Katja Rundel
1/5
I was so excited to work with Colleen and her team at Atelier de LaFleur for our wedding. Our initial meetings all went really well and she brought great ideas to the table. However, the day before our wedding and our wedding day made me wish we would have never hired her. We hired Colleen as our Day of Coordinator as well as our florist. The flowers she delivered were nothing like her original proposal and she blamed this on a "global flower shortage" - but we saw the exact flowers we wanted in her shop being used for a different event. We addressed this with her and after her initial defensive response she agreed to try to get us different flowers by the wedding day (next day).
The morning of the wedding she brought by a new bucket with beautiful flowers, exactly how we envisioned them to be. It was disappointing to see that it took us complaining and becoming emotional for her to come through with her promised proposal of flowers. She said she would come back in a few hours with her team for finish setting up for the wedding (we had rented EVERYTHING for the wedding through her). Our wedding was scheduled to begin at 3 - a time we discussed with Colleen in detail back in February when we finalized the details. By 12:30 pm the day of the wedding she had still not arrived. I had called her several times with no luck. I ended up messaging her and she told me she thought the wedding started at 5.
How could someone with her experience and reputation not know the time an event starts? It was written on our invitations, on our website and we had discussed it in detail in February when she came to our house and took notes on our vision and timeline (our wedding was in April). We even asked her for advice on when it would make sense for it to start and she suggested 3! The worst part - she blamed me for her mistake! She told me it was because she was not invited to our "rehearsal." We never had a formal rehearsal - I had an extra "rehearsal" planned with only Colleen and her team the EVENING before our wedding where we went through ALL details! The setup, the music, the timing... As the Day of Coordinator it was her responsibility to verify the time with me if she is uncertain. Why should I assume someone with her experience would not know?
Colleen's team took the floral arrangements with them again after the wedding - something she had never once disclosed would be happening. After we hadn't picked them up for three days (we had been asking all of our friends if someone cleaned them up and no one knew where they were) she threw them away. When I asked her about those arrangements, she again said it was an "industry standard" to take them and we should have known. This was our first wedding - how should the client know this is an "industry standard" if Colleen, the expert, never discloses that information? The reason we hired her is because we don't know the "industry standards." $500 worth of florals. She never once called or messaged to ask us if we wanted them. She just threw them away.
My poor parents and closest friends were scrambling the hours leading up to the wedding. My mom didn't even have time to shower before the guests started to arrive because we had to set up almost everything on our own. We never saw Colleen the day of the wedding, she only sent two of her employees to finish the setup that we had been working on for hours. My friend who is a florist had to make our small floral arrangements for the tables. If it weren't for so many helpful hands, we would have been hours behind schedule and guests would have showed up to a chaotic scene. Colleen caused myself, my husband, and our closest friends and family great stress on our wedding day due to her negligence. It was one thing for Colleen to mistake the time, it is another to blame the bride on her wedding day that she is the reason her Day of Coordinator was so negligent. The worst part was, she never once apologized. She did not take ANY responsibility at all.
