The Aurora Gallery is an event coordination company, NOT a specific venue; they work with multiple…read morevenues. This review is of how this event coordinator organized our wedding ceremony and reception this September, at a venue called T Studio in Astoria (you can see amy review of that venue separately).
Things they organized well:
* For the most part the package is reasonably priced and a lot of the things are included (e.g. DJ, photographer, staff, décor) etc. However, as we've learned later (see below), this organizer takes on more than they can logistically handle and it would have been much better if we actually organized some of these elements ourselves.
* The food -the restaurant this coordinator ordered catering from was very good.
* The décor was in line with what I wanted, BUT...see the list of "buts" below...
Things they organized.... NOT so well:
* There were multiple warning signs early on that this wedding coordinator is not very detail-oriented. Communicating with her was hard--she took a long time to reply to emails and things were disappearing in the thread. For example, she sent us our wedding contract three times, each time with errors in it.
* They set up very late so there's no chance to check everything--and that's too bad. For one: THEY MESSED UP THE TABLE SEATING. I provided a correct seating chart way in advance and we only had 8 tables (!). And somehow they couldn't get that right and put the same guests at two tables, which completely messed up the whole arrangement and resulted in two of our guests actually eating dinner in a back room next to garbage cans (!) because they wanted to sit together. To make it worse, the coordinator was trying to deny it in a conversation with me later.
* Multiple things that were part of our package were missing during the event, including a coffee station and a water station. I myself (as bride) had to run to the bar every time I wanted a glass of water, and towards the end of the event the guests informed me that there is no coffee! Which was in our package! They refunded us for the cost of the missing items ($125! Out of ~$14K), but well, we only had one wedding.
* The bar RAN OUT OF WINE before the event ended. Already the bar under this company closes 30mins before the end of the event, and all we had on offer for wine was house red and house white.
* The ceremony took place on the terrace: there was a loud air conditioning unit that practically drowned out our vows.
* I wanted to add a champagne reception to our package, and at the beginning I wanted to manage it myself, but our wedding coordinator offered to take care of it for an extra charge. BIG MISTAKE. They did not get enough champagne and were serving glasses with embarrassingly tiny amounts of champagne at some point. I would have bought the bottles myself had I known in advance!
* In general, the staff assistance was non-existent. My parents and multiple guests reported that the staff offered no guidance, the guests were confused as to where they were supposed to go or what to do.
* We paid for "passed hors d'oevres " as part of our package, which were supposed to be distributed before the ceremony. My parents reported that a waiter showed up 2-3 times out on the terrace with a small plate of hors d'oevres which lasted for just a few people.
* The décor was also included in our package including tables and altar décor. The wedding coordinator did provide a vision board and we discussed getting specific things, like fairy lights and lighting up the aisle with candles/lampions. There were neither. The coordinator said she made a budget decision to not include those -and did not inform me about it! But based on all the other fails my guess is that she simply forgot. The part that particularly irked me was: I found a Love-shaped balloon on Amazon and offered to buy it and bring it for decoration, but the wedding coordinator said she'll take care of it. You've guessed it...there was no balloon. I could have easily done that myself.
* My general impression is: when you're planning a wedding, you can't possibly think of every single thing as the bride. That is why you hire a wedding organizer to take off some of the load (and pay them money for it!). Foresight and support was completely lacking from this vendor. I had to think of everything myself and spell everything out, and on occasion even the instructions I gave them were not executed correctly. From things I didn't spell out but I had hope that they will interpret them, here's one example: we provided little bottles of bubbles for guests to use during the ceremony. The event coordinator distributed the bottles on chairs for the ceremony, but provided no instructions to the guests to use them. Result: there were no bubbles during the ceremony or at any point. You just expect that an experienced wedding coordinator would know to "manage" the crowd and give out instructions.
Needless to say, I cannot recommend this vendor.