Euphoria Wedding Coordinator - Anyone working with them?? Recommend someone else??

[lizandcarlos]

Just had our wedding in cancun & had Denise from euphoria as our wedding coordinator. Wish I could say all the good things everyone else did on the reviews of euphoria, however, our experience was quite different. We initially meet with Denise about 9 months prior to our wedding. We picked her based on all the great reviews she got here & after email correspondences with several other planners. We were not able to have our wedding at our first resort option because they did not allow outside planners. We decided that using an outside planner would be to our benefit since she would be working for us and not the resort. On our first meeting in cancun, we were able to pick our Rehearsal & wedding location & some decor details. We made a second visit 3 months before the wedding. A month prior to our visit, we had a phone conference with Denise to discuss details & what we expected to see when we visited. She promised we would be able to see a complete mock up of our tablescape - arrangement, linens, etc. When we actually visited, she had no samples to show us. We met with dj, photographer, caterer, etc. When meeting with the vendors, anytime my husband asked about cost, they were unable to give us pricing & merely advised us to ask Denise. I was clearly nervous after our trip & kept asking Denise to send me photos of what the linens would look like, flowers, etc. I felt I was being annoying since I had to keep asking. Now I wish I would've asked more. Fast forward to the wedding, since, I never saw photos of the items that were actually going to be used, I was quite disappointed with how cheap some of the selections looked. My sister got married 4 years ago & her planner was very detailed & was on top of everything. Her planners was had a checklist & was constantly asking her for selections. If you decide to use denise as your planner, I suggest you are very detailed with your expectations. Denise negotiated a rate for all of our guests at the resort where we had our wedding & when our guests were looking to book, they found rates much cheaper on Expedia. We had to complain several times before they finally decided to change the rates. & they didn't give us better rates, they just slightly raised their rates on Expedia. On my actual wedding day, I saw Denise for a total of 2 minutes only until the ceremony. I expected her to be more involved. My sister had to go look for her to make sure she picked up items we had for her to use at the reception. Our reception was indoors & when our guests arrived, the room was soo hot since they had just turned on the air. You would think they would know to turn it on hours before so it could be cool. I can go on & on but I feel this could get really long. My advice, definitely do research on your own before choosing any vendors. Meet with photographers, dj, bands, caterers, florist, etc. so you can get pricing. I wish we would've done that so we could then compare & be able to negotiate better. By using Denise as our planner, we never really got to see what the vendors were actually charging. Be very specific & expect to have to do a lot on your own. Having spent as much money as we did, I definitely expected more. I hope this helps make things a little easier for someone else so they don't have to go through what we went through.