Before I get into the review, I’d like to note that we were just like most couples who were excited yet overwhelmed with all of the planning that is involved in planning a wedding. We are planning our wedding from out of town and based on the e...xcellent reviews, we decided to reach out to Sondra at An Outer Banks Affair. After an initial 20-25 minute phone call describing her services, we decided to hire Sondra for her “Full Package” because we did not want to have to have the stress of of planning the wedding ourselves from out of town. We really are pretty easy going people. Many of you reading this review are probably thinking “oh that couple was probably so difficult to work with.” Based on this review compared to all of the others, we’d think the same! But TRUST us.....something must’ve changed. There is no way in hell that Sondra has earned anything close to a 4 or 5 star review.
Like we said, our initial phone call with Sondra was fine. She explained her services to “sell” us on her so to speak. After signing her “non refundable” contract (yes, our mistake!) , we had 1......yes 1, 15 minute phone call with Sondra after that. She recommended a couple different vendors.....that’s IT! We asked her to get us a quote on tables and chairs on that phone call. Radio silence from Sondra for A MONTH! We then emailed her once again after the month had passed to ask for the quote on tables and chairs that we discussed....again, NOTHING...no response. AGAIN, 2 weeks after that we emailed again asking for that same quote she kept ignoring us on.....guess what? Still no response. At that point, we we getting very nervous as we were were about 5 months away from our wedding and we still had no vendors booked and our wedding coordinator was not getting back to us after we paid her $1500! We decided to take matters into our own hands and reach out to vendors, set up meetings, review our own contracts, etc. All things that were described in Sondra’s contract that she would provide. Finally, after a third email to Sondra asking for a quote for tables/chairs, she responded with the information we already found out on a basic Google search. Not a quote from the company itself. Know what we did? We got a quote within 24 hours from that vendor with absolutely zero help from Sondra.
That’s when we realized we’d made a huge mistake and needed to terminate Sondra. We couldn’t let her be in charge of coordinating our special day when she can’t even take the time to respond to a simple email. She might have spent less than an hour working on our wedding and has $1500 of our money.
When we had the discussion to terminate our contract, she noted all of her personal issues and and lied to us about the work she had put into our wedding.
Sondra has quickly built a reputation for herself in the wedding community down there as other vendors have noted this isn’t the first instance they have heard about Sondra. BEWARE! Your money is non refundable the instant you sign her contract no matter how much work she puts in. We understand the need to protect herself in the event clients cancel with her after she puts in hours and hours of work, but this wasn’t the case.
She is a huge BS’er. We wouldn’t recommend anyone hire her.