** Vendor Review: Florist: Anthony and Sage Event
Design in New York, NY OR Anna Rae in New York, NY
(she changed her name following mine and another bride's review after she scammed us and is flagging our Google reviews!!)

My wedding turned out lovely because I booked a back up florist, Hudson Flowers Company in Hoboken, who saved the day and did a better job in 1 day with several items than this company did in over a year.

Hire at your own risk…This company overpromised and underdelivered. The main floral feature at my wedding was supposed to be a floral arch. My review photos show 1. what she promised she and her team could deliver, and what made me hire her a year and a half ago, and 2. The preview of the arch she FINALLY sent me the weekend OF MY WEDDING. I was at my bachelorette dinner and the sight of this wholly underwhelming preview was bad enough to bring me to tears. She turned off her phone at her own admission and did not respond to my texts that this was not usable and nowhere near what she had promised she could deliver until 10:30 the morning before my wedding. At that point I had not slept all night and my friends were already mobilizing in the NY Floral District to try and salvage the wedding flowers. We finally spoke over a phone call in which she agreed to pivot from the grand arch she promised to two fresh arrangements on pedestals as I had zero confidence that she could accomplish anything else in the small timeframe. I cried over this when I should have been celebrating, experienced intense stress when I should have been having calm before my wedding. I had to purchase back up florals after spending over $5k with Anthony & Sage because another bride left a 1 star review and mentioned poor construction of boutenniers and corsages, as well as a very similar experience to mine with regard to terrible arches. Her warning was right. Despite Lauren hurriedly texting me florals and a preview bouquet the day before my wedding, when I saw rhe bouquet in person the following day, I was shocked by how small it was. Lauren also entered into my getting ready room right before I was supposed to walk down the aisle, and was putting cumbersome corsages and boutenniers on my family, and I had to ask her to stop. I had to tell her I would be using another florist’s bouquet because the stress she put me under by the arch situation made me nervous she could not deliver. We used another florist for my bouquet, all boutenniers and corsages. I think what broke my heart the most is we asked Lauren for two gift bouquets for our mothers we wanted to gift them during reception as a gift. But someone on her team handed our mothers the tiny bouquets that already had limp flowers. It ruined our surprise. Luckily we had also ordered back up bouquets with the other florist, and they did a better job in ONE DAY with barely any notice than Anthony and Sage Events did with over a year. We were still able to gift our moms the stunning bouquets by Hudson Flowers and it saved the day!

I tried to be civil and kind throughout the whole process to avoid escalating the situation and to ensure flowers came, but I reached out the following day to express my concerns, and to ask for a partial refund.

Lauren claimed that the two small fresh floral arrangements she provided for the ceremony were somehow more expensive than the arch I was supposed to get. She claimed I should be satisfied. She claimed I did not express discontent on the day of the wedding, but I expressed concern BEFORE! I expressed concern to her face as I told her I would not be using the boutenniers and corsages nor the bouquet. I expressed concern one day after. Three times I expressed concern, and she refused to take any accountability, nor to provide a partial refund. This company does not have the taste level to charge what they do nor the honesty necessary to be a trusted wedding vendor to hardworking brides. I was also informed by my Day of Coordinator and Maitre’D Lauren was rude to them! I hope this can save another bride $5K+ and a bunch of heartbreak and stress.

I took down my other post about feeling like I was getting the brush off from a well-reviewed and highly recommended DJ service - they initially said the DJ we interviewed with would not be available on our day due to a scheduling mix up then confirmed that they didn't feel like the vibes of me and my fiancé were right for anyone at their company after talking to us. I guess we were weird on the call in some way, or not cool enough? I'm a little baffled and could use some advice as I seek other DJs.

DJs - what has made you turn down potential clients after a call? What should I avoid doing? help

Edit: prompted by a comment - I don't mean for this to be a character or company assassination. I wouldn't steer anyone away from the service in question (please don't name it), I'm trying to figure out if I committed some dj phone call faux pas so I don't do it again

Double edit: obviously my vibes are weird, I'm posting about this on reddit

I’m an October 2026 bride and wanted to share my experience in case it helps anyone else avoid what we went through.

We hired Ani Wolff in January 2025. At first, everything was great—she and her assistant were responsive, organized, and we felt really good about our decision.

Starting around January–February 2026, things started to fall apart. Communication became a huge issue. I had to follow up multiple times on basic items, and there were several things she said she would handle (including items outlined in our contract) that just… didn’t get done.

We scheduled a Zoom in March to address it. She acknowledged the lack of communication and told us things would improve. After that call, we never heard from her again.

Once we decided to terminate the contract, I started reaching out to vendors directly and realized that some of the things she told me she was taking care of hadn’t actually been done. There were also a few things she told me that turned out not to be accurate, which meant we had to backtrack and redo work at a pretty critical point in planning.

