BRIDES BEWARE. This Mia Angela is full of lies and deceit, and will resort to anything in order to not fulfill her obligations. She has taken over $9000 from us, and we have no wedding to show for it. I first contacted Mia Angela of Sweet Occasions Inc (which has since changed to Beginnings by design, then Banff Wedding Co) in November 2016. I had seen her company on Wedding Wire Canada, and there were lots of positive reviews. I am sure she wrote those reviews herself, by the way. Included in our wedding package was supposedly the following: A personalized wedding itinerary, complete with contact information, maps and directions, and all scheduling and reservations. An itinerary was sent to us, with words such as : "Your commissioner has been booked!" and "Your flowers have been ordered!". No contact information was provided for any vendors, except Michael Buckley of Photoflow as our Photographer. No maps or directions were provided, which is not surprising since I learned that Mia is not even based in Banff, but operates from the Cayman Islands and Hawaii. A Commissioner: Despite my request to have the contact information for our commissioner, Mia never gave it to me. A bridal bouquet: Same as for the commissioner, no florist was ever booked for our event. A Photographer: Michael Buckley of Photoflow was the photographer I had selected for our wedding. When I personally called Michael last week (November 20th 2017), he told me he didn't even work for Mia anymore, not since the past Summer. I was never informed that there would be a change in photographers for our wedding. Our Marriage License: although our wedding license application and commissioner form were filled out and sent on December 2nd 2016, when I called the Banff Registry on November 20th 2017 (that's right, a year later), they had still not received the documents from the wedding planner. I called the wedding planner the same day, and the Banff Registry received the documents half and hour after my call. Then, on Saturday November 25th 2017, I received a call from my new commissioner (that I booked myself) saying that Mia's assistant had contacted the Banff Registry and told them that our wedding was canceled!!! The Banff Registry thus destroyed our documents, and we had to apply for a new wedding license. Accomodations at the Château Fairmont Lake Louise: We had paid Mia in full for our honeymoon stay at the Château Lake Louise for the week following our wedding. Two months before the wedding, I contact the hotel to verify whether the room has been paid, as agreed. The credit card they had on hold was expired! I informed Mia that this was unacceptable, and she updated the credit card, but only paid the deposit on the room ($690 out of $3500). Then on Friday November 24th, I receive a call from the Director of Conference Services and Catering at the Château. Mia had just tried to obtain a refund on her credit card for the deposit. I have filed a complaing with the Better Business Bureau of Southern Alberta, as well as the FBI (FTC and IC3), the local police, the Canadian Antri-Fraud Centre, the CIU, and more. Mia, if you're reading this, know that you will not intimidate me as you have with other brides. On Thursday November 23rd 2017, Mia calls me (from Honolulu Hawaii) because she received the complaint I had filed with the BBB. She wants me to remove my complaint, since I "lied". As you can see Mia, I have kept records of everything, and cannot be more transparent. I told her I would only remove the complaint once she fulfilled her obligations. She told me she would send me an "updated itinerary" on Monday, November 27th 2017. This is what I received on Monday: "Hello Melanie, Per your request to cancel the wedding on November 20th, 2017 via email, our relationship is hereby terminated. I have sent your cancellation agreement via SignNow. Please kindly return this to me by the end of the day. Sincerely, Mia Angela ​CEO" ​ I obviously never requested to cancel our wedding, on the contrary, I am trying to salvage it despite the circumstances. So I repeat, brides beware, because this evil woman will steal all of your hard-earned money and will try to manipulate you until the very end. A professional scammer indeed. read more

It would have been cheaper do to everything our selves. She missed so many details on the day of the wedding. I will post a big long juicy review I just wanted to let anyone thinking of using her to run. I had to change my wedding date b/c she didn't book venues as soon as we gave them our $10000 deposit. I had to send out new save the dates like a month later. read more

