Vendor Reviews Round One: Cake & Venue

So I wanted to wait to do my vendor reviews until I had all my vendor-related dealings wrapped up but since I’m still waiting for my photos, I’ve decided to start posting them now, two at a time.

Let’s start with two of my favourite vendors (all ratings out of five).

Cake: The Sweet Escape Patisserie
Rating: 5 out of 5

No debate here, we picked the perfect bakery. Michelle, the owner, was great to work with, her prices were amazing (we paid somewhere between $300 and $400 for everything) and the cake and cupcakes she made were an all-out smash hit. We order 12 dozen cupcakes and we had exactly 99 guests. Despite having way more cupcakes than guests, we ended the night with fewer than ten leftovers (and I know some people didn’t have one). So that pretty much says it all right there.

The only downside was that I didn’t get to taste all of the dozen flavours that we ordered.


Venue/Food: The Berkeley Church
Rating: 4.5 out of 5

If we had to do it all over again, we would definitely pick the same venue. While it wasn’t cheap, going with the Berkeley was money well-spent in the end, particularly since we were able to save money on alcohol since we brought in our own and we décor since the Berkeley really didn’t need much.

We loved the look and the feel of this place and I think our guests, for the most part, liked it. I do know that they pretty much all loved the food and the generous portions they were given. And more than a few of them also quite liked the Berkeley staff’s openness to having a great party.

Our only issues with the Berkeley had to do with communication, a complaint I’ve heard about from others. Our initial planner (who I believe no longer works there) was flaky. Our new planner, Kathy, was much better but the transition was a bit bumpy (we’d booked some meetings with the OP and then things had to change when we got Kathy) and I think we missed out on getting some key info early on (we didn’t find out some details about candle usage until two weeks before our weddings; candles

were a key part of our décor).

But I will give them full credit for starting us off with a very detailed, very useful proposal that allowed us to have a clear understanding of costs as well as what was due when, an idea that many other wedding vendors should look into