Decor, Linen, Chairs,Tents …etc

Notice the damask use at the high table

First off, let me say, I loved these pictures I got from Nairobi Club (Our wedding will feature in the newsletter so if you or your parents are members, grab a copy and check it out).

Second, I thought the decor came out very well.

Now onto the post: Our tents, chairs, linen and half the centerpieces were done by Weddings and Events by Kui.

What I did not like about the vendor:

• Her staff members do not know P.R and if Kui does not watch out, she may lose business. The sheer audacity of her accountant calling and threatening that the tents would not go up unless we paid 100% was just ridiculous at best. The other dude insisting that we give him cash instead of a cheque was also something else I did not understand. How do we pay over Kshs 100k in cash?
• The people who were to put up the linen were late on Saturday morning so my very good friends who had been put in charge of tents had to help them otherwise things would have gone hay wire (side note: I have asked all the people who put in the work to be completely upfront about the vendors so I can provide proper feed back to whoever is reading this blog - that’s the reason I know this)

What I liked about the vendor:

• Not rigid. Let me tell you, we went to Chairmania for another wedding and they did not have the blue the bride wanted. They said they couldn’t get the blue she wanted. Now Kui, will look for what you want (we only chose to get the damask linen because Eastleigh has a huge variety and we didn’t want confusion).
• She thinks outside the box. If you notice, our chairs are fully dressed without any tie backs. You don’t have to get tie backs all the time (and they cost extra by the way). She also had the candle holder stand thingy that served as the centerpiece. I found out later that they are Kshs 490 in Mr. Price and she charged us Kshs 500 A PIECE for them (what the hey?!?! – this should also be in what I did NOT like)
• Despite what I have just mentioned above, the pricing is not too bad. And is negotiable. She also gives you extra things (like we got green makuti lamp shades and 100 extra chairs).

Let me also say that a vendor is only as good as the people who will come to your wedding because believe it or not, the owner will PROBABLY not be showing up to your wedding. The owner will be sure to delegate the wedding to someone else and I would like to advise the brides out there, make sure you find out who is going to be in charge of your wedding – that’s the person you need to know.

Also, we wanted dome effect but this couldn’t work in the tennis pavilion since it has trees all over the place (if you look at the pictures closely, you can see them). Kui came up with a set up that worked for us (since we didn’t want the U or the V).

Decor, Linen… etc

First, WE, babe and I that is, got the linen (damask print) ourselves, from EASTLEIGH. So no props to the decor person whatsoever.

You and I know that if you ask for black and white table runners, you will undoubtedly get zebra print (SMH). So we were quite proactive about this part of the decor.

Still Can't Get Over this Cake - Note the linen and background

Note the centerpiece - From the flower lady

Other Centerpieces - From the Decor Person

Serving Area

High Table - Gift Table in Background

Since I don’t believe in LONG posts, and this one is threatening to be one, please check in tomorrow for the post on Decor.

All pictures courtesy of the Secretary of Nairobi Club (More on this story later)

Wah!

Ladies and gentlemen, I am at an evening party and let me just tell you, do not underestimate the importance of a good DJ.

What!!

Invest in a good one, some can just kill your evening party.

Entertainment

We had two forms of entertainment for the reception:

• Master of Ceremony
• DJ

I am yet to watch the wedding video but I am going to assess the Master of Ceremony based on the feedback received. No one has complained about the MC. Actually, people are asking for his number. He was THAT good. I have been asking people who attended the wedding what top three things were memorable and he has shown up in like all the lists. People were even asking why Kayamba are still in business because an Emcee can just bring the reception to life.

I must say that for the little I heard him in church, I knew he would be a hit!

Our MC was Frank Njenga. You may know him as Mogaka from Vitimbi (when mum told me he was going to be our MC, I had to watch Vitimbi to see who this guy was…. HILARITY THE END).

Side note: During the entry in the reception, when we were dancing in, he told everyone who was on the train to sit on the ground (CRAZY RIGHT??) but it was a profound moment. He told babes and I that when we decide to leave each other, we have to call EVERYONE who had sat on the ground in honour of our wedding day, to come and sit on the ground with us again.

For the DJ, if my pal DJ Joey, was in the country, he would have been the most obvious choice. We went with the Inferno DJs since one, this was the DJ unit he was with when he was in Kenya, two, I love nineties music and they have to have the largest collection of this (listen to Hot 96 for more information, they are the resident DJs on there). I have known the Inferno DJs from when they were just starting out and used to play at WAPI so for me, I had to have them do the wedding. And they did not disappoint. Massive shout out to DJ Tim Dawg!

Let me just say one thing about DJs. Don’t you hate it when the DJ is at a wedding and doesn’t have any slow music? WHO DOES THAT? But let me just say, I had emailed the DJs the first song, but I still burned a CD of the songs for extra measure because I wanted to dance to MY songs, not something else like K-Ci and Jojo – All my life.

BTW

If any of you readers need contact information for any of the vendors, please contact me on ciikusblog@gmail.com

Like, for example, I am aware that Scarlette’s website is down

The Drinks and a Two Step

One of the often overlooked items in the budget is usually the drinks. But let me tell you, there is some math that needs to be considered there. You see, Nairobi Club charges you Kshs 55 per soda. For 600 guests that totals Kshs 33,000. If you get the soda from Coca Cola, they charge you around Kshs 20 which effectively totals to Kshs 12,000. Crazy RIGHT?  The thing of it is that Coca Cola gives you the contact information of the distributor closest to your reception location. This distributor in turn delivers to the reception. The only thing of it is you have to pay deposit for the bottles and then when the distributor gets back his bottles, you get back your deposit.

