We hired Pebble Red Events to plan our wedding and after an initial consultation with Shawnta, we signed up for the full package to have her plan everything for us. However, despite being sold on a pricy package to have Shawnta and her team do all the planning, we ended up planning most of our wedding ourselves. In short, Shawnta was friendly and had great connections, but did not make our wedding a priority at all, was unprofessional at times, and made the planning process even more stressful for us. If you're looking for full package services, someone to ease the planning process, and someone dedicated to making your dream wedding become a reality, we strongly recommend you look elsewhere.
Pros: Shawnta has great connections and helped book amazing vendors. We already had our venues, but Shawnta got us a great DJ, caterers, and florist. Shawnta was friendly and willing to jump on a call when requested. Evelyn, the day-of coordinator, was helpful with logistics on the wedding day. In hindsight, we could have booked the same vendors with recommendations from our venue without paying for these services.
Cons: Shawnta was opening a business in Portugal, which may be the cause for taking her away from dedicating time to plan our wedding and what we expected with the full package contract. After reading positive reviews and having a good consultation with Shawnta prior to her move to Portugal, we were very disappointed we did not get what we paid for in the end. After an initial consultation and booking the main vendors, Shawnta did not reach out once. After a month or two of silence, we had to initiate communication every time to request a call with Shawnta. Shawnta was late to one of the calls and even slept through and never showed up for another call. We were clearly not a priority for Shawnta, which added a lot of stress on us. We continually had to press Shawnta for details to ensure she was in fact planning anything. Two months until our wedding, we finally pushed Shawnta to help us with rentals and décor. Despite her website and a consultation promising that Shawnta would create vision boards and make your vision a reality, Shawnta shut down every idea we had and every request we made to have a beachy vibe/style for the reception. She repeatedly told us guests don't care about details and was clearly reluctant to support what we as the bride and groom wanted for our dream wedding. She only recommended that we use décor from her inventory, which is very limited and was not our style. If we wanted something else, she would not do the research and told us to research and order items if not in her inventory. We had to push her to order one thing - a welcome sign customized with our names. Overall, we ended up doing all the design boards, ordered several items ourselves, coordinated and had separate calls with the vendors, planned our timeline, etc. One month in, Shawnta finally initiated contact for the first time to get final payments for vendors. However, she ended up giving us different amounts than the original quotes due to her disorganized notes, and in one case, because she forgot to book transportation and the price increased. When we asked for a call to talk about day-of logistics, Shawnta set up a call with us and Evelyn. However, the call only involved Shawnta and Evelyn getting on the same page as we sat there awkwardly, clearly indicating they had not sorted out their own details. There was not one word from Shawnta the week of our wedding nor afterwards - not even to acknowledge the final payment we gave her the day before our wedding. The day of the wedding, I even had to coordinate things as the bride. The chairs were delivered to the wrong location, delaying the ceremony. Rather than communicating with anyone from my party, we all were awkwardly waiting around, until I had to call Evelyn to ask for an update and suggest we could just pivot to a standing wedding.
Overall, the planning process was stressful from the start, left us continuously in the dark, made us feel like we were not a priority at all, and was unprofessional. We highly recommend you seek planning services elsewhere if you want someone to take the reins and ensure your wedding day is perfect! read more
