(I will be posting reviews for all of my vendors, but I had a lot of issues with the Pigeon Catering staff for my wedding that I wanted to share in a separate post.)
Pigeon Catering - D While the food was delicious, the
staff on the night of my wedding was absolutely TERRIBLE! The only reason it’s not an F is because the
process leading up to the wedding went pretty smoothly. But all that changed come
my wedding weekend. There was a complete and utter lack of
professionalism, and I felt like my wedding was just an afterthought that the
staff had to get through. They may do a lot of weddings, but there needs to be
a level of respect for the bride and groom who are experiencing a
once-in-a-lifetime event. I don't do this every day and I deserved a lot more
than just getting through the night.
I sent an email voicing my concerns to the wedding coordinator, and after two
weeks of no response I called. I left a message and it took another week (so a
total of three weeks!) before anyone responded to me. I had asked for some sort
of financial compensation for all of the issues we experienced that night, and
I received a short email (not a phone call) saying they would mail me a check but that they couldn’t tell me
how much for. We spent over $15,000 with them, and received a check for less than
2% of the total amount. I get that it's better than nothing, but it's certainly not a reflection of how poorly my wedding was handled by their staff.
If you decide to have your wedding at the Board of Trade (or another one of their locations) and go with
Pigeon’s catering and staff, I suggest either having a wedding planner (even
thought they claim to cover all of your needs with a bridal attendant) or a
VERY detailed list (by the minute!) of how the night is supposed to go down.
And make sure someone keeps tabs of all of your belongings all day long!!!
The worst part was the attitude we encountered and the way
that all problems were handled. Instead of anyone taking ownership of anything
that went wrong, it was just excuse after excuse and it was no one's
fault or responsibility to fix.
In addition to just the general lack of respect and professionalism, a few of my specific issues with Pigeon’s staff:
·
Linens arriving 3 hours late due to last-minute
event scheduled the night before my wedding. They were also scrambling to clean
up in the afternoon while we were trying to set up and ended up just shoving
things haphazardly in the back room.
·
They lost several items I had brought over in the morning that were special to me and were unique details of my wedding -- probably due to the above scrambling to clean
last-minute.
·
Never offered my husband or I cake and didn’t
save any for us either. They ran out of Groom’s cake, so neither of us even got to taste it.
Not
only that, but my friend found the top layer of our wedding cake on a table in
a back room along with trash and other things on top of it at the end of the reception.
·
We paid extra for cheese fries to be passed out
to guests as part of the exit. Except they were passed out at the middle of the
reception. And again, my husband and I were never offered any.
·
The food that was packaged was done so very
poorly. An entire pan of barbecue shrimp spilled on my husband’s tuxedo on the
way back to our hotel that night.
·
We were told my outside decorations would be
brought inside by a staff member for us to retrieve the next day, however they
were all left outside. Because of that, several items were broken and stolen.
My custom-made table toppers were also balled up and set to go out with the trash if
we wouldn’t have seen them the next morning.
I've read some great things in the past about Pigeon, but my experience with them was anything but. Take this for what it's worth.