We get a lot of clients who live in another state but rarely do we get clients who live in another country. Because they live and work in the Philippines, Marix and Arjay hired us to help them plan there wedding here in Virginia, acting as their eyes and ears on the ground. With technology these days, it is pretty easy to accomplish much of the planning process on-line. We provide our clients with a group website, where we can share photos, documents and calendars with each other with ease. When they visited over Christmas, we crammed in all the vendor interviews and they were able to select the ones they liked.
Ceremony: Our Lady Queen of Peace Catholic Church, Arlington, VA. Welcomed non-members.
Reception, Catering & Cake: 2941 Restaurant, Falls Church, VA (Director of Special Events Michelle Marquez). If you are looking for an intimate space for your wedding, I highly recommend this restaurant. The Waterfall Room, where the reception was held, can hold up to 80 people. The Koi Room can hold up to 60, the Tasting Room 30, and the entire restaurant can also be bought out. The outdoor terrace is beautiful for either a ceremony or a cocktail hour in our case. Being one of the best restaurants in the DC area, the food of course is outstanding. They have also recently began offering wedding cakes and let me tell you, the cake was spectacular – beautiful to look at and incredibly flavorful and moist! Michelle is super easy to work with, is very professional and takes really good care of her clients.
Photography: Rick Martin Photography. When in doubt, you turn to reliable vendors and Rick is definitely reliable. Arjay and Marix just loved the images from Rick’s website and their instincts were confirmed when they met him in person. Rick brought along his good friend Bruce to shoot, so we were lucky to have double the talent that day. We featured Rick earlier in the year.
Videography: A&E Productions, Eric Nicholas. If you are looking for a documentary style videographer, Eric is your man. He doesn’t do any fancy editing, just shoots your day as it happened and is an excellent value. While Eric is a camera man for a TV station during the week, he shoots weddings on the weekends. It’s great to have him on hand because he’s pretty savvy with AV equipment in general.
Floral Design: Linda Merritt, Heaven on Earth Wedding Flowers.
DJ: DJ Mike Valenti. I just love Mikey V, whom I met at the very first wedding I ever coordinator and whom has remained on top of my list for years. Everybody had a fabulous time dancing their hearts out, including an all-out sing along for the last song “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons (one of my favs).
Transportation: Regal Limousine Rolls Royce.
Beauty: (Hair) Le Salon, Tysons Corner Center and (Makeup) Suzanne Minskey, Faces by SAM. One of those last minute things, I had to find some good value vendors for Marix’s beauty team. One of my former clients years ago had gone to Le Salon in Tysons and her hair turned out really nice. That was one I kept in the Rolodex. $65 for a fun updo is a pretty good deal! As a last minute booking, I was able to score Suzanne Minskey whom I had not worked with before. She’s just super nice and calming, and having worked with models, has gotten her used to doing make up very quickly. Marix said her hair and makeup looked good well into 3am!
More to come in Part 3! Vicky