cHill Weddings

I met Christina on the Weddingbee boards. She seemed knowledgeable about Philly weddings, and though she hadn't done a ton of weddings at that point, her price was really good. We were originally looking for just a day-of-coordinator, but because the price for full coordination was still less than half of what we budgeted for a DOC, we figured that we should go for it, especially considering that I was planning a Delaware wedding from Texas.

In the planning stages, Christina was a wonderful resource. She was very quick to respond to email and phone calls and offered valuable support and feedback to both my mom and me, especially on particularly sticky issues. She referred us to wonderful vendors who were within our budget, including Jeremy Evans Thomas (our wedding photographer), Synergetic Sounds (our DJ and lighting designer), Dollface Studios (my boudoir photographer), Citywrites (our calligrapher), Flowers by Mary Elizabeth (our florist), Wertz Motor Coach (our guest shuttle) and Cakes by Suzy (our groom's cake and wedding cake baker). With these references, Christina ended up saving us thousands of dollars and, for the most part, we were pleased with her vendor referrals.

Christina ran the rehearsal well, commanding attention and respect of a large number of people. She was efficient and addressed questions authoritatively.

There were a number of things, however, that didn't go so well. I understand that issues come up that can't be helped, but as a professional wedding planner, we expected Christina to more effectively manage these things. I made it clear that guests would start arriving at 5:30PM. I heard from a number of guests that when they arrived (after 5:30), the guest book and card vase was not set up and the staff was not properly dressed. There were 2 issues that probably kept Christina from having the set-up completely finished when the guests arrived: the chuppah was not properly configured and the shuttle was late. When we arrived at the museum at 5PM, the chuppah set-up was underway, but it was set-up incorrectly. This was a huge problem that needed to be corrected. More details can be found in the Flowers by Mary Elizabeth review below, but the bottom line was that if Mary was unclear about the set-up, Christina should have taken the initiative to get it fixed, rather than to rope the groom into fixing it. The other issue was that there was no point person for the bus, so the driver didn't have clear instructions on what to do or where to go, which meant that it was late leaving. I heard from a number of people Christina apparently told people that it would not be coming back and we would not hold the ceremony if people were late (neither of which were true), so people had to drive themselves instead of taking the shuttle, which is exactly what I didn't want. The bus ended up making a second trip and delaying the start time of the ceremony, which is fine, but the lack of communication around this was unacceptable. The bus should have been organized better so that the ceremony wasn't delayed by 20 minutes.

Further, I was waiting in the back of the museum with my mom and the rabbi from 5:30 on. At 5:30, I managed to catch Lisa (Christina's assistant) and ask her for my bag to touch up my makeup. After that, I heard nothing else from Christina or Lisa. 6 rolled around, and no one came to get me. 6:10 rolled around and no one came to get me. I knew something was wrong but had no idea what. Not knowing what was going on was HORRIBLE. All I wanted to do was get married, but for some reason, I couldn't! I had no idea that we were still waiting for people to arrive, and had I known, I would have felt SO much better about the whole thing. Instead, I felt in the dark and out of control. In the end, the rabbi had to say enough is enough and tell her to get on with the ceremony.

That being said, I was so pleased with the reception room set-up. Everything was set-up exactly as I intended and it really looked beautiful.

Once the ceremony was finished, however, it was as if Christina disappeared. I had to cue the DJ to do things like cut the cake and do the hora, and I had to tell my dad when to give the toast. Christina had a minute-by-minute timeline of the entire day, and she knew that toasts were to be done during the first and second courses and that the bride/FOB/groom/MOG dance was to be done during the second and third courses. But after the time for these things came and went and the DJ made no mention of doing it, I had to be the one to tell the DJ to make these things happen. This was precisely the reason I hired a wedding planner -- so I wouldn't have to make sure things like this were done at the reception!

Other things weren't in place when they needed to be -- there wasn't a knife and plate next to the cake, so we were standing there for a few minutes awkwardly waiting for these things (apparently my sister had to ask her to get it, and Christina said to her "Oh, I figured she would have a cake set?" Christina had made a checklist of everything I had and I handed it all off to Christina the day before, and there was no cake set there.). We needed chairs for the hora and after the DJ made the announcement, it also took her a few minutes during the hora to get them. It was like the DJ would make an announcement, and then we would stand around waiting for a few minutes, and then whatever we needed appeared. This was unacceptable, and really awkward.

Lastly, and this is the least of my worries but it impacted my mom a lot, when we asked Christina to help us transport the gift bags to the hotels, Christina declined. She also did not offer to help us transport everything from our house to the museum. I believe this is standard wedding planner stuff, and it was a significant hassle for my mom in the days before the wedding.

In the grand scheme of things, these things did not impact the event. We were still married. Our guests still had a ton of fun. And I understand that things go wrong. But when things do go wrong, the wedding planner should be the one to make it right -- that's why we hired one. Unfortunately, it was Christina's lack of communication and preparation that made these things go wrong. This was unacceptable for a professional wedding planner.