Hello all,
I would just like to share about my wife and my experience with this wedding planning service company, whose name I didn't explicitly spell out letter for letter in the title but still obvious enough, that does wedding planning for couples at locations such as Hort Park, One Rochester, Fort Canning Park, and Raffles House. It was not a very good experience and I don't know if they are really good or not since they seem to be a few years old only so thought it would be good to share
My wife and I booked a wedding package with them for Hort Park location in May 2015, for a wedding in June 2016. When we were discussing the package with the staff then they were very enthusiastic and gave a lot of suggestions on how they can help plan our wedding. As it was a booking for the Hort Lawn and MPH, it's a fully customizable wedding which was what my wife and I were looking for, to be able to decorate and customize our own garden wedding, so their enthusiasm rubbed off on us and we signed a dinner buffet package for 10 tables with them. We were only planning to invite intimate friends and family only so wasn't doing a big wedding
Anyway, it was 30% deposit and the remaining 70% to be paid 1 month before the actual day (as everything need to be catered for and confirmed beforehand, they cannot do like hotel pay as you use on day itself, they need you to confirm everything beforehand then they cater there on day itself, not enough then too bad). As we booked very early, there wasn't much discussion for some time, up until the end of 2015, we only sort of confirmed the theme and general look and feel of the wedding, and this also is mostly thought up by my wife, who also keep chasing them for a timeline of when we need to confirm what details before the wedding. Never gave a timeline for anything at all even until the wedding over, only payment timeline got give.
Forgot to mention that the contract we sign for the package has this sentence as well 'Professional support from our team of experienced Wedding Planners. A dedicated Wedding Planner will be assigned to ensure your journey with us on this joyous occassion will be a memorable and seamless one'
However, even after numerous chaser emails and whatsapp messages, and repeatedly reassuring us that everything is going to be ok and that they will take our feedback into account, nothing much changed. The enthusiasm from the beginning wasn't there at all. Ideas and suggestions provided by them were scarce and only when we request for it. We even told them so many times a wedding is someone's once in a lifetime, can please consider that. Honestly feel that if only motivated by money to do this job, should not consider being a wedding planner because you will only ruin other people's wedding experience.
Nevertheless the wedding happened as planned, and after much sleepless nights and hard work from my wife and I, the wedding was still a fun and enjoyable one, and the decor was also pretty nice and beautiful, barring some hiccups that was due to lack of attentiveness from the coordinators and poor management
Honestly the long pre-wedding planning period is too much to write about so I'll just write about the seriously bad points on the wedding day itself that should have been managed/avoided by them:
- We told them the solemnization chairs on the lawn were to be arranged in a 'V' shaped pattern facing the podium where the solemnizer was going to stand, they arranged it in a straight line.
- Sound and media technical crew was only there for the outdoor solemnization at the lawn part, after that moving into the MPH for dinner, nowhere to be found. Luckily I prepared a brother beforehand to do tech and gave him the whole program list with song and video details so he knows what to play at the right time. Did they only hire the tech people for 2 hours time or something? Atrocious. Did I also mention we had to bring our own laptops as well to link up to their system? Not because they don't have their own laptops, but they didn't bother to ask for our song and video files so we were so worried we decided to bring our laptops in case we needed it. Luckily we did.
- There was supposed to be 3 people helping throughout the event, the coordinator, planner, and decor person in charge. Only the coordinator was present throughout and the planner about half the night. Even then the coordinator seem to be blur and because there is no tech person and my brother assigned to tech also couldn't be at the tech all night, she seemed to think it was alright to play background music (the ones with singing kind) during the maid of honor speech as well as my speech. It wasn't even soft, it was at a level that we couldn't really hear the speech and my wife even had to signal to her to cut it. Honestly no common sense, we have videographer team recording our wedding, how you expect people to record speech if you play loud background music?????
