Let me preface this review by saying that we actually had to fire All Events Perfect in the middle of wedding planning because they were that bad. It was clear that they did not have our best interests at heart and through a large part of the process, we often felt like we were assisting them rather them assisting us.
There were SO many things wrong with each part of the planning process that we went through. There was not ONE vendor we hired where it was a smooth process with AEP. From the beginning, when Sarah Jane emailed us the contract THREE times because it was missing pages (the contract itself was 3 pages) to the end when all we wanted was Sarah Jane to respond to our emails in a timely fashion, each step was a disaster. Each time we were hopeful that the next time would be better or that AEP's inattention to detail was a fluke. We were wrong.
Venues: We told AEP our budget and the number of guests we expected (100 - many from out of town), they sent us a list of venues that they recommended. We had concerns about if it would fit our budget and was assured by both Sarah Jane and Kim that Sarah Jane would not send us places that did not fit our budget. The first 3 places we saw wanted guarantees much higher than we anticipated along with a price per person that exceeded our entire wedding budget. Sarah Jane had sent us one place as an option that (surprise!) did not fit into our budget or guarantees but when I asked her about another venue she told me that based on her “passed” (her spelling error, not mine) experience, it was out of budget (the venue I asked about was almost 50% less per person with a much lower guarantee than the first place she recommended). We went with a venue recommended by women on a wedding forum. When we booked our venue, Sarah Jane told me she had just done a wedding there last month! So nice of her to forget to recommend a place that actually fit into our budget and guarantees.
Kim was the person originally assigned to our wedding. We found out she was no longer working on our wedding not by a nice email or phone call from either Kim or Sarah Jane. We found out by emailing and calling Kim. The email gave us an out of office. The phone call went straight to voicemail. It wasn’t until we emailed Sarah Jane that we got an answer. It was unbelievably unprofessional.
Florist: Sarah Jane sent me to a florist who’s language through our entire meeting was “the prices for X *start* at $Y”. When I wanted to meet other florists who would be more in budget, Sarah Jane sent me to a place in New York City (where prices are already generally higher) and told the florist that our floral budget was about $1000 more than Sarah Jane herself had estimated for us on our budget sheet. We went with a florist that fit in our budget whom I found through a wedding forum.
Lighting: I emailed Sarah Jane to ask about lighting for the reception. Her response? Daytime weddings do not require lighting. WOW! Shouldn’t wedding planners have details like what time our reception starts (5 PM). Sarah Jane told me that she misspoke once and it was because she emailed me from her blackberry and didn’t have my file in front of her. The email she sent me most definitely did not come from her blackberry.
The last straw was that, based on our contract with AEP, they were supposed to maintain our budget sheet. There was never ONE time where Sarah Jane sent me the budget sheet without my asking for it. When I pointed this out to her towards the end of our business relationship, she LIED and cobbled together an email and said basically said she sent an updated budget sheet in July. It was quite disgusting. If you’re going to fake an email header, you might want to check that it’s consistent with the format of actual forwarded emails. Hers was not along with other errors.
We felt scammed by AEP. If you want someone who is unorganized and frequently lies (albeit poorly) to try to cover herself (she calls it misspeaking), then All Events Perfect is the perfect wedding planning company for you. Sarah Jane told me she would sign a release as long as I understood I was not to write a review about her “tarnishing” her company. If Sarah Jane actually did her job well, or in many instances, did her job period, I would have nothing negative to say about her and her work would speak for itself. Well this was her work and this is why we fired her.