Just had a wedding planned, decorated, and MC'ed by AK. Sister-in-law had their wedding planned by them as well, so as returning/referred customers we thought we would get a great level of service. Here we go.
First some positives
Andrew is very quick with his responses, plans well, and communicates with vendors promptly, maybe even too much. Other vendors may have complained that sometimes the communications were too much, but hey, I would rather be safe than sorry. The decorations were executed as agreed and up until the day of the wedding, scheduling was timely performed. As someone we needed for both Korean & English speaking, he fit the bill.
Now for a description of some of the occurrences
-Decorations pickup
Andrew scheduled to pick up wedding decorations from our home at 8am. His staff came past around 11am and cited an accident. We can understand those unforeseen circumstances but a phone call letting us know would have been nice. I actually had to call them to find out where they were. You DO NOT want to make an already anxious bride even more frantic by giving her more things to worry about first thing in the morning.
-Pre-wedding photoshoot
At bridal room at reception hall scheduled for 12:30pm. We took initial photos but flower vendors came late. Traffic, we understand. Flower vendor left bride's bouquet in another van headed to church. One of AK's coordinators asked the flower vendor to go to the church as pictures can be taken without a bouquet but we can't have a bare church where we were supposed to take pictures at 2pm and have a wedding starting at 3pm. Andrew told the flower vendor to go to the hall instead. AK's fault, that the flower vendor put the bouquet in the wrong car? No, but let's think about priorities. Hence, we arrived at a church with no flower decorations that didn't finish until minutes before we walked down the aisle. Because of strict church rules where we had to take family pictures before the wedding, the guests ended up seeing the bride in her dress.
-Reception
1. First dance: We edited our song and sent to Andrew. He played the original song instead so our routine and did not match the song. There's to wasting hundreds of dollars on choreography, dance lessons not to mention the time we put into practicing. We take a lot of cues from the music so it didn't go as planned.
2. Table numbers: We asked them to switch the table numbers. All it would take was simply walk to the table, pick up the table number and change it with another table. 5 second job. It was not done. Andrew may have changed it on a PDF he sent us, but doesn't do any good if he doesn't actually do it.
3. Food serving: It's pretty common sense to serve the parents and family first. Try being in an Asian family when your friends are stuffing their faces while your parents, grandparents, relatives from Korea look around for their food. Please imagine the conversation I had with my parents for that afterwards regarding proper manners and respect. Do the servers know to serve family first? I don't know, but I would figure that Andrew that works with a lot of Asian weddings would know this and properly directed them especially, he was very adamant in pointing out the family reserved tables repeatedly. Also, we received our food after most of other people got theirs. Original plan was to eat first and very quickly so we can go around and greet tables while they are enjoying their meals. That did not happen. We went around to many empty seats at tables. Could they ensure that guests stay the whole time? No, but they wouldn't have left in the middle of their meal, hence the reason of eating first and greeting during the meal.
4. Speeches: Announcing to the guests to get ready to toast, after maid of honor, groomsmen speeches but did not have those ready. If not for the guest, at least for us the bride and groom. Instead, we had to ask our waiter to bring us some champagne ourselves during the speech.
5. The MC games: Admittedly, we agreed on the games to be played during the wedding. Maybe it was the games themselves or the MC's but they weren't fun. We'll give them a pass. But their main game was pretty long and boring. We actually asked the MC to stop during the middle, but he proceeded to continue anyways. Be more attentive to guests' responses and think on your feet.
Now, with all the missteps that occurred, and when confronting Andrew, we're really not asking for explanations, we are looking for solutions. But what we got were excuses, saying they don't know what happened, miscommunication with vendors, blaming other vendors for not doing as planned. As a wedding coordinator, it your job to plan and execute. Yes, shit happens and there are unforeseen circumstances, but there were too many mistakes that could have easily been avoided or fixed.
I could write an essay detailing all of the mistakes, but let's end it simply 0 stars for execution, 4 stars for planning and when weighted, 1 star. read more