- Poor management and no checking of equipment beforehand. Our MCs' mics stopped working more than once during the event. Really if it were not for my wife's 6 sisters and my 6 brothers which we assigned to do various roles (manage reception, floor managers, F&B managers, timekeepers) it would have been a disaster. I feel bad cos my brothers had to work harder than they should and can't enjoy the night as much as the guests. Seriously it's like we are doing their jobs for them, and paying them money to do a lousy job
I don't know if it's we pay too little or what, but that should not be an excuse for not doing a proper duty, especially people's wedding. And thinking back it's not that cheap as well - $13k ++ for the whole package and $3k++ separate cost for the booking of Hort Park from Nparks. Considering we only had 110 guests, that's easily $150 per head, if we had more guests can hold at a decent hotel already. The food also not that fantastic, actually only cost a fraction of the package, we suspect they earn quite a bit from their cut as wedding planners and also for the customized decorations, which is even more infuriating because they did such a poor job of it
Anyway we have complained to them before but to no avail and I thought I should share so other people will consider carefully if they approach this company for their wedding. Rant over and apologies for the long post
I would just like to share about my wife and my experience with this wedding planning service company, whose name I didn't explicitly spell out letter for letter in the title but still obvious enough, that does wedding planning for couples at locations such as Hort Park, One Rochester, Fort Canning Park, and Raffles House. It was not a very good experience and I don't know if they are really good or not since they seem to be a few years old only so thought it would be good to share
My wife and I booked a wedding package with them for Hort Park location in May 2015, for a wedding in June 2016. When we were discussing the package with the staff then they were very enthusiastic and gave a lot of suggestions on how they can help plan our wedding. As it was a booking for the Hort Lawn and MPH, it's a fully customizable wedding which was what my wife and I were looking for, to be able to decorate and customize our own garden wedding, so their enthusiasm rubbed off on us and we signed a dinner buffet package for 10 tables with them. We were only planning to invite intimate friends and family only so wasn't doing a big wedding
Anyway, it was 30% deposit and the remaining 70% to be paid 1 month before the actual day (as everything need to be catered for and confirmed beforehand, they cannot do like hotel pay as you use on day itself, they need you to confirm everything beforehand then they cater there on day itself, not enough then too bad). As we booked very early, there wasn't much discussion for some time, up until the end of 2015, we only sort of confirmed the theme and general look and feel of the wedding, and this also is mostly thought up by my wife, who also keep chasing them for a timeline of when we need to confirm what details before the wedding. Never gave a timeline for anything at all even until the wedding over, only payment timeline got give.
Forgot to mention that the contract we sign for the package has this sentence as well 'Professional support from our team of experienced Wedding Planners. A dedicated Wedding Planner will be assigned to ensure your journey with us on this joyous occassion will be a memorable and seamless one'
However, even after numerous chaser emails and whatsapp messages, and repeatedly reassuring us that everything is going to be ok and that they will take our feedback into account, nothing much changed. The enthusiasm from the beginning wasn't there at all. Ideas and suggestions provided by them were scarce and only when we request for it. We even told them so many times a wedding is someone's once in a lifetime, can please consider that. Honestly feel that if only motivated by money to do this job, should not consider being a wedding planner because you will only ruin other people's wedding experience.
Nevertheless the wedding happened as planned, and after much sleepless nights and hard work from my wife and I, the wedding was still a fun and enjoyable one, and the decor was also pretty nice and beautiful, barring some hiccups that was due to lack of attentiveness from the coordinators and poor management
Honestly the long pre-wedding planning period is too much to write about so I'll just write about the seriously bad points on the wedding day itself that should have been managed/avoided by them:
- We told them the solemnization chairs on the lawn were to be arranged in a 'V' shaped pattern facing the podium where the solemnizer was going to stand, they arranged it in a straight line.
- Sound and media technical crew was only there for the outdoor solemnization at the lawn part, after that moving into the MPH for dinner, nowhere to be found. Luckily I prepared a brother beforehand to do tech and gave him the whole program list with song and video details so he knows what to play at the right time. Did they only hire the tech people for 2 hours time or something? Atrocious. Did I also mention we had to bring our own laptops as well to link up to their system? Not because they don't have their own laptops, but they didn't bother to ask for our song and video files so we were so worried we decided to bring our laptops in case we needed it. Luckily we did.
- There was supposed to be 3 people helping throughout the event, the coordinator, planner, and decor person in charge. Only the coordinator was present throughout and the planner about half the night. Even then the coordinator seem to be blur and because there is no tech person and my brother assigned to tech also couldn't be at the tech all night, she seemed to think it was alright to play background music (the ones with singing kind) during the maid of honor speech as well as my speech. It wasn't even soft, it was at a level that we couldn't really hear the speech and my wife even had to signal to her to cut it. Honestly no common sense, we have videographer team recording our wedding, how you expect people to record speech if you play loud background music?????
- Poor management and no checking of equipment beforehand. Our MCs' mics stopped working more than once during the event. Really if it were not for my wife's 6 sisters and my 6 brothers which we assigned to do various roles (manage reception, floor managers, F&B managers, timekeepers) it would have been a disaster. I feel bad cos my brothers had to work harder than they should and can't enjoy the night as much as the guests. Seriously it's like we are doing their jobs for them, and paying them money to do a lousy job
I don't know if it's we pay too little or what, but that should not be an excuse for not doing a proper duty, especially people's wedding. And thinking back it's not that cheap as well - $13k ++ for the whole package and $3k++ separate cost for the booking of Hort Park from Nparks. Considering we only had 110 guests, that's easily $150 per head, if we had more guests can hold at a decent hotel already. The food also not that fantastic, actually only cost a fraction of the package, we suspect they earn quite a bit from their cut as wedding planners and also for the customized decorations, which is even more infuriating because they did such a poor job of it
Anyway we have complained to them before but to no avail and I thought I should share so other people will consider carefully if they approach this company for their wedding. Rant over and apologies for the long post
