Exciting Events

I hired Dawn to in February 2015 to Cater our August 2015 wedding. At the time of hire she stated to us that she could provide for all of our weddings needs.
After the deposit was given and the contract was signed we heard nothing from Dawn until we wanted to make additions to our order, she at this time wanted an additional deposit to cover the increase menu request we felt at that time with the wedding still 7 months away that an additional deposit was not warranted as nothing had been purchased yet. It also increased are bill a $ 1000.00
As the wedding grew nearer we contacted Dawn and each time there was a crisis and she could not talk at that moment and stated she would call us back. Never a return phone call we would email and even sent letters through regular mail with no response. We at this time we’re getting a little concerned and started digging around and discovered some very poor reviews In regards to her catering of events. We tried to work with her to determine if what we had found was correct still wanting to give her the benefit of the doubt. So far all that we had read was playing out for us poor follow through once money had changed hands lack of professionalism and rudeness on her part. She was put up a good front
My tip to anyone thinking of hiring her is to be very diligent and do you research

~~~Continuation~~~
For 3 days she continued to call and text my fiancé, wanting to resolve the matter. Finally that Sunday he agreed. For nearly 2 hours my fiancé, maid of honor, and myself were on the phone with her, recording the disagreements, arguments, and resolution. We discussed how we had now seen more negative reviews, our concerns on how she showed up to another event with our coordinators without rentals, the 2 other weddings she catered with our coordinators that went well, and how our rentals should already have been reserved. She offered to handle all our linens at no cost to us, to keep our headcount at 80 with $ 15 pp, and even added in free horderves in varieties. She continuously BEGGED for us to allow her to prove herself. My fiancé, the kind hearted Marine that he is, gave her one last chance. He agreed to all her «free» offers, agreed to $ 15 pp for 80 people, agreed to letting her handle the rentals. ALL as long as she agreed to a revised contract and to 25% of the OVERALL cost being paid upon services rendered (which computed to approximately 45% of the final balance owed at the time). She agreed, she emailed a revised contract, which included word for word from our email of what we were accepting (literally, it was our email copy/​paste into the new contract). Shortly after she emailed her invoice for $ 883.15 to be paid via PayPal, as agreed, and we paid that. The remaining balance of almost $ 700 was due to be paid on 11÷7÷15, our wedding day. A little after a week of making our payment we received an email advising that she was refunding the $ 883.15 via PayPal and would like the payment to be processed via Square. My fiancé agreed and made the payment.
Almost all my family is out of state, and was flying in for our wedding. The wedding venue was also a weekend getaway for both our families. We packed up and left early on 11÷6÷15 to prepare and decorate for the wedding on 11÷7÷15. The area had limited cell reception, which meant it was almost impossible to check emails, and phone calls were spotty. However, all our vendors were provided with the name, address, and phone number of the venue. Dawn and her employees were suppose to arrive with the rentals and food at 11am on ¹¹⁄₇. At 12NOON, she was still a no show. The wedding was scheduled to start at 1pm.
The father of my fiancé, and the coordinators all scrambled to find last minute food options. My family and the family of my fiancé all scrambled around the property to find chairs and tables. All this was happening an hour before the wedding was to start. The wedding started with not enough chairs for the guests, so many were left standing. When the ceremony concluded, that 30% of the guests left. There was a variety of food purchased from 3 local restaurants, which the remaining guests indulged in, and soon after the next 30% of the guests departed. The final 40% remained until the cake cutting and speeches, as the previous departures ensured seating, but without the rental portable heaters available they left shortly after due to the chill in the air. All remaining vendors were released 2 and a half hours early due to no guests remaining, other than the ones who were staying on the grounds.
Upon our return home on the evening of ¹¹⁄₈ we saw an email sent by Dawn on Friday morning, ¹¹⁄₆ (as previously mentioned, we had already left for the venue that day, and she was aware of the limited cell reception). Taking out all the religious fluff, sworn facts on her mothers grave, and begging, the email (repeatedly re-​sent) basically advised that she could not call us, and that complete payment was needed to purchase the remaining food and rentals, regardless of what our contract said, because her business was in trouble, and her and her children were being relocated under protective custody immediately after our wedding.

