Disappointing
Our experience with WeddingBox Lake Como was disappointing and I want to share our experience.
Initially, WeddingBox led us to believe that our venue had set vendors were were required to use. We later discovered through other brides on Facebook that this wasn't the case. This felt disingenuous, as it seemed they were steering us towards certain vendors without providing quotes or helping us explore options.
Our planner displayed a concerning level of disorganization. Despite numerous conversations about our wedding details, the online portal was rarely updated, and we had to continually correct the planner on various details, resend information, and answer the same questions multiple times.
We were given incorrect payment amounts, which led to multiple wire transfers, each incurring additional fees.
Before the wedding, we were informed about a new policy requiring security for large gatherings. This was not the planners fault, but she was unclear about the new law, initially telling us we needed four security guards, but sending us a bill for six. Lack of attention to detail was a theme throughout.
She brought her boyfriend to our consultation the day before the wedding. Not a huge issue, but felt unprofessional.
At the wedding, there were issues with guest transportation, causing a two-hour delay and cutting our event short. This was not the wedding planners fault directly, however, the planner did not obtain a contract with the company, despite us asking for one, and blamed the boat company for showing up late/not having enough boats. The planner also told our guests to try to book water taxis without consulting us, and cancelled the returning boats without consulting us, promising us a full refund. They did find us an alternate boat service for the ride back, but served us a several thousand euro bill at the sweetheart table during the dinner at our reception. This felt like a good resolution at the time, however, we never received the refund we were promised and instead were just out additional money for boats that were cancelled by the planner. Now the planner is ghosting us.
Table numbers were switched on two tables, which was noticeable because there were different numbers of people at each. When we brought this up after the wedding, Sally, dismissed us, claiming it didn't happen.
The planner tried to help us with extending our time at the venue, but the suggested we provide 3000 euro IN CASH and offered to have "us and a few of our guests" driven to the nearest ATM, which felt like a ridiculous/rude ask toward our guests.
We were incredibly stressed during our wedding due to constant issues and felt like everything was going wrong. Our primary planner, whom we had been communicating with for two years, avoided us and sent her assistant to deal with us instead.
It would have been nice for the planner to reach out to apologize or at least reassure us that they were trying to work on our refund from the boat company, but we didn't hear from them for almost two weeks. When we reached out during our honeymoon stating that we felt we were owed a partial refund due to our time at the venue being cut short, our catering for cocktail hour being cut short, the missteps with the planning with the boats, etc., our planner thanked us for how "mature" we were during the wedding as things went wrong, and then copy/pasted a message from Sally (the owner) with a dismissive response, stating they did everything right.
There were other inconsistencies such as our planner telling us that they had never used that boat company before and that was the issue, but later Sally saying that they had used this boat company before and never had a problem, but would never use them again.
We are disappointed with how we were treated and felt like WeddingBox made us out to be the problem rather than supporting us through a traumatic experience. There were certainly some factors out of their control, but this should have been the happiest day of our lives, and instead of feeling supported, we felt taken advantage of.
