A friend I met through my friend Belinda got married on July 4 in a cloud of hot pink flowers and decorations, and when I mentioned I’d love to do a blog post on her wedding, she sent me a huge list of testimonials for her wedding vendors. LOL. If only all brides were so enthusiastic!

Villa del Sol D’Oro in Sierra Madre, gussied up for a wedding

Susie and Chris had a beautiful, all-in-one location wedding in Sierra Madre. Most of the pictures I will include here will be from my friend Belinda, but I did lift one from Susie’s Facebook page, which features her (now) husband. After the jump, the following is all Susie, with a few formatting and copy editing changes from me.

I need to give major props to all my vendors!!!

Casablanca Flower Shop

Located in Downtown L.A. in the Flower district, (213) 955-9227. They had the best prices and friendly service. Gina, who was my go-to person, was awesome! She let me change my mind like 20 times! And still gave us a great price.

DJ Party Pros

MC Cory and Ninoska were awesome. Cory has great equipment. Our service was well heard because everyone had a mike. Cory is very personable and sweet and kept the crowd going! His wife and assistant Ninsoka kept the jams going and helped assist my wedding as a planner, too! (888) 846-4443.

The Villa del Sol D’Oro and Santa Anita Catering

(I found them online.)

Our wedding location and caterer did a fantastic job. I read only horror stories on the head person of the catering company. Her name is Sandi and she was an absolute doll. She always returned my phone calls and made sure everything I asked for was there. The food was yummy. The Villa is only catered by Santa Anita Gardens, so it made it easy to select a caterer! For the food tasting, we go to taste so much, we almost passed out. To make it affordable, Sandi also lets you buy your own alcohol and offers different packages. We bought our alcohol at Costco. And since we are ethnic, she let us have an outside caterer for hors d’oeuvres. We had Sushi and Guatemalan treats. Belinda said it was all yummy!

Tristan Spinski, LWeddingPhoto and July the Photo Guy

For photographers, we hired our friends! You can’t go wrong with photojournalists.

Tristan Spinski shot our wedding portraits with the graffiti in D.C. He’s a freelancer who travels for work.

Leah and Julio both live outside Cali in different states, so we flew them in for the big day. Leah is awesome and very sweet. And her work speaks for itself. I haven’t seen our photos! I can’t wait. Julio was there the night Chris and I fell in love. His work is awesome, too and he works for the Houston Chronicle. [Note from the editor: And I just realized my friend Mayra, also a talented photographer at the Houston Chronicle, is pictured in this website’s header because she’s his girlfriend. Small world! Ha!]

J&M Entertainment

We only hired them [as the videographer] on Wednesday before the big day. They do everything! We were impressed with their work at a wedding we attended a week before ours.

Susie’s custom designed invitations, designed as passports
containing all the information her guests would need

The Print Spot

I designed everything — invites, programs, posters, stationary, wine labels, etc — myself! I’m a designer and had to do it myself! But I had everything printed at the Print Spot in Monterey Park. Ask for Robert, he’s the printing MAN! (213) 269-4218.

Annapolis Formal

MY dress! Long story but this was my second dress! First dress was from eBay and Craigslist. They made the dress a reality!

So there, you have it. If you ever are at a loss for wedding vendor referrals for Southern California, take it from Susie. She loved all her vendors.