MAKE IT A BEACH TOWN WEDDING!
Note: The vendors to the right of this article focus predominantly on the Naples, Bonita Springs, Estero, Marco Island, and Ft. Myers areas. We are keeping this site open to Orlando, Miami, and Key West because we do have domain names from those areas pointing to these sites. However, eventually we will be developing individual sites for these regions.
On January 5th 2008, my daughter Courtney Graham became the bride of David Sharifie. Both grew up in Naples Florida during their high school and college years, then moved to California for a couple of years before deciding to move back to Florida for their Naples wedding.
I look back on the months I spent helping Courtney plan her wedding and the frustration I felt in not having one great source to find a lot of different vendors for research and pricing purposes. So now I am launching this site to help you find different wedding resources in the Naples, Bonita Springs, Estero, Marco Island and Ft. Myers Florida areas.
As for my daughter's wedding: We had the church wedding at St. William's Catholic Church just off Pine Ridge Road; then it was off to the beach and the Naples Pier for beach pictures: and finally the wedding reception was held at the Players Club in Lely Resort (a great economical choice). The wedding video was great done by Rick Mastandrea of Real Treasures Video. Her wedding dress came from David's Bridal. They honeymooned at the Sandals resort in Montego Bay, Jamaica.
The wedding pictures, however, were a big problem.
Basically we were all cheated by a company called Refined Touch that my daughter found on the internet. They actually showed up, took what ultimately turned out to be some very nice pictures, but then moved to the Philippines shortly thereafter, refusing to deliver the photos or the album. I saw another bride on the local news lamenting the same problem with the same group. In the end many months later as with my daughter, this bride got a CD of photos and that was it. No album, no prints, just a CD of pictures. Prior to getting the CD this group did put photos on-line and so they got to haul in even more cash accepting some $500 of on-line orders from relatives who hoped that they would indeed be legitimate. That would not be the case, adding insult to injury. Hopefully nothing like this will ever happen to you. As it happened she is working with another photographer who is going to create the wedding book for her, so hopefully everything will come out fine in the end --- except that Refined Touch was not very refined as they made off with some of our credit card cash which at this point I suppose is non-recoverable.
Please know that we can't guarantee the advertising vendors to the right. And of course no one can please everyone 100% of the time. Even the best of vendors can have a bad day. However if you know of a blatantly dishonest situation such as that we encountered with Refined Touch, please let us know. We want to have a list of quality vendors who work hard to do the best job they can. Also to learn about Southwest Florida in general, please check our our other sites www.NaplesTouristCenter.com, www.BonitaTouristCenter.com, www.MarcoTouristCenter.com, and www.EsteroTouristCenter.com.
Oh and have fun with this link: www.TheMostInterestingWomanInTheWorld.com
-- Marlene Graham
