Hi all,
I am a newly wedded bride who held my wedding dinner at One rochester in Nov 2012. My husband and I were looking for a small and outdoorish setting to sit about 100 pax. And One rochester was our final choice cos we trusted their selling point of having a dedicated group and experienced wedding planners.
However, from the time we signed on the package, our nightmare began.. First and foremost, we had 3 different wedding planners on our account. The first time when the first wedding planner left, we thought it was all right but kinda of hinted that we hope for an experienced person to take over. Before we even had a chance to get into the details on the wedding the 2nd one left. The 3rd planner was horrible.
She is almost inexperienced! And worse of all, we were 2 months to the actual date! The entire experience was nerve-wrecking for us.
1. Planner was totally inexperienced! She is unable to give ideas and fell short of the basic req of a wedding planner. Not creative nor innovative. Basically an order takers. If you are looking unique wedding, have second thoughts about it. In the end, I had to be more hands on that i thought i had to be.
2. Tried raising the issue to the GM and Operation Manager. The conversation i had with the GM was def strange. He said that he is not in charge of running the event and that scares us even more as we thought that a more experienced person will be helping us. In the end, he said he was show up for a wedding to oversee it but didn't. We also made an appt earlier wanting to run thru the details with him intentionally but he didnt show up. We were late for 15 min for the appt but there was no message or notifications from him that he cant make it last min. My husband and i were so angry cos eventually we are back with the inexperienced planner to handle the situation.
3. I became the planner finally, writing constant reminders on email to update the planner on the next steps. And to our horror, things could still go wrong on the actual day! My husband and i are not perfectionist but not having enough drinking cups on the actual day itself was totally unacceptable! 4
4.Prior to the actual day event, i had made an appt with the planner wanting to recee the site in more details and she totally forgot our appt, such basic professionalism was not even carried out. The operation manager was kind to show us around but he mentioned that he was not aware that we are coming. There is definitely poor communication and lack of it between the sales, operation and management.
There were more to say but eventually i had to resigned to my fate to run everything myself. Thanks to the bunch of supportive friends that helped me a lot with the planning.
For all the brides out there, my advice to you is that if you are looking for a outdoor wedding venue, kindly consider other places unless you really like the ambience of one rochester. We felt that the management team is unprofessional and undedicated. We strongly think that having expertise in planning your wedding is more worth it than just the ambience of the place.
Cheers