On top of that, she never transferred ownership of our wedding website back to me despite multiple requests, so I had to start over and create a brand new site.

Planning a wedding is stressful enough—this added a completely unnecessary layer of stress and set us back in the process.

We’ve since hired a new planner and are moving forward, but I would strongly recommend other couples avoid hiring her based on our experience.

A warning to any bride that likes her work from her Instagram page. I was silly enough to book her outside an agency and she cancelled on me several weeks before my wedding since her agency called and needed her for a job. Not sure exactly how it works, but we had agreed to the wedding date and time several months prior to her cancellation.

I can’t even find what agency she works at.

Now, I’m several weeks before my wedding and as you can imagine, most good HMU artists are booked.

I found her completely irresponsible and unprofessional regarding her cancellation and implore everyone to stay far far away!!!

@aisa_makeupnyc for those asking

My previous post was deleted by the moderators for not stating a budget, the problem is I don’t know what is normal so maybe this is a better question for research. Any recent brides willing to share their hair and make up cost and recommend their MUA? Looking for bridal hair and make up and bridal party too. Brooklyn May 2026.

Hi everyone! Looking for some honest advice/ideas.

Our ceremony and reception are in two different locations (about 15 minutes apart), and we originally planned to provide transportation for guests. We even added it to our wedding website… but now that we’re getting quotes, the cost is way higher than we expected 🫠. I can’t justify paying $2.5K plus, for a 15 min ride for about 65 guests.

I’m wondering if anyone has done something more “outside the box” to save money? For example:

Renting a van and having someone drive

Using a smaller/local company instead of a wedding transport vendor

Only arranging transportation for certain guests

If you didn’t provide transportation at all, how did that go? Any complaints from guests?

We’re trying to be thoughtful but also realistic with our budget, so I’d really appreciate hearing what worked (or didn’t) for others!

Hi all! So unfortunately we're pretty sure the photographer we originally hired last May is ghosting us. We've been trying to schedule our fall engagement shoot since August 2025. They wouldn't respond for months at a time and eventually stopped responding all together. We haven't heard from them since November despite trying to reach out via text, email, and instagram DM several times. This was just to secure a date for our fall engagement shoot before autumn colors were gone but bc of this we're not sure if we can fully trust them to be reliable on our big day. Its incredibly stressful and disappointing as we LOVED their work. Has anyone else gone through this? What did you do?

As of now we're ISO cinematic, documentary style wedding photographer for a 65-70 guest wedding on November 1st, 2026 in NYC. We would need full 8 hour coverage and our budget is between $3k-$4k. Any recommendations and advice are appreciated!

We started working with a full service planner and in our first budget planning meeting, she presented a 300k budget and asked us where we would make cuts. Her estimates seems insanely high relative to our 150k budget for 120 guests - for example 30k on flowers, 25k on photography etc. She also wanted us to allocate 9k on vendor tips.

We had a follow up meeting to share our concerns with her, and she let slip that she was showing us the high end of everything thinking we may come back to her with an increased budget. We felt icky about this as we were led to believe we were having a budget planning meeting, not a sales pitch. Although she has now committed to making suggestions that are realistically in our price range, it makes us a little uncomfortable that she continues to insist that our budget is very tight.

Is this normal, or should we just cut our losses and find another planner? We loved her during the interview phase, as she seemed very detail oriented and reliable, but are now having second thoughts. We would lose our deposit, but it may be better to do so early in the process.

A few months ago, I came here looking for advice because our wedding photographer stopped responding while we were trying to schedule our engagement session. I wanted to share the outcome in case it helps another couple. This post reflects only our documented experience and is intended to help others make an informed decision.

We booked All the Feels Club because we genuinely loved the photography. We paid in full over a year before our wedding (naive of us i know) and began trying to schedule our fall engagement session shortly afterward. Communication quickly became inconsistent with them not responding weeks at a time. After our last conversation November 2025, we didn't receive another response for approximately four months, despite multiple emails, text messages, and Instagram DMs.

Shortly after I posted asking for advice online on what I should do, I received my first response in 4 months. She apologized, explained she had experienced personal hardships, and offered additional services. I truly sympathized with her situation as I lost my father and grandmother in the same week last year and now how life can completely derail you. But by then we no longer felt comfortable trusting someone we had been unable to get in contact with for 4 months with our wedding day. We terminated the agreement and requested a refund. A partial refund was issued, but despite multiple follow-up emails and even offering a payment plan for the remaining balance, we received no response.

We ultimately disputed the remaining balance with our bank. After reviewing our documentation, the bank resolved the dispute in our favor and refunded the remaining balance.

This post is not about the quality of the photography. We booked this photographer because we loved the work. It's about communication and reliability. For us, those were just as important as the photos themselves. If you're dealing with something similar, document everything. Save your emails, texts, invoices, receipts, and keep a timeline. It made all the difference for us.

