Destinations Found

     

Our experience with Jessica was not one which I would suggest to other couples looking for someone to take the stress out of wedding planning, coordination, and execution. The positives I can say about Jessica are that she showed up and decorated for both days and that she sorted out a late night pizza issue that arose a few days before our wedding. The rest is, unfortunately, quite negative. We were left feeling as though she didn't really value us or our wedding the way you would want a planner to. Things could easily have turned to disaster, but our amazing families and friends ensured that our weekend turned out beautiful despite our planner not doing a lot of what she promised.
The Negatives
1. Communication: This is the biggest issue we had with Jessica. There were often emails that went unanswered for weeks, despite numerous follow ups from us. When we did get responses, they were often incomplete. We had to have multiple conversations where we voiced our displeasure with the lack of communication, were told it would be better, but then didn't see any follow through. Despite having weekly calls scheduled, we routinely had to email and call Jessica and leave multiple voicemails (because her phone always goes to voicemail) after the calls were supposed to start in order to get meeting links sent to us. There were also multiple occasions where she just didn't reply to any of those emails or calls so our weekly meetings ended up not happening. Her phone went straight to voicemail during the wedding weekend as well. We basically had to send people to search for her in order to actually get any answers from her during the wedding weekend. Perhaps biggest of all, she did not even take the time to seek out or check in with my wife until just before the reception (day 2 of events that we had hired her for). None of that behavior helps take the stress out of planning a wedding, but only serves to add to it.
2. Follow through and attention to detail: was also a major problem. We were promised renderings of what the decorations would look like as well as florals, but never received any of those. Jessica helped arranged shuttles for our guests, didn't really look at the timings so ended up having the company send us schedules that would have had our guests arriving an hour after our events were scheduled to start. My wife and I caught those mistakes and made the changes with the company, but that is something our wedding planner should have been on top of. We wanted childhood photos to be placed at the tables during the reception and printed out the photos, but Jessica never attempted to get those photos from us to actually put out. We also bought a neon sign to put out, but that was also not put out. Our guest book was also placed in a corner and the instructions weren’t put out, so very few guests ended up signing it. We also contracted her services for florals and the ones we received did not really resemble the photos we sent. If there were difficulties obtaining florals like the ones depicted on my wife’s Pinterest board it would’ve been great if that was communicated to us so we could’ve discussed other options. Also, multiple items were not received. More on this later.
3. "Coordination" during the events: She was present in person but didn’t really take any initiative to coordinate anything. My wife was basically ready to walk down the aisle and had to ask Jessica about her bouquet before someone got it for her. We purchased dried flower petals packets to give to the children at our wedding so they could throw them as we left the ceremony, but those were never given out. We realized this when our officiant directed the children to line the aisle and no one moved. Jessica was present for the ceremony but didn’t actually direct anything or coordinate anything. We had also asked Jessica to arrange for us to get appetizers from the caterers while we were getting ready for the reception so we would have something to eat while getting ready. This was also not done.
4. Transparency: After the wedding, we wanted to take a look at the invoices for the florals to see what we paid for and compare it to what was received to make sure that we weren’t charged for anything that we did not get. We discussed multiple items in the planning process which we did not receive so wanted to make sure we weren’t paying for those items. We never got emailed invoices and the links to the proposals were deactivated. I emailed Jessica twice asking for the itemized invoices and have still not received any reply from her. In the second email, I let her know that I would be disputing the charges with the credit card company if I didn’t get the receipts. This was also ignored so I had to dispute the charges through the credit card company. Maybe she will respond to the credit card company, but my guess is she will ignore them too.

Overall, we would highly recommend searching elsewhere for your wedding planner. She is not worth the money, time, or stress. My wife and I deserved much better from her, and couples reading this review deserve much better too. I think Jessica knows that we were displeased with her service because she didn’t follow up with us after the wedding to ask about how things went, and ignored our emails about the invoices. So please look elsewhere for your wedding planning services. You deserve much more from a wedding planner and Jessica is not the person to deliver the service that you deserve.