If I could give this experience zero stars I would. I started off with great communication 6 months before the wedding. About two months out, I started emailing Mari to schedule the trial and the exact schedule for the wedding day. I sent email... after email with no response. About 1 week before the wedding I was finally about to reach the salon. We set up times for the trial and for the wedding day. Based on my communications early on, I was under the impression that for both of these appointments they would be coming to me. Well... that is not what happened. About 10 minutes after the trial was to start, I called to see if they got lost on the way. They giggled at me that I was mistaken and that they had been waiting for me. We rescheduled for the following day. During this trial run, we were supposed to be practicing the wedding makeup (obviously, right?). Well for the wedding I signed up for airbrush makeup, they didn't bring it to the salon on the day of my trial so we practiced with "airbrush creme", this must be a joke right? So I had my makeup done and I had black marks on my forehead, smears under my eyes, and "sorry but 24 hour lip color isn't very forgiving" lipstick almost to my chin on one side.
Then, we had a conversation about money for the wedding day. Up to this point I have paid my deposit and heard nothing further about payments. I am assuming that we pay them on the wedding day. So I ask how they would like the payment, cash, check, etc. Mari then is brought over and tells me how things work for them. She says, usually I contact the bride at least 2 weeks out and send an invoice. We make sure to get payment before the wedding day so that our brides don't "forget" to pay us.
I said, "I hope you'll understand that I'm not even confident that you all will show up on the wedding day. And since you didn't contact me, I was unaware of your policy. It has been a struggle to reach you at all".
After leaving the salon and taking the time on the drive to think things over, I decided that I didn't want them anywhere near my wedding day. I called and canceled all services. I have never had such a bad experience with a business.
My sister ended up doing everyone's hair and makeup and it worked out wonderfully.
(FYI: Her excuse for not responding to me was that they got a new salon email address and she forgot that she still had brides using the other email. She didn't have a reason for not trying to call or email me to schedule times)
If you do end up using this salon, don't say I didn't warn you!