It's incredibly unfortunate that I have to write this review but I feel that other brides should be warned.
We hired Ashley to photograph our wedding in St. Augustine, FL which was set for November of 2020. We met with Ashley and her husband f...or a half hour in February of 2020 to get to know each other. We signed the contract to hire her in February 2020. One month later, March 2020, Covid hit and we had to put our wedding on hold. In July 2020, we notified ALL of our vendors that due to Covid, we had to reschedule our wedding and we didn't know exactly when it would be rescheduled for. Everyone was so understanding and on hold because of the pandemic. There is an email with this information being delivered to Ashley.
She claimed that she didn't know the November wedding wasn't happening until one week before the November date, which is again, crazy because she responded to our email later in July. I tried to rehire her for our new date, June 2021, and Ashley was already booked. She then said she was going to keep our deposit of thousands of dollars, and that we were responsible for the remaining balance.
I went back and forth with Ashley in emails showing her that she knew that the November date wasn't happening, but she was not budging and threatened to take "legal action" on me. What? Why? YOU kept my money for doing NO work. We gave her a handful of times to do the right thing and send our money back, and she denied our request over and over again.
I ended up having to bring Ashley Steeby to court, ONE MONTH before my wedding to handle this. And then our second hearing was 14 DAYS before our wedding. Obviously, the judge ruled in our favor and ordered that she has to pay back the money we gave her once he saw all of the evidence. The anxiety I went through from this is indescribable. Planning a wedding is already a lot, then during Covid adds more stress, then this lawsuit? I wasn't sleeping, wasn't eating and was completely broken out in hives just 2 weeks before our wedding because of this woman.
Ashley has now blocked me on all social media so I cannot reach her, it's been over a month month since the court ordered her to pay us back and we still haven't received anything. She didn't even reach out ONCE to apologize for how she handled the situation. I gave this woman probably a dozen chances to fix how she handled this and to clear her name, but she keeps digging a deeper hole for herself by not responding, and not returning our money. I'm a business owner and entrepreneur myself, and i can say that the way she conducted her business made me NEVER want to do business like she did.
Save yourself the lawsuit, the headache, the hives and the money and find someone who will actually care about your special day, not just about the money they will make.