Do your research before booking Lina. a quick google/ Facebook search you'll find what kind of…read morebusiness she operates. She'll sell you a dream, call it "Luxe", charge a premium and deliver cheap, tacky, DIY decor and she'll change it without asking. Her contract protects her from any accountability. Not satisfied? Take it up with the vendor, who you have zero contact with during any planning or ordering. She'll offer credit for future services! Because that's what you want from a person who didn't fulfill their end of the contract, right?
I checked her Instagram, I loved everything I saw. She has beautiful dessert displays, that are themed with color, decor, florals. A variety of pastries and candies. And she claims to have 10yrs of experience creating dessert displays. Expectations were high. She claimed to work with local bakeries to build these displays. Guess Walmart is considered a local bakery, right? What we got was a rushed, sloppy display of cookies and mini cupcakes in various shades of brown. All piled onto wood crates. Nothing that showed she had experience. Nothing like what she has posted on her Instagram. She sure didn't post our dessert display.
One thing I asked before anything, because I noticed that a lot of her events are bridal, wedding-centric. I asked if she was able to do the complete opposite end of the spectrum. We asked for full on color-drenched Purple! Red accents and gold for sparkle. Asked for floor to ceiling purple drapes. We were going for WOW! Venue is 21,000+ sq ft warehouse. We want to make it feel like we are not in a warehouse. She's got 15 years in the business, she should have a network of vendors to assist her. But she said she'd have to special order them.. it took me 15 minutes to find a local vendor with purple drapes to cover the venue. No need to special order.
Instead, Lina waited 2 days before to tell us that her special order was "short". Short to me is 40%-50% of the total. She and her team decided for us to just use white drapes. About 10% of the drapes were purple. She did offer a $3,000 credit though! We paid $6,500 for draping alone. She claims it took her team 3 days to install them. Yet I was there when they came to hang them. It took roughly 4 hrs.
We paid for fresh floral centerpieces. She created a "floral recipe" even. I thought wow that's impressive. I like attention to detail. Again, Purple should be the main color, Purple hydrangeas, purple stock, w/ red roses, minimal greenery in a glass vase, which we also paid for. We wanted guests to have a nice arrangement to take home. 128 to be exact. We got less than 40 large centerpieces w/ mostly white, filler flowers, lots of greenery and carnations, all on a plastic plate. these made them feel cheap and not worth the price we paid.
The night before, I saw two crates of assorted bud vases and bunches of fresh flowers. I knew then that she had cheapened out on the flowers and was going to throw those together the next morning. I was right. Her and/or her staff, threw a bunch of flowers in bud vases attempting to fill the gaps where larger arrangements should have been. I could have done that myself!
A common thread in the stories I've now read about Lina is she stops communicating with her clients, after going through texts and emails I'm reminded that she did ghost us for a bit. I didn't pay it much mind because we had communicated our needs very clearly. But also the week leading up to the party she would not talk to me directly. Her whole model is that she's there to help you every step of the way and she's "a shoulder to lean on" When I needed her the most she would not even text me back.
We asked for food vendor quotes. We never got any. We ended up getting our own caterer. We asked her to help get a mariachi, but she lagged so we found one ourselves. We asked her to get us two photographers and a videographer, she waited until two days before to say she knows a guy. By that point we were not comfortable giving her anymore money.
Contractually did she do the bare minimum. Yeah. Did I thank her for what she did, yes. Because I was raised right. I wasn't going to point out everything that was wrong, that she didn't fulfill. The event was over, what was she going to do? Offer another credit? Apologize? I was just glad the day was over. She got lots of compliments and kudos from guests because they did not know what I know. That it was supposed to be much more than just nice. It was not $24,000 worth of nice. I have done events on a smaller budget and had it look way better.
But be the judge for yourself. I'll show you what we paid for vs. what we got..
