A REAL BRIDE'S REVIEW (not friends of the owner)
Event: Wedding & Reception, 250 Guests
Venue: The Claremont Resort & Spa
Date: November 11, 2011
This vendor gave me the most stress. I cannot honestly give Beverly a 5 star review. Her personality is great. She is a friendly person, but her ability to communicate well with a client is severely lacking. When I first attempted to make contact with her, after being referred to her by the Claremont Resort and Spa as a preferred vendor, I had an extremely hard time getting in contact with her. I left messages and emails, and no response. It wasn't until I threatened to move on to another vendor, that I got a response from her. That was the first RED FLAG.
On our first initial meeting at the Claremont, she was an hour late arriving. Our original meeting time was 1pm on August 8th, confirmed in an email on June 17th. She emailed me on August 6th to ask if we were still meeting at 10am? Since I replied from my phone, I confirmed that we were meeting on Monday, and that the original time was for 1pm, but earlier was fine. I inadvertently put 10:30 as the time, not 10am. So I got there early to meet with her. At 10:30, she called me to tell me she was running late from the city, but that she was about 15 minutes away. She finally arrived at the Claremont at 11:30am.
After doing a walk through and discussing the things I wanted to do we discussed extras things. I informed her, I was thinking about a gobo light and she said, Oh let me put you in touch with my guy. He's got great pricing, I'll shoot him and email and we'll go from there. Sounded Great!!
I also told her I want to do a little piping and draping around the door. She said "Oh I can do that. " My response was Great!! That makes this easier than having to deal with lots of vendors.
Several hours later, she sent me an email forward from her lighting person, who just gave me a number and nothing else. I emailed back, asking for a full proposal. I never got it. I went back and forth with her and her person, several times, saying I wasn't going to give money without a proposal. Again, it never came.
Moving on, In November, Beverly sent an email asking us for the final numbers. So I sent it back to her, and asked her to get back to me on the draping. I sent her a picture of the draping and what I wanted to do. No response. After the second or third email during her posted business hours, she responded at 10pm to inform me that it was after hours, and that she doesn't reply to emails this late. In this late reply she informed me that she would get a quote for me for the piping and draping. A QUOTE!! To my surprise she informs me, 1 week before the wedding that she doesn't do the piping and draping. The next day over the phone, she informs me that she meant, she was going to refer me to someone she knows. However the only person she referred me to was the lighting guy, who never sent a proposal. When someone tells me they can do something, I don't interpret that to mean a referral to someone else. Highly upset, she asked me to calm down, and even said, "Girlfriend, wow, there are some issues here. We can work this out". I am not your girlfriend. I'm a client. An upset client. Stuck with her for the chairs, I moved on, without the piping and draping at the very last minute.
The day of the wedding, the chairs arrived early!! Thank God for that, but upon further inspection, some of the chair cushions weren't ivory, they were more of a dirty ivory almost tan color. Some of the cushions were a bit tattered as well. For $1800 I just expected her very best. The chairs were beautiful, but it wasn't just my eye that caught the color distortion.
While my personal experience with her deserves 1 star, based on overall completion of our contract for chairs, I give her 3 stars. Based on the Yelp ratings available I give her 2 stars-Meh. I've experienced better. read more