Ji Kim
1/5
Long story short, I fired them. Unlike our initial interaction, our experience with pn event wasn't what we expected, and here is the reason why. Fyi it will be a pretty long review, but I thought it might be helpful for those of you who are looking for a wedding planner.
We COULD NOT communicate with them.
We wanted a reception hall that can hold 150 people within 20 min driving distance from the church where the wedding ceremony is taking place. So we asked for a list of venues, and 2 weeks later, they got back to us with 4 venues.
One of them was too small. Only could hold 100 people. ( I don't know why it was even included in the list)
2nd place was the place we suggested to them. All they sent me was a picture of prices that I could find online.
3rd place was big enough for us. But it was a barn-style wedding venue which was far from the wedding I imagined...
And the last place was the one they found that would cost us 70% of our budget. Yes. You read it right. 70%. And that price was before tax & service fee.
We were confused. Why would our wedding planner want us to even consider a venue that would cost 70% of our whole budget? That didn't seem to be an ideal plan. At first, we thought there was a reason for them to recommend the venue because we thought they were professionals. However, after we thought about it carefully, we had to tell them we wanted another venue simply because we couldn't afford them. Instead of listening to us and looking for another venue, they tried so hard to convince us to change our minds. Their reason was that it would be easier to plan the wedding and convenient for our guests because they just need to go upstairs to their room after the reception. Still, spending 70% of our budget was too much, so we said no again.
But l they didn't give up. Instead, they told us to reconsider it, and when they asked us for the second time, I asked if we could get a discount from the hotel or if they forgot to tell me about a deal they had worked out with them.
However, no one answered my questions. They just kept telling us it would be much easier to have a reception at the wedding. (Btw if it was going to be easy, I would have done it myself. I hired a wedding planner for a reason) They claimed that having a reception at a non-hotel venue is not ideal for our guests. Also, we will probably need to group reserve Uber for our guests because the area we will have our reception at is not transportation friendly.
However, no hotel told me that I would need to group book Uber for my guests when I called them. And not even a single night I had trouble finding Uber in the area. Also, my fiancé and I have lived in Texas for more than 15 years. We know the area and we never have problem getting an Uber or driving around.
This was when I lost my trust in them. I really wanted to trust them with the whole process and work things out with them. HOWEVER, not only having no support from them about planning my wedding, not being able to communicate with them... it was just NOT WORKING.
So we decided to fire them. I asked for my deposit back because they breached the contract. Technically, we made no progress! But they refused. They said it was me who decided to break the contract, so they would not give me the deposit back. It was a significant amount of money to me. However, I didn't want to plan my once-in-a-lifetime event with someone who couldn't communicate with me and kept forcing her opinion on me. So I decided to plan the wedding without them.
Since then, my wedding planning has been going well. We heard back from about 20 venues in less than 2 weeks and made a reservation at the venue 15 min from the church for $10,000 less than the price of the hotel pn event recommended to us. FYI we are not having our reception at a mediocre venue. It is a 4-star hotel!
There, that's my story. Some people might have had a good experience with them, but I certainly wasn't one of them. I hope people find this review helpful and don't experience what I experienced when they are about to start their wedding planning.
