We did not have the best experience with Gatlinburg Chapel weddings. My husband and I wanted a simple elopement and upon searching on line, we found Pastor DeWayne. He agreed to marry us without any religious invocation involved with the ceremony. His prices were right in line with others in the area, so we thought we would go for it.
We had to make a few changes along the way with flower colors and a few other very minor details. We would email him our changes, and he would never get back to us. We emailed him a few times and then ended up calling and calling till we got a response.
On our wedding day, we showed up early and waited for him to come find us. We then drove to our site. It was very nice! Then, the pastor told us he wanted a monetary gift. We had all intentions on leaving a gift for the pastor and photographer (which we wish we didn’t). He was very unprofessional in asking us within 30 seconds of meeting us for a tip.
The ceremony was nice, short, and to the point like we wanted. The “professional” pictures were a joke. A month after our ceremony and a few emails, I finally called and I was told they were sent, and we never got them. So they “resent” them to me and magically appeared later that week. I wouldn’t call them professional at all. Just some guy in baggy jeans off the street with a decent camera taking pictures. The “professional” didn’t even take one picture of me head to toe in my dress.
We planned on having our wedding ceremony videotaped and a DVD made. We understood that the DVD would be unedited; however, we did not know that we would be unable to hear anything other than the waterfall running BEHIND us. Hardly a word of our ceremony was audible on the DVD. The professionalism was somewhat none existent when trying to ask for a refund. I never thought that a Pastor would be screaming at me on the phone while his wife made rude comments in the background. And we sent the dvd back, and never got our refund despite him telling us we would get one. We even went as far as contacting the Better Business bureau and never got anything back.