I want to leave a positive review since it's a small business operated by an individual, but at this price tag (total: $550+tax) and the experience we received for our PROPOSAL, I want to share my full experience to warn others who may be interested in this service
PROs:
- Food quality: chacuterie had a lot of variety and was fresh. Jaime also had a small fan to help keep flies away from our food which was a helpful addition. Our chocolate dipped strawberry, rice crispy and Oreo dessert dish were all great and freshly prepared
- Punctuality: Jaime was punctual and everything was set up by the time we got there
CONS:
- Location: the picnics are offered at a park where there are many patches of dead grass. There are so many beautiful areas of hawaii and this one was just not it. There weren't many palm trees (maybe only 1 where we took photos), and several folks after seeing my proposal picture had to ask if it back home in California, or hawaii
- Photographer ($150 of the $550) was a total flop and the worst part of the entire experience. Let me elaborate:
- This was booked for our proposal, a once in a lifetime event. However, 90% of the photos are blurry and unusable (see photos attached for yourself). There are 2 "money" shots that I feel are a requirement: the actual proposal AND the ring picture (both of which are blurry).
- Our photos were sent exactly 7 days after the proposal, with a # of edited photos and some unedited ones. I noticed that certain pictures were missing (such as a close up ring photo) and asked for all of the raw photos to be sent which she did 2 days later. To my surprise, it was blurry
- Out of 130 photos, only 4 are deemed usable, in my opinion. Out of these 4, I have also asked for the raw images since I am not a fan of how the editing smoothed out our skin texture to not look natural. I have requested the raw images, but have been ignored.
Technically her end of the contract is fulfilled with X number of photos and X number of edits (And she kindly provided all the photos exceeding the originally contracted # of photos). I also understand that the definition of a "good photo" is subjective, but I think we can unanimously agree that blurry photos or providing FULL edits to photos (where there's only a certain number of photos to be edited per contract) of when 1 fiancé is not ready (or smiling, see photo attached) is bad.
The owner refused a refund for the $150 for photos. And I think the least that can be done to make it right is to send the raw images for the 4 photos that I requested so I can re-edit them and not blur/smooth our skin
My fiancé purposely chose a picnic for the proposal, as it is one my favorite past times and we have worked with many picnic planners before. Though, the planning was fine, the quality and service which we were given is truly disappointing.
EDIT below is responding to Jaime's comment below as yelp doesn't have a "comment" feature - the 130 photos that include raw images do NOT provide the images that have already been retouched. I was hoping to get the non blurry proposal photo raw so I can re-edit as the skin texture is too edited/smoothed for our liking read more