Almost Anywhere Weddings and Proposals

After speaking to Shelley on the phone, we hired her very quickly for our July 30th wedding, partly because of her sales pitch that is very convincing (she dove into all kinds of ideas for our weddings for over an hour during the "introduction" call and at the end of it sort of pressured us for an immediate answer). She also asked for full payment immediately, which we should've pushed back given that no other vendors ask for 100% payment at booking. We didn't give that too much thought given her solid reviews online and we trusted her. Well, fast forward to the month of our wedding... did not hear from her until 2 weeks before our wedding telling us that she got delayed writing our wedding due to COVID but she is recovered and is working on it. Did not deliver on that promise and 5 days before our wedding, she sent an EMAIL telling us she's unable to do it. Amidst the frenzy of last-minute tasks and family arriving etc., we had to scramble and interview multiple officiants. I sent out at least 30 messages to various contacts and made at least 15 phone calls to find a replacement. Plus given that she wanted to run our ceremony fully, we did not have ANYTHING planned up till that point. She caused us so much added stress on our already stressful wedding day. We would have appreciated an earlier heads up, and a phone call instead of sending us an email that could've been covered by the zillions of wedding-related emails we are getting. Anyway, she promised to give our money back plus $100 as compensation, but won't be able to until end of July. Come the week after our wedding, still no news from her, my husband has been sending her gentle reminders every month since then she she kept stalling. I am sorry she doesn't have money since she weren't doing weddings, but why take money upfront from people and spend it all before even performing the service? At some point she offered to pay in installments since she does not have the full amount, and we agreed that this is at least something and a show of faith. Of course she did not keep good on her word. And now, she has gone cold and stopped replying, hence we decided to write this review. We are looking into legal actions that we can potentially take to get our money back.