"Weddings of Topsail, A beach wedding minister" via pastor Skip and Elaine Corbett is who we chose to plan and officiate our wedding. Communication was sort of a problem from the start. We asked for pictures of the wedding supplies we ordered a...nd were given very little to chose from. the photos are of low quality and they only assured us not to worry they have done this for a long time. no attention was paid to detail and we were constantly having to correct details of the ceremony. Then we traveled to Topsail 4 weeks ahead of time to meet with all the vendors for the wedding. Skip and Elaine refused to meet with us and did not answer our emails the whole time we were there.
Our pastor, Ron Lewis, was the only good thing that came out of the situation. A beach wedding minister is only a referral service and upcharges all of their supplies. The only job they had was to make sure the details of the ceremony were right. The sand ceremony was supposed to have a third color for our son and it did not. Pastor Ron did the best he could with what he had, but every time I(Groom) see the sand i think of the mistakes Elaine and skip made. The whole experience dealing with them was not pleasant. They acted as if they worked out of their home and the supplies and pastor Ron were all part of their corporation, when in fact everything they supplied including the Pastor were third parties. If they would have just told us this we could have went to a party supply store and saw the benches and arbor we ordered. Instead we had to look at grainy pictures and decide from there. They supplied us with a photographer for $500. We were told she was an amateur but we got better photos ourselves. Not worth the fee. Also, Elaine and Skip told us she was available for the wedding when in fact she was leaving for vacation so we had to rush the photos. We were never asked if she was to take photos of the cake or reception, but she was in such a hurry and left so there was no option. Pastor Ron was paid his fee out of what we gave Skip and Elaine and we were informed we could have got all of our supplies and photography cheaper had we sought him out instead of using them. I feel he did a better job of sorting the ceremony out and getting to know us and our needs anyway. Skip and Elaine were pushy at times about the bill but very unavailable when it came to meeting them and discussing our details. They were informed well in advance of our trip to their area and avoided our emails all week until we informed pastor Ron of the issue. Then they waited until the day of our departure to contact us. We are very disappointed with them and how they handled the situation and would not recommend them to anyone. It would be better to plan and do it all yourself. If you wanted to have a wedding in the Topsail Island NC area I would strongly recommend looking up Pastor Ron Lewis instead. He is cheaper and seems to actually care about his clients. If Skip and Elaine would have cared and paid more attention to detail we would not have cared about the price. We just did not receive the rate of service and response we expected, considering how much we paid for how little they did. After Every email and correction and concern, they kept saying don't worry we have years of experience and everything will be perfect. Well their experience didn't show, everything was NOT perfect, and all we feel is scammed.