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What do you do when your destination wedding planner quits halfway into the planning of your wedding

[Deleted User][Deleted User] member
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in Destination Weddings Discussions

I am in the middle of planning my destination wedding and was horrified to learn that my wedding planner who works at the resort is leaving. I absolutely loved and adored this person and she was the main reason why we booked our wedding at this resort. I was under the impression that the resort would hire someone of the same caliber however her replacement has been an absolute nightmare. She has been on board for 6 months now and the communication has been virtually non-existent. I had followed up with the interim planner as 2 months had gone past with no response. After numerous email follow ups, I received a response from the new planner stating that she had started a few months back and would now be handling my event. Why did it take 3 months for her to introduce herself? Over the past 3 months and she doesn’t respond to emails, calls or any communication attempts I have made. We tried to get in touch with the hotel to see if there was anyone else to speak to and this finally prompted the wedding planner to call me. She was rude, condescending and rushed me through the questions I had with no regard or explanation regarding her lack of response. We have outstanding deposits that I’ve been trying to pay with no response. No responses to my guests when they email her trying to book a room. No responses to any outstanding details regarding my wedding. I am in a state of sheer panic and contemplating booking a plane ticket to see this woman in person as we have tried everything possible to contact the resort with no luck.

 

Has anyone else experienced this during your planning? If yes, what did you do and how did your event turn out? Any ideas or advice would be greatly appreciated. 

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Re: What do you do when your destination wedding planner quits halfway into the planning of your wedding

  • saric83saric83 member
    First Anniversary 5 Love Its First Comment Name Dropper
    It happened to a few ladies who were planning their weddings at the same time as me, so I think it's fairly common.  All of them were stressed out, but everything worked out fine.  

    I'm not sure how your resort works, but once we had the contract signed, we didn't talk to the coordinator until 90 days in advance to finalize all of the details, so not hearing from them for a few months during a transition would have been completely normal.  And for guests booking rooms, that definitely wasn't my coordinator's job; that was my travel agent's job.  Do you know if the guests are truly supposed to be contacting your coordinator for that?

    I know it's really hard to deal with something like this, but it will be okay!!  When is the wedding and what resort?
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  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] member
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    Thank you so much saric83 for your feedback. We are getting marred at a resort in Cabo in May so it I coming up quick! 

    I think the previous wedding planner went above and beyond so when the new person started, all vendor communications and room bookings were handed back to me. I am fine with that but it is just a change from the service the last planner provided. The resort is now trying to add extra charges on top of the charges we agreed to in the contract. This has become an absolute nightmare but it is reassuring that you say the lack of communication is normal. I am almost at the 90 day point so I am praying the communication improves.  

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  • saric83saric83 member
    First Anniversary 5 Love Its First Comment Name Dropper
    Yeah - that's a little overwhelming!  If I were you, I would search the hotel name with destination wedding in Google and see if there is a chat board for just this specific resort, and if there is, you can talk with some other brides who are going through the same thing to see if they found a better contact.  

    But with the extra charges, I would scan and send your contract to them and just bluntly say, "Absolutely not.  This is what we agreed to, and we will not pay anything beyond this."  

    I had some personality and communication conflicts with my wedding coordinator as I wanted him to be much more responsive than he was, and I felt like he was really unorganized, and I was very concerned he wasn't following the lines of our contract.  But when it all came down to it, I kind of realized that to some degree, he didn't really care about figuring out our wedding until we were there (because obviously, each week he had multiple weddings to pull off).  But when it was our turn, he was amazing!  

    So for now, just fight the battled regarding the big stuff and know that all of the little stuff can fall together very quickly in the days leading up to it.  Good luck!
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