Simply Unique Weddings & Events

My cousin hired Mary from Simply Unique to plan her wedding a few years back. She and her husband paid for the best package available, since they were living in California and the wedding was taking place here in Erie, PA and they wanted to have some help making all the arrangements. My cousin wanted to just have a nice event where friends and family could come and enjoy themselves. Well, she ended up spending most of the night before her wedding in tears, and I didn’t know till then how little Mary actually did. According to my cousin, all she really did was show up to a few consultations. Mary came for the rehearsal, where we were also supposed to decorate the church. Not only did she not have ANY supplies for decorating (not even tape or scissors!) but she didn’t even have any ideas on how to decorate the space. When it came time to start decorating, Mary took off, saying that she was going to pick up an arch for the altar. FIVE HOURS LATER, she returned with no arch. The entire wedding party was late for the rehearsal dinner because we were waiting on her, and she didn’t even have the courtesy to apologize or give any excuse as to why she was gone for hours when she was supposed to be working with us. One of my aunts threw together some decorations and one of the bridesmaids skipped the rehearsal dinner so that he could get all the decorating done. My cousin and her husband are both Army vets, so nearly all of their wedding party were out-​of-​towners. Since Mary didn’t bother to bring anything, she started sending the party out for supplies, not even bothering to see who actually knew the area or give directions to anyone. It was utter chaos!
I later found out that she also failed to hire an officiant or even simply send my cousin a list of potential officiants as she requested. After the ceremony, she tried to tell our family that they weren’t allowed to take pictures because there was a professional photographer (who, thankfully, did a beautiful job and turned around to tell Mary that the family could take as many pictures as they wanted.) A week before the wedding, the reception venue called my cousin to see if it was still on, since Mary never bothered to confirm anything. My cousin ended up having to do nearly everything herself despite paying this woman roughly $ 1000. To top it off, Mary had the gall to show up at the reception and take a doggie bag of food and cake (which my cousin also had to scramble to arrange for herself.)
After the event, and after learning about even more blunders on Mary’s part that added a great deal of stress to my cousin, I privately e-​mailed Mary asking that she refund at least part of my cousin’s money, and listed off the services she was supposed to perform and failed to. Not only did I not get any sort of response whatsoever, but Mary then went to attack my cousin, asking her why I was e-​mailing her.
I am now planning my own wedding, and after this experience with the owner of Simply Unique, I am extremely hesitant to spend any part of my budget on a professional wedding planner.