While all the stories above are horrible, ours beats them all. My son and his fiancé booked them for their wedding months ago. There were bad signs throughout, but THEY NEVER SHOWED AT ALL!!! Plus she was bringing all the tables and chairs. So 2 hours before the ceremony, we realize she’s a no-​show. We recovered due to some helpful restaurants. So… she is more than unprofessional and rude, she is also a criminal, and she will be forced to make amends.

If there was a choice to put 0 stars, I would.
I beg of anyone reading this to run from this scam artist. I will post more this week when I have more time, but essentially dawn and «chef Neil» scammed me out of what was supposed to be a nice corporate luncheon that I worked so hard to plan. They showed up without desserts, replaced tri-​tip with pulled pork, no sauce for the pasta, mashed potatos in a chafing dish instead of a planned mashed potato bar, used one of the pumpkins an employee had decorated for a contest as the centerpiece on the hors d’ oeuvres table (was supposed to be an ice sculpture), oh — and they didn’t bring enough forks and plates. We paid fo three servers and only two showed up — an hour an a half late! I could go on and on! Luckily I work for a corporation who won’t take this scam artist lightly, but nonetheless– I beg of anyone even thinking to use them to run away! I should have run the minute she asked me for more money after giving her a $ 900 deposits or she could purchase software and put money towards a new truck for her company!!! What kind of professional does that?!

I’m writing an update to my first review of Dawn — Exciting Events. I IMPLORE anyone considering hiring DAWN to please read every review on Unilocal and thumbtack. We all have had the same issues with Dawn from beginning to end. I luckily fired her before my daughters wedding but unfortunately not before we paid her in full … I don’t know how any one person can experience the multiple flat tires, car accidents, lost wallets, stolen wallets, kidnapped daughter, daughters intervention, drunk bartenders, stolen property and so much more. ALL of this is from reviews on Unilocal and thumbtack. I have every intention of taking Dawn to court so that she will be stopped from doing this to anyone else. Remember that it’s not just financial damage here but also damage to what should be one of the most special days of your life. Dawn –Exciting events is a nightmare. RUN don’t walk but RUN from Dawn and Exciting Events.

PLEASE SEE MY PREVIOUS POST for the beginning of this novel (sorry, it’s long– I’m straight up upset… obviously)
Contract Breach 4: Many things, of course, are related to the fact that catering didn’t provide the man-​power that we paid for. Water was never served to our guests. Guests went into storage and pulled out plastic water bottles and served themselves. We were promised servers that would go around and do this for us. Many things promised in our contract never arrived. There was no ice (we specifically paid for ice and bought water for them to serve) for guests. No ice tea. No orange juice. No coffee. They said they would bring their own linens. They did not. I find out later that they frantically went to the hotel staff and borrowed bedsheets from the hotel to cover the tables. The hotel was kind and lent them bedsheets (catering told them that the bride/​groom were supposed to bring the table linens and that we messed up. The hotel felt bad for us and gave them the bedsheets. They outright lied as it states in the contract that they would provide the linens). Bedsheets! Are you guys hearing this? The cocktail drink dispensers that they promised to bring– nope. Not there. All the bar equipment I bought because they said they wouldn’t provide their own? They didn’t use but they definitely destroyed (packaging ripped, etc.) so that I couldn’t even return them.
Contract Breach 5: Catering said that they are in charge of the clean-​up. Simply, they were to gather all plates and cups used, scrape off food, and stack them back into the rental crates. They left the biggest mess I had ever seen. The bar room was wrecked with food flung on walls, broken glass on the floor, hotel bedsheets were trashed, plates were left with food unscraped. My guests didn’t do this. Catering did. My husband and I woke up early the next day to a disaster. The two of us cleaned up catering’s mess for about 3 hours the next morning. And we were left to profusely apologize to the hotel staff.
