came to addressing them, so I choose black folder enclosures which I ordered online from Paper Source. Their wedding website service was also super easy to use and you can choose to have your own url and even make it password protected if you wish.
Photographer – Megan Kelsey Photography
Ok, guys this is a BIG ONE and I could probably write an entire post on picking your photographer… but I’ll try to keep it brief. Picking your photographer can be very overwhelming…. at least I thought it was. I had reached out to probably 10 different wedding photographers, most of them were recommended by the venue, but some I found on Wedding Wire or The Knot. My biggest tip, which seems pretty simple, is to look at their pictures! Find them on Instagram, Facebook, check out their websites & blog and see what their photography style is like. I found myself easily ruling out photographers because I simply didn’t like the way their pictures looked… and that’s one (there are many) of the reasons why I fell in LOVE with our photographer, Megan Kelsey Photography! I was obsessed with how pretty, bright & airy all of her photos looked and that’s exactly what I wanted! She had also shot at Wyndridge Farm before and was able to send me the entire gallery to get a better idea of what my wedding day would look like!
Not going to lie, when I first started looking at wedding photographers I was shocked at the price, and my family, including Walt, thought I was CRAZY for wanting to spend so much on photographs. However, I think you just need to ask yourself how important are the wedding pictures to you? For me, they were like #2 on my list, so pretty important.
I can honestly say, and my family said it too, that my wedding pictures turned out AMAZING and they were worth every penny we spent. It’s been 8 months, since the wedding and I still find myself looking at them and I’m just as obsessed as I was day one. P.S she took every picture that’s in this blog post!
Ok, so now more about our actual photographer, Megan Kelsey Photography. Megan is an absolute sweetheart and was super easy to work with! She is so good at what she does, and makes you feel so comfortable in front of the camera, which is super important! I can’t tell you how many of my friends raved about her after the wedding and started following her themselves!! She’s based out of the DC/Virginia area but will travel. I would 10/10 recommend her if you’re looking for a wedding photographer.
Desserts – Browns Orchards
Just writing about this makes me want to get in my car, drive to Browns Orchards and buy one of everything from the bakery! Browns Orchards was recommended to us by a family friend who also had their wedding at Wyndridge Farm. Its an orchard and farmers market located in Loganville, PA. They make the best desserts and are SUPER affordable. We had decided we didn’t want to do a big wedding cake, we just wanted a small one and then wanted various other mini desserts and cupcakes. (We actually didn’t even cut the cake at our wedding, we cut a cupcake and saved the entire cake for later!) The actual wedding cake itself was a yellow cake with lemon icing layers and a buttercream frosting. It was DELICIOUS! We decided to eat one layer of it when we came back from our honeymoon and the other layer is still frozen in our freezer, which we will eat on our one-year anniversary! We also had the following desserts: vanilla cupcakes, chocolate cupcakes, lemon iced cupcakes, chocolate peanut butter cupcakes, mini black bottoms, brownies, mini pumpkin whoopie pies & mini cream puffs.
DJ – Jenny Z
This was another extremely hard vendor for me to pick. I reached out to several different companies and had no idea how I was supposed to know which one would be good. If you haven’t seen them DJ before, how would you know if they are the right fit for your wedding? DJs were another vendor that I was shocked at the price. One of the companies happened to be the DJ from our friends wedding and she was affordable so we went with DJ Jenny Z.
Flowers – Family
My aunt actually did all the flowers/table decor for the wedding, which was super helpful! I’m not much of a flower person (ask Walt, I’d rather have a pair of shoes instead of flowers that will die in a couple days,) so I knew I wanted no flowers other than the bouquets. For the tables, I simply wanted greenery (silver dollar eucalyptus) as the table runner and that was it! Funny story… the day before the wedding all the eucalyptus went missing and we only had this neon green looking greenery to use, which was totally not the look I was going for. I can still remember my mom walking into the room to tell me (probably nervous I was going to freak out) but somehow I was very calm about it, I mean what else was there to do? My Aunt worked some miracles though and was able to get the correct greenery shipped overnight to Wyndridge and it arrived the morning of the wedding. Everything turned out beautiful and exactly how I had envisioned.
Makeup – Stella Marie Makeup
Ok, so I know pretty much nothing about makeup… like on a normal day I’m lucky if I remember to put on mascara. However, you obviously want to look your best on the big day, so we went with one of the makeup artists Wyndridge Farm recommended, Stella Maria Makeup. Stella was super nice and easy to work with. I had a makeup trial a couple weeks before the wedding which was super helpful, as someone who doesn’t wear a lot of makeup, she was able to give me a natural look but still enough to pop in the photos! (Funny story – at the trial she put false eyelashes on me and my eyes legit would not stop watering… like it was bad!) Luckily, I had better luck with them on the wedding day. In total, there were 10 of us getting our makeup done so she brought an assistant for the day of and was able to get all of us done with plenty of time left!
Hair – Kim Guy – Visage Salon
Our hairdresser, Kim Guy, who we’ve been going to for 14 years, did all of the hair for the wedding! She currently works at Visage Salon in Bel Air, MD if you’re looking for a new hairdresser or someone for a wedding/event. There were 12 of us getting hair done the morning of the wedding, so she brought an assistant with her. I have extremely fine, thin hair so choosing a hairstyle was not easy for me. At my first hair trial it seemed like everything I really liked wouldn’t work for my hair type, so I actually had a second hair trial. This time I went back in with a better understanding of what I wanted/what would work and ultimately decided on a low up-do with the front pulled back messy. I used this headpiece which I ordered off Etsy to had a little sparkle. My bridesmaids all ended up doing some type of twist or braid.
Wedding Dress & Bridesmaid Dresses
I’m planning on doing a full blog post on picking out my dress but I’ll share the vendors here now. I got my wedding dress from Amanda Ritchey Bridal in Parkville, MD, the bridesmaid dresses were from K&B Bridals in Bel Air, MD and the Jr. bridesmaid dresses were from Azazie.
Suits – Men’s Warehouse
The guys suits were rented from Men’s Warehouse. We had the most difficult time finding the exact color blue I wanted. Luckily, we were able to find these ones and they turned out great! Walt’s tie was from Azazie and the groomsmen ties were from Etsy!
Wedding Bands – Saxons
We got our wedding bands from Saxons in Bel Air, which is where Walt had gotten my engagement ring from. I went so many times to try on bands and it took me forever to make up my mind! Walt was also pretty indecisive when it came to his. I ended up getting two diamond bands and I love the way it looks. Walt ended up with a gray tantalum band.
Videographer
I went back & forth a million times trying to decide if we should have a wedding videographer. I wanted one, but everyone else thought it wasn’t necessary and they aren’t cheap, so ultimately we decided not to have one. Looking back, it would’ve been nice to have one but I don’t regret not having one. We have BEAUTIFUL pictures that we can look back at to remember the day and personally, I think that’s enough. My advice would be if you can afford a videographer then get one, but don’t stress out if it’s simply not in the budget.
That should cover everything! If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below!
Honeymoon Review: Sandals Barbados
Our Wedding Venue – Wyndridge Farm
Our 1st Anniversary!
