The wedding is over!
Wow, after over 14 months of laborious planning our wedding is finally over. The day went by so fast it was ridiculous. Here's a debriefing and run-down of who, where, and what.
Photographer: Robert Bruce in Royal Oak. Great guy, easy to feel relaxed with Robert and his helper around. Voted 2009 best photographer in Detroit by WDIV channel 4 voters. We are inclined to agree!
Videographer: Alan Lockwood in Birmingham. A pro. He gave us a same-day highlight reel that turned out great.
Venue: Troy Marriott. Excellent and accomodating! We threw the staff a few logistical curve-balls because our ceremony was short and our guests were plowing through food like ravenous beasts but the Kitchen handled all 300 of us without a hitch.
Wedding Day Photography site: Troy Museum and Historic Village. Close to the Marriott, perfect backdrop.
Rehearsal Dinner: East Lake Restaurant. Handled our 50 guests without a problem. The food was decent, we snuck in our own champagne and they let us bring in our own Filipino Roasted Pig (45 pounds!) and they cut the pig for us too! Reviews: Yelp, other.
Wedding DJ: Mary Ann Productions of Royal Oak. Another professional. Great job keeping everything on schedule and making sure everyone had fun.
Honeymoon: Kauai, Hawaii. 3 nights in Poipu, 3 nights in Princeville. Kauai was so nice we're sad that it's over already. Our wallets on the other hand are glad to get some rest.
Troy Museum and Historic Village
We highly recommend the Troy Museum and Historic Village for your photography venue.
We found it to be a great alternative site to the A-list sites like Cranbrook or Meadowbrook for a few reasons. First, the Troy Museum is nice because it is compact and does not get as much foot traffic as the A-list sites yet it has enough scenic variations and backdrops to make for some striking wedding day pictures. With less crowds you won't have to wait for pedestrians to move out of the way of your pictures. The museum grounds are on about 1 acre of land so it is substantially more compact than the other sites. In Troy, the buildings are nice and close together -- that means less walking for you and less chance you will get grass stains on your wedding dress or rental tuxedo.
Second, the museum has charming backdrops (see village pictures). The Troy Historic Village looks like a mid-1800s small-town scene plucked from Davy Crockett (but in the midwest). If you're familiar with the metro Detroit area attractions think Greenfield Village but reduced down to a handful of buildings on 1 acre of land. The museum website has several pictures of the village. Troy's historic village features a variety of quality photo spots. We used the log cabin, a small church, a great one-room school house, an elegant large gazebo in the middle of the village, the print shop with a long porch, and some of the rusted wagons they have lying around. These little buildings make interesting backdrops for your photography.
Third, price and convenience. The museum is less than a 5 minute drive from the Troy Marriott so it is convenient while being surprisingly picturesque. Definitely better than taking pictures in the hotel lobby. The cost to reserve the museum site for the afternoon was a mere $50 security deposit and $50 usage fee for our entire wedding party and immediate family members. In contrast, Cranbrook charges $100 PER PERSON to photograph on their grounds. For our large party of 5 groomsmen, 5 brides maids, and 8 family members Cranbrook would have cost $1,800 just to be there for two hours. I may be a Cranbrook alumnae but that screams RIPOFF.
In addition, the Troy museum's employees were nice and even let us sit in some of the air conditioned employees-only areas because it was really hot out during our photo session. They were very kind. By comparison Meadowbrook states very specifically in their contracts that photography groups may not enter any of the buildings nor may they use the facilities. That's just jerky.
Thus, if you're having a wedding in Troy, take a look at the Troy Museum and Historic Village. You will not be disappointed.
Reference:
Troy Museum and Historic Village
60 W. Wattles Rd (at Livernois Rd)
Troy, Michigan 48098
Robert Bruce Photography
We had a late engagement shoot with our photographer, Robert Bruce. Robert is an award winning photographer and popular on theknot.com. After spending some time with Robert it is definitely nice tohave a professional who knows poses that look good and he knows the area well.
No, unfortunately this isn't our photo.
For our shoot we spent some time walking around the grounds of the Cranbrook campus and picking select spots. Robert said that normally Cranbrook costs $100 per person in a photo shoot.
I do not know what parts of the campus the "official" Cranbrook photographers have access to but since the campus grounds are expansive it is pretty easy to walk around and take pictures in some beautiful locations. As an alumni it might have been nice to get some pictures in the Quad area but not essential to the picture-taking experience.Hello Kauai Honeymoon
After debating Maui vs. Kauai for some time, we finally settled on Kauai at the suggestion of many people familiar with the two, some of whom lived in Hawaii for anywhere from 1-4 years. With a glowing recommendation like that, Kauai must be pretty awesome.
Kauai is small but it has a lot of stuff to do on the North and South parts of the island. To make the trip interesting we're splitting time between 2 of the main tourist areas on the island: Princeville and Poipu. Apparently the best places to stay are the Grand Hyatt in Poipu and the soon-to-open St. Regis in Princeville.
We booked our trip through a travel agent rather than the internet travel sites like Expedia. Surprisingly our trip booked through a traditional travel agent turned out to be $170 cheaper than the best the internet could offer (Expedia) AND it had a bigger mid-size car, as opposed to economy
Another tidbit to know is that booking hotel and flight together really does save a lot of money. I had gotten into the habit of booking hotels and flights separately. I found that Expedia has the best booking interface for multi-destination trips or partial hotel stays because, unlike the other internet travel agents, Expedia does not require that you fly to another destination nor stay at the same hotel the entire duration of your trip.
Tuxedo Rental: Men’s Wearhouse is mediocre
- The website sucks.
- Standard tuxedo rental is from $109 to $159 per person
- Rent 5 tuxes get the Groom's tuxedo free
- You cannot try on a tuxedo
- Setup your tuxedos 4+ weeks in advance. Anything less than 14 days will cost $20 per person for rush orders.
- Any changes with less than 14 days advance notice will cost you $20 per person
- $40 free tux deposit, $20 deposit per regular tux, $7 damage deposit.
- For Michigan local Tuxedo rental, try President Tuxedo as an alternative to Men's Wearhouse.
Avoid the Weekends
To figure out the tuxedo rentals I've had to go to Men's Wearhouse four times. If you go on a weekend they are jame packed. The tuxedo rental associate was busy and seriously busy with multiple people waiting around to get service. Here's a clue MW: hire more tux rental people!
I made 4 trips to MW just to setup the rental. The first time I dropped in to figure out the price of a tux rental because their GODDAMN WEBSITE won't give you a clue. I'll tell you: tux rental prices for a regular sized adult range from $110 to $160 not including taxes and fees. On this first visit the store was relatively empty except for the tux rental person. The other 3 employees wandered around an otherwise empty store straightening pants and shirt sleeves.
The second visit was a Saturday afternoon but during Prom pickup season. The place was jammed and the single tux rental associate was overwhelmed with rental pickups and people trying to pick styles. We stood for about 15-20 minutes without any visible progress in the queue waiting for the rental associate. Forget it. We left.
The third visit we got help right away but the rental lady was too slick. She was hurrying through the rental procedure without showing us a price book or our style options. Of course she picked the most expensive rental which totaled to be approximately $175 per person. No way am I going to pay damn near $1,000 to rent some shitty tuxes for my friends.
Fourth visit I had to go back and pick a cheaper rental style. This was an easy process but I think the lady screwed up the colors for the groomsmen so now I have to go back again to tell them to change the colors. That will be the fifth visit, followed by the sixth to pickup the rentals and seventh to return.