Contract Breach 6: We ordered and paid for 110 guests. We had 95 guests in total. It was simply embarrassing that not everyone was fed. It wasn’t an issue of people getting seconds. Some couldn’t even get firsts. This part is infuriating and makes me so sad. It was unacceptable. My parents had some food they brought so we cut up watermelons and served bread.
Contract Breach 7: Food was not good. We were promised a fresh waffle station. They were frozen eggos that were cold and stale. Chicken was dry and burnt. The presentation was sloppy (food was, again, sitting atop of bedsheets). And definitely, not all the food we ordered was even there.
And there’s so much more. Not only things that made us lose money (they threw away ALL caps to ALL bottles of liquor we bought. Some bottles were full to the neck but we found that all caps were gone. How are we supposed to save any of that? We lost a lot of money there.) but they essentially made an otherwise fantastic and special day horrible. Why should any bride and groom spending thousands of dollars have any of this on their plate?
They are indecent people. They haven’t followed up with us, never apologized. I don’t use the word appalling lightly but in this case, it best describes our experience with them. Dawn is appalling. She is manipulative, she lies, she will truly take your money and run. My husband and I are honest, good people. And I am not exaggerating nor making any of the above up.

On the initial meeting Dawn was great and seemed to have it all together. Having many years of experiance myself in event planning I thought she would be a great rescource. I sson came to realize that was inaccurate. Every invoice she sent was different. She said she would book portable restrooms for our wedding and I gave her the deposit of 250 (half the cost of the rental). I later decided to contact them myself to find out she never even spoke to anyone there. She said that it was because they cant book out more than 30 days. If you plan any sort of events you know that is not accurate. I ended up booking them myself for $ 125 cheaper (1^st jon portable restroom is AWESOME!) I had such little confidence that Exciting Events would show up that I arranged for a backup plan. A couple months prior to the wedding we had our final head count I added a generous amount to the total and told Dawn. She said that we couldnt change it from 100 because she would have to charge an extra $ 5 per guest which would come out to more. I told her fine I expect to be given all the additional food. My cordinator didnt even make us plates to take home because she told us that we really didnt want to do that since all the food was placed on the floor.
Neil was creepy and unprofessional. He took the microphone from the pastor after he prayed for the meal and told all my guests how awesome he and is food is. He doesnt follow health standards and drank our beer, served himself desert before we even did our cake cutting. He smoked all night and never once washed his hands. He was late and kept asking for tips and cash. The best man didnt let the money dance bags out of his sight for fear Neil would steal them.
I can go on and on. My cordinators typed a 2 page outline of just the events of the wedding regarding the horrible things that «chief» Neil did. Dawn and her husband are thieves please dont work with them. She makes a good first impression but dont let her fool you! They take advantage of people that dont know any better.
JUST RUN AWAY FROM THIS NIGHTMARE! IF YOU DONT KNOW LAWS OR WHAT IS STANDARD FOR EVENT PLANNING THEY WILL TRY AND TAKE EVERY PENNY FROM YOU BY ADDING GRATUITY AND INCREASING COSTS!!!

I was impressed with the service I received from the initial contact all the way thru to our event. The food was fabulous, the team from exciting events truly went above and beyond our expectations. Recommend this company to my family and friends.

Dawn was by far the most unprofessional person I have ever worked with. She was late, rude, provided terrible staff (we had to kick a server out for being intoxicated before the reception even started), and that was only the day of the event. I have an entire document of details about her poor service. I wish I had found her one-​star reviews on Unilocal before signing a contract with her (she used to be «Impressions Catering,» which is why I didn’t find anything about Exciting Events until it was too late).

Dawn and Neil catered my daughter’s wedding on 3÷08÷2014 they are very unprofessional people and everything they promise you they don’t come through with the person they brought to help was a 14year old that didn’t do a thing
The venue where her wedding took place asked us not to refer them to anyone and they would not be allowed to return there. Dawn has her ideas and doesn’t care about yours… She took our money and ran, they also took some of our things that didn’t belong to them so if you come across them please be very careful. It’s too bad they are this way Neil’s food is good I have to say that for him… but there’s more to it than that…