Again, if you have to get water from your caterer, there will be a significant mark up. However, if you opt for the 1 liter water per table, you could maybe get this from a supermarket. What we did was, we got the 500 ml bottles from the manufacturer of maisha water – KETEPA, which was cheaper than buying from Nakumatt. They delivered to Nairobi Club (at no extra charge) and it didn’t dent our wallet one bit.

Just a thought.

Take a Break

Are you a bride?

Are you a stressed bride?

Are you a stressed bride turning into a bridezilla?

Take a break:

Source: dwsmg.com

Have a Kit Kat

Its never that serious!

Wedding Vendor – Grounds and Catering

I have realised that I have narrowed down my vendors and now I only have the following left:

• Grounds and Catering – Nairobi Club (to be covered in this post)
• Entertainment – MC and DJ (sometime this week)
• Tents, Chairs and Decor – Early next week
• Photo Session and First Night – Sometime next week
• Sodas and Water – This is more of an advise post than a vendor recap but it wouldn’t hurt to spread the word – This week I think
• Rings, Nails, Dress, Shoes – Still contemplating on whether I will blog about this.

GROUNDS AND CATERING

I remember vividly when we first began scouting for a wedding location, we wanted somewhere that would provide the location and do the food. So we went to hotels, clubs (Karen Country Club), even Valencia Gardens. Nothing seemed to be working. We had visited Nairobi Club and wanted the cricket field but they told us that we could not get the cricket field until the cricket calendar was out (in case there was a game/tournament on our proposed wedding date). The tennis pavilion was available but we were worried it would not cater for 500 guests.

We still told them to book the space for us in the meantime in case  another

couple came to enquire. In November, we decided to go with the tennis pavilion (the grass was not so green but we prayed it would have rained by April .

The tent lady had assured us that 500 guests would fit and so did the assistant F&B guy at Nairobi Club (who is pretty good by the way). By this time, we had already chosen the menu and we were good to go! Right? YOU WOULD THINK SO!!!

• My folks increased the guests to 600 – This didnt turn out too badly since the tent lady said it would still work out
• The F&B guy at Nairobi Club, (not the assistant who we had been dealing with, but the F&B guy) CALLED ME, the Tuesday before the wedding to tell me that the tennis pavilion was too small and that 600 people wouldn’t fit and that we would HAVE to move the wedding to the cricket side. Now, since I was having my kitchen party on that day and really, I couldn’t be bothered… where the hell had HE been… I told him to call babes. Turned out the dude was having a complex at not being in the loop and wanted to mess things up for us. He also was NEW at Nairobi Club and didn’t even KNOW how many people the tennis pavilion could hold. ASHINDWE! When he called babes, babes laughed on the phone and told him we were dealing with the assistant F&B guy. I mean really, who calls you at that time? That close to the wedding? SMH!

As mentioned, catering was also done by Nairobi Club and the food was excellent! I couldn’t taste the food myself on that day due to the excitement but people swear that the food was good. It was made better by the fact that they had a dessert menu so guys hogged on fruit salad and mini pastries. We had also gotten more cake from Paul’s Bakery so cake was NOT an issue.

Other minor things:

• They had housekeeping man the toilets so it was clean for the guests (no excloosive for us!! – If you have the wedding at the cricket field, you may need to get extra toilets so this worked for us as well),
• We had to bring extra security for the guests cars so we hired cops from Kilimani Police Station ( 500 bob per cop ),
• The club has a generator so KPLC messing up was NOT going to be a problem.
• The food that was left over during the reception was used during the evening party and they also roasted two goats for us and had some roasted potatoes. The bar opened at 6 p.m  just soon after the reception ended.

Nairobi Club gets a B+ and mostly cause of unnecessary drama!

Wedding Vendor: Stationery

I love my stationery wedding vendor and therefore I may be a bit biased in my review of her AWESOME work. But on the real, I love her. She is unique, crazy, different…… she is a risk taker and I love her best cause she tells it as it is. If she thinks your idea just will not cut it, she will tell you. If she thinks the sample she gave you was not her best work, she tells you. I was DEFINITELY not disappointed by this vendor.

I looked for the sample we gave her for our wedding programs so you could see how our idea just flowed but I deleted all the wedding inspiration pictures

However, for your viewing pleasure is our invitation cards. As I said earlier, I wanted something simple, I wasn’t going to give people directions, cause I mean, its not like the wedding was at Ol Arabel or somewhere like that. Also, because we did not have a wedding registry, it made things easier for us. So instead of all those, we had a quote, which she chose since at that point, I could not be bothered to search for one :

This is how they were packed. Awesome, right?

Then, the card:

from top left: the front of the card where guest name is written, the back of the card with our monogram, the invitation wording then the quote

Our stationery vendor was Scarlette of Scarlette Designs. She is awesome and gets an A+

More Flower Pictures

The Only Flowers in Church

Aisle in Church

That green and white still kills me softly!

I know this is technically not a flower picture but since I gave you all my nails woes stories, I have to show the final product. Makes it worth it to have such pictures

Signing the Certificate

And finally, the parent’s cakes. Wanted to also clarify that the green is not ribbon but rather icing. Cake Art kweli!

Cake Art Rocks