Before you read any further I just want to put out that this review is based on our emails, meeting, and information we found out after the fact once we decided NOT to use Sweet Occasions for our wedding. We should have known something was up right from the start when we emailed Sweet Occasions to see if we could set up a meeting with them and get an initial quote of their service for our wedding. We would try to set up for a weekend appointment and they would respond with some random weekday time repeatedly. Next, the initial quote with our budget just didn't jive with us. Turns out they are not a full wedding planning service. But they won't admit to that, they will beat around the bush and hope you don't notice what items their services don't cover. When we got to looking at their budget for us they didn't include items that every wedding needs like invitations, clothes (kinda important), and ceremony location rental (really important). So we would have to spend above and beyond our "budget" they came up with. Don't forget to read the fine print. If you want to add anything to your wedding that is not included in the package you could end up spending way more than you thought. Apparently they add a 20% charge to the "extra" AND $150/hr for the undetermined amount it takes to make it all come together. The wording of the packages is tricky. From the Sweet Occasions package that fit our needs the best, we would have had to book a minimum of 20 rooms at the resort with our guests - but the bride and groom's room would be free as a bonus! BUT, if the 20 rooms were not filled, we would have to pay for the remainder of rooms to ensure our room would still be free (even though this is a terrible expense that can be obviously avoided). After we decided not to go through Sweet Occasions, we still booked with the same resort. With booking an event with the resort, they only required we book a minimum of 8 rooms but we would have to pay for our own hotel room. If we wanted a free room, we would only get it if we our guests had booked up a total of 20 rooms. Sweet Occasions has a carefully produced choice of words to make it seem like we needed 20 rooms booked. A huge reason we initially didn't go with Sweet Occasions was that they told us that the photographer we really, really, really wanted did not work in Banff anymore. As soon as the representative said that during our meeting, my fiancé slowly turned her head to me and said "They just updated their website with photos of a wedding in Banff." Turns out the photographer is still available in Banff... read more

"We started planning our wedding in late 2015 with Mia for 2018 which I know was a little ambitious of us, but FINALLY, our big day happened and it was PERFECT!!!!! In working with one company for so long, i am pretty sure I must have driven mia a little batty with all my questions and attention to detail but from the day we met her in Canmore, fast forward a couple years, she always was there for me when I needed her! I am really appreciative for the support and the help putting together my fancy sparkly dream day and I couldn't have done it without her! :) Thanks, Mia!!! Throughout this LONG journey, I know that I have grown and I have watched Mia and her companies grow too. I am grateful for the friend I have made in you, Mia. I had no idea when I started that I was hiring someone that would end up as a lifelong friend. Anyhoo this is a review so enough with the sappy stuff! Mia was 100% responsive in getting back to my emails, texts, facebook messages, phone calls and my stalking habits lol with an answer to the questions I had. Professionalism, well that's kinda a tough one to answer because we planned so long and ended up becoming friends too. Mia is AMAZING at what she does, that is for 100% sure. She always dresses stylishly and appropriately. Her communication is great over all sorts of different methods and she certainly has a presence and gets stuff done! Value, well I would be giving myself a 1 star here, so Mia can have my extra stars! We planned SOOOOO long that I sure did get one heck of a value out of hiring Mia lol as a client for her though, I think I sucked every penny I spent! (SORRY!!!!) Flexibility 100% :) Overall, my experience planning was absolutely AMAZING!!!! I am the happiest girl ever with the most wonderful husband ever and the best wedding EVER!!!! :D I definitely couldn't have done it without Mia & her team, nor would I have wanted to! If you have the opportunity to work with Mia - TAKE IT!!!! " read more