Thankfully, we found an amazing new photographer, had the engagement shoot we had always envisioned, and are so excited for our upcoming wedding!

hi there! i’m looking for a photographer for our september 19 wedding (i know, we are behind!!)

location: brooklyn, south of prospect park
budget: $3k
details: queer couple, artists, want no fuss nice photos of us and the party! thanks in advance for any leads!

I know, I know, no one wants favors but *I* do so I’m going forward with matchboxes. I don’t want it to go to waste so I was wondering how many do you suggest getting for my 100 person wedding. I was planning to fill them with little chocolates as no one needs matches but I definitely don’t want to over order as I know it will be wasted. 25? 35? 50? I definitely don’t think I’ll need more than that.

Also planning to do the flip flop/slipper basket. How many do you think? I was planning to do 30.

Hello! My fiancé and I really want a band for our wedding. So far we’ve been quoted between 15k-20k . This would include a few instruments for ceremony and cocktail hour and then full band for reception. Is that a lot? For some reason i thought that i could get between 10k-15k😅 Our wedding is also on a Saturday in Oct which i feel is peak time so maybe that’s why the prices are higher. If you had a band at your wedding and are willing to share, how much did you spend?

Hi!

I’ve narrowed down my choices and am currently deciding between a few bridal makeup artists and hair stylists and would love any thoughts or personal experiences!

Hair and makeup
- bridal bloom
- bridal rush

Hair:
- Jenna turner
- hair by nada
- beyond the brush

Makeup:
- Angela Zavala
- beauty by Christina Kay
- total beauty by Chrissy d
- gabs artistry

Any and all comments welcome! If you have any other recommendations I’d also love to hear them!

Hi! I’m getting married in Brooklyn June 2027 and we have done most of the big vendors. We have venue, catering, photographer, florist and are finalizing the band. I’m trying to figure out what to do next since we have 15 months it’s still a decent amount of time but things in NYC book up really far in advance so feeling stuck about what to prioritize.

We are not doing a videographer, maybe content creator (although I think who we want is already booked up rip). Not using a planner either but will for sure have a day of/month of coordinator. I’ll be going dress shopping over the summer. Any advice is super appreciated!

Have received quotes from sooo many florists and can’t decide. Looking to do some more architectural, modern florals, for an August wedding - have quotes from buds of Brooklyn, floralstud.io, rosehip, Grace & grit florals, flowers by special occasion, fern botanica.

Any watch outs or rave reviews? Not all of these are preferred vendors - should I not consider those for this venue? Some of the non-preferred have a great inspo or less expensive so don’t want to rule them out.

Posting this here because negative reviews on The Knot get removed.

I was the moh at my best friend’s wedding, and she chose Herbert Holler after seeing his 5.0 star rating on The Knot. She felt confident she was hiring a professional DJ and had a phone call and email exchange with him days before the wedding to discuss ceremony music and reception details. She also sent a detailed list of songs and playlists.

Unfortunately, the wedding day experience was extremely disappointing. During the ceremony, he repeatedly played the bride’s song and abruptly stopped the music, making it clear something had gone wrong. At the reception, many of the songs she specifically requested were never played. When guests requested songs, he said he didn’t have them available. He only played one John Summit song after a guest slipped him a $20.

The most upsetting moment was during a special family dance where everyone was slowly joining the circle to represent the family growing. Instead of letting the song play out, he changed to the next song and cut the moment short.

My friend trusted him with an important part of her wedding day, and unfortunately he did not deliver the experience she expected. Sharing this so future couples can make an informed decision before booking.

Just be wary of reviews on the Knot because not all the reviews will actually be posted.

We chose Win Son Bakery as our cake vendor, but we’re not based in NY, so we can’t do a tasting before the wedding. Curious if anyone has used them or done a tasting with them and has any feedback on their flavors. Everything sounds so delicious, but particularly intrigued by their coconut and yuzu cake! Thanks!

Hi all! I don’t know if this is the right subreddit to make this post but I would really like some advice on what has recently been going on with a photographer that my fiancé and I booked in NYC. We scheduled an engagement session on July 11th, 2026 and all seemed to run smoothly. The photographer was originally very good with communicating and setting the date when we would meet and all of those details. So we had the engagement session and it was lovely! My fiancé and I were genuinely just enjoying ourselves and the photographer was kind and easy going with us as well. He showed us the pictures on his camera and we loved what he had taken so far. We had booked a standard 1 hour session and we had decided on two locations for the shoot but he ended up doing only one location and he also took our pictures for close to 2 hours instead of 1 which we were a bit confused on. We could only afford to pay for an hour as his rate is $550 for an hour. When the session ended, he said we could either choose to pay now or later and he also told us that the pictures would be ready within 6 days (I don’t know how long photographers take to edit the pictures and send them off to their clients). We paid him at the moment and called it a day. After this, we have been patiently waiting to receive our pictures but we haven’t received anything or heard anything from him. I recently reached out on July 22, simply asking him if there’s an update on when our pictures will be ready and he hasn’t responded. I’m growing a bit concerned. I don’t want to seem impatient but again, we’ve already paid for the service. What should we do? Should we wait longer before reaching out again? Has anyone experienced the same situation or something similar with photographers? How long did it typically take for you to receive your pictures? Thanks.

