After speaking with Julie over the phone, I was really optimistic about hiring her as our coordinator. Once we hired her, we meet multiple times and she was always on top of everything. She always promptly responded to my emails and texts. She even ran a few wedding related errands for me: dropping off menus at the rehearsal dinner, picking up ice cream from the vendor and dropping it off at the venue.
Unfortunately, on the day of the wedding her level execution did not hit the same high marks, which may, entirely, be my fault. You see, when I hired Julie, I explained that I didn't really need her to do any decorating or anything, I just needed to her make sure that my then-fiance and I had someone to ensure that our day went as smoothly as possible, a day-of assistant if you will. We needed someone to communicate with the vendors, coordinate the rehearsal, someone to be with us when we were getting ready to ensure that we stayed on schedule, someone to set up lunch when it arrived, someone to communicate between us and the venue staff during the reception, and just someone, generally, to make sure that we always had a full glass of whatever we were drinking. Admittedly, Julie said she hadn't had a wedding that didn't require her to handle some of the set-up and decorating, but she assured me that my needs were completely within her realm of capabilities. She even gave me a small discount because she didn't have to set-up or decorate.
So based on that conversation and the work we had already completed together, I was fully expecting her to continue her stellar performance on our wedding day. Unfortunately, I was really disappointed. First, she did not provide herself with enough time to set-up before the hairstylist arrived at the hotel. Secondly, we had an incident with hotel management about furniture placement. Julie didn't try to handle the situation at all. She just stood nearby as I tried to reason with hotel management. I'm mean come on, no bride wants to have an argument with hotel staff while she is getting her hair done on her wedding day. Then, after lunch was delivered and set-up in my room, I gave Julie explicit instructions about going to go to my fiance's room to set-up lunch for him and his groomsman. She assured me that he had a similar setup. My fiance later told me that she just dropped the food off and didn't set-up at all. Additionally, she generally, lacked attentiveness and was or pro-active in her duties like refilling glasses, keeping the suite door closed so that a/c would stay one, calling room-service for additional drinkware, picking up stuff that was lying around, etc. My bridesmaids and mother had to complete small tasks that I had envisioned Julie handling.
Then, before the ceremony, my fiance asked Julie to deliver a message to me. She totally forgot to deliver the message. I didn't find out until the next day that he asked her to deliver the message to me. Also, during the reception she only had three tasks: ensuring that the vendors had dinner, providing tips to the vendors before they left and making sure the vendors removed the items at the end of the night. Despite only have those few tasks, I only saw Julie one time... when she asked me where the tips were located. One time the entire reception! Not once did she check on my husband and I to see if we needed anything or if things were meeting our expectations. What was she doing during the 4hr reception?! Lastly, she was supposed to help my husband and I get our things to an Uber at the end of the night. When the time came, she was no where to be found and when I called her, she didn't offer any help or solutions to our Uber problem. The next day, without prompting, my mother and several of my bridesmaids mentioned how they observed her lack of attentiveness. Julie was a nice enough person, but if I could do it over, I wouldn't hire her again. read more