I would like to warn anyone who is considering booking with Angela (otherwise known as Mia) from Sweet Occasions, which is now being called Beginnings by Design (search under Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands on Wedding Wire). It was a complete nightmare dealing with her and I ended up in tears after losing thousands of dollars to her and getting nothing in return. I've since found out that many others have had similar experiences. There is a complaint filed against her with the Better Business Bureau of Southern Alberta and some of the concerns listed in that complaint are similar to ours. Some of the events that led up to our complete dissatisfaction, frustration, and disgust with Sweet Occasions are as follows: 1) in a span of 2 months, we got passed through 4 different wedding planners who did virtually nothing for us; 2) we did not have our itinerary returned to us within 2 weeks with the vendor bookings completed as promised (in fact, we never received it); 3) I ended up booking our accommodation, restaurant, and hair and make-up appointments myself because they were taking so long to get back to us that I was concerned that we would miss out because things are booking up quickly for the summer; 4) I found out that the wedding planners I was working with from Sweet Occasions weren't even based in Banff. They were working from the other side of the country & knew very little about the area - they couldn't even tell me how long it would take to drive from Banff to Moraine Lake or provide restaurant suggestions. In fact, "Mia" isn't even in Canada and was living/working in the Cayman Islands and now Hawaii, even though she claims she is based in Banff; 5) After expressing our concerns about the multiple changes in wedding planners, Angela told us that the last wedding planner we had been working with was in a car accident a week or two prior and had "almost died" and was currently still in the hospital, so that's why she was passing us off to a 4th wedding planner. However, I received 2 emails from that same planner during the time that Angela claims she was in a car accident & one of the emails was just hours before Angela told me that she was still currently in the hospital. 6) Angela also resorted to manipulation and actually forged an email written by a lady from Parks Canada, not realizing that the email had already been forwarded to me by one of her employees and it was easy to spot the edits she had made to try and "prove" a point that I had questioned her about. After I requested a refund and sent her a screen shot of the original email showing that I had documentation of the forgery/edits she had made, she responded by saying that it was "in both our best interests to conclude our relationship". Angela is currently withholding money that we are legally entitled to, which is above and beyond the non-refundable deposit stated in the contract. She told us that she had been kidnapped at 7am on Valentines Day by 5 guys in the Cayman Islands who stole all of her belongings and used that as an excuse for not responding to us and not refunding our money. I have since spoken to 2 other brides who dealt with her who also got a kidnapping story, but it was a different kidnapping story each time. I think this experience speaks for itself, but Angela's way of doing "business" is completely unethical and immoral. Looking back, there were several red flags that I should have picked up on including the fact that there is no address listed on the Sweet Occasions/Beginnings by Design contract agreement, the contract is completely one sided and does not provide the client with any protection if Sweet Occasions does not fulfill their obligations, and the contract gives Sweet Occasions the opportunity to cancel at anytime based on subjective reasoning with penalty given to the client. If you are still considering booking with Angela after reading this, you don't need to take my word for it - just speak to other wedding vendors in Banff (restaurants, hotels, photographers, limo companies, etc). The Banff Registry might be another good resource. If you are asking around, the vendors in Banff know her by Angela but she has changed her name several times over the years as well as changing her company name and frequently changing her place of residence. You can find her real name by searching Sweet Occasions in Google Maps. Then try Googling her real name and see what you find! I ended up booking my wedding in Banff myself and still saved money even including the thousands of dollars I lost to her. If a wedding planner isn't willing to meet you in person, don't book with them! Also, click on the link that says "other reviews that are not currently recommended". Unfortunately the reviews aren't recommended simply because those people have only written one or two reviews on Yelp so they get sent to the bottom. read more

I would warn other couples who are planning small ceremonies to not do so with Mia at Sweet Occasions. We chose her services because of all the nice reviews we saw but it must be for larger weddings that she tends to focus on cause she's making more money or something. After booking I was chatting with a girlfriend who also eloped in Banff and she put her head in her hands when I said I had booked with Sweet Occasions. She had terrible experiences in 2013 with her wedding. Needless to say I wish I had spoken with her before hand. Mia seemed to totally not care and drop the ball on our wedding planning once she had the money in hand. We were put on the back burner and emailed every 3-4 weeks being told that she was really busy and would get to our bookings when she had time next month... every time it was "Next month". She was really slow with responding to emails and never answered her phone, it was all around a disaster. I would really think twice about booking with Sweet Occasions if you can help it, it would cost much less to just book all of your needs yourself and probably WAY less stressful as well. On wedding wire she tried to say it was a false review after I posted it and then proved to wedding wire I was a legitimate customer (showing receipts and emails with Mia as proof). Good try though! I have warned many couples about you... read more