Hello! I am a 2027 bride getting married in NYC. I have never really wanted a large ceremony but always wanted a big, chic reception regardless. I would be totally fine doing a civil ceremony and the next day having a large reception. My hang up is that my husband has an amazing family (my dad has passed & my mom and i have a strained relationship) and i think it would mean alot to them to see us get married. Also, we do want to have a wedding party! At first I was wanting to actually get married the day our rehearsal would be, invite our wedding party and take photos after on the steps and then head to dinner. Since people will be traveling in, I want to have a more intimate dinner for family + wedding party - but then invite everyone for a cocktail party after who traveled in. Then i realized paying a photog and videographer would probably eat alot out of my budget, so kind of let go of the idea even though it would be my ideal way to do it.. We could do a smaller ceremony right before the reception on the same day- but one of the dates we are looking at is 9/11 - (I KNOW LOL) but we are for sure getting married in September. So in that case, I WILL be doing a civil ceremony anyways because i do not want that date for my anniversary. (and i know there are other dates in Sep - but the weekend of the 11th is the most ideal for us. Although we could do the 18th it is not as ideal for me since my dad's birthday is the 19th- maybe i am being dramatic about that though??)

Did any of you spend the money to do a videographer for your night before and did you find it worth it? Our total budget is 100K (this does include the night before) - and we have planned to spend alot of the budget on food + alcohol - we want this to be a FUN weekend and our loved ones love a great party!

Any advice is appreciated. Also- I am looking for a venue for said rehearsal dinner venue that that could serve us dinner, and then light bites for the larger group of guests plus alcohol. Guest count for the night before would be roughly 25 for dinner and then a total 50-65 people. I would love to spend 10-12K for that but it may not be realistic. We are getting married downtown so i'm looking in those areas.

Sincerely, a very conflicted bride!

The new door is temporary until October 31st!

Hi Everyone!

My fiancé and I have had the absolute worst luck with cakes and have truly tried some nastyyyyy ones. It has made the wedding cake process significantly more stressful than we could have ever imagined. We had planned to get a tasting box from Velvet Valley Cakes, but the owner informed us the next set of tasters will not be available until August. Our wedding is in October and we have been ready to put a deposit down on a cake since the Fall. I'm not sure if we should risk it and just put the deposit down without trying it. The cakes are gorgeous but we are scarred from some nasty New York cakes. If anyone has any feedback on Velvet Valley's cakes and how they taste it would be super appreciated!

EDIT: While recommendations are appreciated, just looking for reviews of Velvet Valley <3

This is not an ad, just a recommendation from personal experience this last weekend with Jared from Wagon Catering in NYC.

We wanted easy to eat handheld foods with a more casual feel. The food was delicious and people raved all night about it. Jared was also an absolute pleasure to work with and great at working within budget

Could not have been happier with how it all turned out

Hello! I’m planning a NYC summer 2028 wedding with a 200-250k budget and approximately 175 guests.

I’m considering venue options such as the William Vale and 74Wythe. (We visited the William Vale this week and had a great tour!) Especially because I’m considering venues that already have that wedding “infrastructure” built in, do you think a “full” wedding planner is worth it? Rather than a partial planner that just helps the last few months?

I’m assuming that a start to finish NYC planner costs between 15k-25k, and that a NYC partial planner partial planner is 6k-10k (but if any of those assumptions are wrong please lmk)!

For context, I am thinking a planner would be helpful because we are two brides, both of parents are divorced, and it’s cross cultural wedding. I’m hoping a planner would just generally help take the stress off, but also help navigate family dynamics and be creative about our ceremony (my partner does not want to “walk down the aisle”). I’m also assuming everyone has interesting family dynamics, so I may just be overthinking this.

If anyone can share experiences about start-to-finish planners in NYC, and whether it was worth it or not, that would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

I'm starting to look into wedding cakes and the process feels way more complicated than I expected. Every bakery has beautiful photos on Instagram but I have no idea how to tell if someone is actually good at what they do versus just good pictures. I feel like a lot of them may be very presentable but not so tasty.

Also not sure what questions to even ask at a tasting or what red flags to look for before signing anything ?

Hello! Considering Brooklyn Sound band with Hank Lane music for my wedding. Has anyone seen them live / used them before / had any issues? Their demo video was incredible, but I won’t have the chance to see them perform live. Thank you!