I do... Weddings

Part time planning mess. Not worth the effort

We booked Melissa with IDW about a year out from our wedding. Our venue was flexible with vendor selections and we are more than competent at planning larger events but wanted to find someone with local vendor connections, familiarity with the venue, and someone who on the day of mainly played the role of making sure things stayed on schedule and cleaning up after so that none of our guests had to worry about it. While the details are generally worse, here are the main points: 1. We had to remind Melissa multiple times at our rehearsal and the day of our wedding what our documented and discussed plans were. Things were still missed and not done correctly and led to about half our guests seeing the bride before the ceremony. 2. She completely rearranged our seating chart. Our parents were separated at the tables along with a majority of guests and their 1s. 3. Day of our wedding Melissa spent most of her time setting up florals and not guiding guests or keeping a timeline. She often was not found by us or our parents when she was needed. 4. After the wedding she was to load our car with any remaining items and park it on the street for us to pick up the next day. Her text to us was completely incoherent and it took nearly an hour for us to find our car the next day. 5. Her attire at our wedding was unprofessional. Many of our guests even called this out as she did not just blend in with anyone in our somewhat formal wedding attire. A few people had asked us if we even knew who she was as if she was not involved in our wedding at all. 6. If anything, she added work to the planning process for us. We were sending her contracts that didn't need any feedback yet we had to help keep her organized with them all. 7. On multiple occasions she spelled our names incorrectly and needed to be reminded of this. 8. She provided no help with vendor selection or alignment. At no time did we feel that we had a local professional who could help make any connections. 9. When rain was forecasted, she did nothing to help with the "Development of contingency plan for weather and other unforeseen challenges." as defined in our contract. At one point stating "I wouldn't expect much sleep this week if I were you" instead of just being supportive in trying to figure out changes to plans. 10. All helpful documents she sent us were things anyone can search for. i.e. Wedding day checklist, Wedding Vendor checklist, etc. Nothing Melissa provided really changed the way we thought wedding planning would go nor did they really provide much more than another document to reformat and update when she needed it. After our wedding, we provided this feedback to which we got back a handful of excuses. Simply put, we felt like an afterthought to Melissa and the IDW team which only worsened as our wedding date got closer. Luckily all of our other vendors we had selected were amazing and filled in a lot of the gaps left by Melissa and the IDW team. Of all of our vendors, IDW was by far the worst we had and we can only recommend to anyone else to find a different planner to help with their wedding day.