Reverend Leslie Harry Cohen

Rev. Leslie through his unprofessionalismm, rudeness and complete apathy came very close to ruining the happiest day of my life.
My wife and I were married in October of 2011. In the summer of 2011 we started looking for someone to perform the ceremony. I found Rev. Leslie on the internet and contacted him. He called me and I told him about my then fiancée and myself. We set up a meeting and he stated that he would write vows just for us. About a week later we met him at his apartment and we told him more about ourselves. We told him we were getting married out on Long Island (Centerport). He stated he was unfamiliar with the area and we told him its in Suffolk by Huntington. He said he knew huntington as he and his wife had looked at a house there years ago. He then read us the vows he had written and while they were nice they were very generic and could have been for anyone and just pluged our names in. He then told us the price which was $ 600. We thought this was high since we had seen people who would do it for half that but we were asking him to travel out to Long Island and he seemed nice so we gave him $ 100 deposit and left thinking we had someone to perform the ceremony and could now stress about other things in the very stressul process that is getting married.
We were scheduled to be married on Friday the 7^th. On Monday night, the 3^rd, my wife gets a message on her cellphone from an outwardly upset and borderline hostile and rude Rev. Leslie stating that he doesnt know where this place is and doenst know how is going to get out there so WE need to figure it out. Now my I’m thinking he had more than 3 months to figure out how to get there and call us with questions or concerns and hasn’t but he calls 3 days before well thats weird. So i call him back, my wife is to upset to. He states that he was unaware of where this place was (we told him three months ago where it was and he seemed fine then) and didnt know how he was going to get there. I told him that there is a train that goes close and then its a 5 min cab ride. He then askes who was going to pay for this. I took a 2 seconds, literally, to compose myself and think since it was out of the blue and I thought this was all agreed upon and before I can answer he states that since I have to think about it he wants no further dealings with me and hangs up. I inform my wife and she breaks down in tears. She then calls him after she composes herself and offers him $ 75 for transportation (the actual total for 4 cabs and two train tickets was $ 71 but we rounded up.) He then states that that wont be enough and he doesn’t like our attitudes anyway. Now neither one of us were anything but nice to him, we were both upset but not in an angry way in a paniced way since we only had three days (Tues, Wed and Thurs) to get everything together and now we might have to find someone else to officiate. We inform him that we looked up how much it will cost and he then said if we were going to «nickel and dime» him he wanted no further dealings with us but he would return out deposit out of the goodness of his heart.
Now first of all he was aware of the location of the wedding from the beginning and should have, and in my understanding at the time did, include that in his $ 600 fee. Secondly he had three months to ask for transportation fees and waited till the last minute to ask for them. He then wanted more than the actual cost of transport. Then he acts as if he is doing us a favor by returning the deposit, even though as the one who broke the contrac this is his obligation.
We did eventually find someone to perform the ceremony. The ceremony was prewritten since he did not have time to write something since he only had two days (he couldnt meet us till Tuesday night) The prewritten formulaic ceremony was by the way very similar to the «custom written» one that Rev. Leslie did for us and even had the same Apache prayer. Also this new person was cheaper even on short notice.
In my experience Rev. Leslie was rude and unprofessional and was very oportunistic as to when he asked for more money and obviously had some other reason for not wanting to do it that came up sudenly and instead of saying that and offering to recomend someone else who could do it he fabricated a reason.
I would not recomend utilizing him and if you alreafdy have booked him to be very cautious in all dealings with him.