Charissa has good reviews; however, she is taking on too many projects. When she accepted us as clients, she had a wedding the day before, (our wedding was on a Sun.) In March, she said her daughter's graduation was on our wedding day, (I am fairly certain the review from Jamie was the wedding the day before. 400 guests)but she could make it work and even accepted the floral contract for the welcome party on Sat. We/she should have walked away at this time. This is our first wedding & we were not aware of how things worked regarding a day of coordinator. Charissa said we plan together & then the day of the wedding you and the bride relax & enjoy, her & her team would take care of everything. You are so busy during the wedding, you do not even realize what went wrong on many things until it is over, my daughter had no idea Charissa tried to leave early, and it was not until the next day we discussed all the things that were not in accordance with contracts.
We never ONCE reviewed our timeline and vendor contracts with Charissa in the weeks before the wedding, we never saw her after our walk thru on Friday, April 19, until the wedding day, May 26. She called 8 times on Thursday before the wedding, only to see if I had confirmed her admittance to the venue at 8 am, so she and her team could set up early before her daughters' graduation. Typically, we would have started around 1. She continually said all week how exhausted she was & how we would get through this. The flowers for the Welcome Party looked a bit tired. I had spoken with her on Tuesday & she said she had put them all together, so they had been refrigerated since Tuesday, that may be why they looked a little tired. Everyone loved the design though. "loving the look"
Our floral proposal included lavender to give scent to the boutonnieres. She mentioned she had to pick the rosemary for them on Friday. When I asked why she was picking Rosemary, she said the Lavender did not look good, so she went with Rosemary. Our original proposal included Rosemary & we nixed it because the bride did not like the scent of rosemary. She had changed it and never even ask or told us. We had no option to change it on Friday, the boutonnieres were made. The bride got the scent of Rosemary every time she hugged her new husband.
She said she had a rain plan set as we planned an outdoor dinner when we switched to indoor dinner from outdoor dinner, she kept asking me to reprint all things that changed and bring the printed materials to her office. I did this 3 times the week of the wedding.
She called me and awakened me at 7:15 am on my daughter's wedding day, to make sure I brought what we was needed to set up early so she could get to HER daughters' graduation. I was already accommodating HER schedule, we were to meet at 8:30, I live 10 minutes away. The ceremony chair/table vendor said he did not want to have his chairs damaged by hail and did not want to set them up, so she called me on her way to graduation. NO chairs. Had we set up starting at 1 pm or later, (which would have been the start time, but we changed it for her graduation) we could have had chairs. She had staff & we had folks to help set them up. When we returned our dinnerware to Rental Depot, they had several of the same chairs being returned. When I ask if they were damaged, they said, "They are plastic, what is there to damage?" I should clarify that the day of the wedding the weather forecast was severe thunderstorms, there was a thunderstorm with heavy winds from 11-1, and rain continuing until 3 or so, then it cleared up, the sun was shining and there was no rain or wind for the entire wedding. Then there was a downpour starting at 11 pm. Additionally, Charissa decided to have rose petals put in the grass to resemble an aisle. These was specifically written that the venue did not allow. Those petals were there when we returned, she was to pick them up.
The alter stands were proposed and accepted with urns to create height, there were no urns, &the pedestals looked odd and squatty.
The wedding cake was pink with white flowers, it should have been white with pk. We ordered 10 dz cupcakes and got 7.5. It was delivered on a white cake stand, we had a 6 piece gold cake stand and dessert trays, with post it notes indicating which ones the cake & cupcakes should be put on. She had the cake order contract, even a color photo of what the cake should look like. She never noticed until I told her, by then it was too late to fix. It was delivered at 12, the ceremony began at 5:30.
The Bride and Groom were seated at a small table in a corner for dinner, (she miscalculated seating) We paid for two sound systems, only one was used. Granted one was for the garden dinner, had she been alert and on top of things, she could have had the ceremony in the beautiful garden that we did not use for dinner.
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