Clearly Classy Events

I am the mother in law and used clearly classy because that is who my future daughter in law picked and I thought it would help with communications and make it a seamless event. I was wrong. Once I started to have communication issues with Johnna, I filtered out her previous reviews and looked at the critical ones. They were spot on. My hope for writing this review is twofold: 1. Warn any brides or parents thinking of using Johnna 2. Give Johnna some insight that she so sorely lacks Johnna is in a service industry and her communication style is “snarky”, rude and condescending. Previous reviews mention her eye rolls, sighs, and flippant comments. All true. It feels like you are working with an entitled, spoiled teenager. Johnna referenced “full disclosure. I am going through a divorce”. So I tried to have compassion for her. However, when she would not answer any phone calls. Tell me “you’re not the only customer” “My life is so crazy” “This is so simple hopefully you can do this task”. All those comments, coupled with past poor reviews….I think this is just what Johnna is like….no people skills or poor customer service. I paid for a full service event planner as I was from out of town. By the end of the event, my answers to her questions were one word answers and mostly I just avoided coordinating with her because it was so unpleasant. I was so excited for my son and his new bride (and this was my first wedding) and Johnna took away the “fun” and excitement for planning the wedding. At the end of the planning stages, I had no idea how the event would come together. I had lost all trust and communication with Johnna. I am sorry she is going through a rough time right now. I do hope she regroups and goes to some continuing education on customer service and positive communication skills. At this point, I would NOT recommend her

I rarely write reviews much less negative ones. I write this for future brides selecting their coordinator. Hopefully, the same mistake I made will not be repeated: choosing clearly classy events. Some examples of the service I experienced with Johnell are listed below. (1) Johnell never provided us with a seating chart that had accurate dimensions. She gave us a version that she “eye balled” which looked like a rectangle drawn in Microsoft Paint with round tables inside. She said if we needed to “fudge it” the day of the wedding, she’d figure it out. This was problematic because our venue was very limited on space for seating. Luckily, our caterer, a former wedding planner, found her drawing unacceptable, and created a to-scale seating chart for us. Fortunately, this was created because Johnell’s version did NOT fit our space which would have left us scrambling the day of the event. (2) We were told upon hiring, that Johnell would be present for the vendors arrival and for their complete coordination. Our event rental company delivered all the rentals the day prior to the wedding, setting up chairs and tables 24 hours in advance. Perhaps, Johnell considered this outside her duty since it did not fall on the wedding day. Again, luckily we had a great caterer who came to our house to help coordinate the event rental company. This was largely outside our caterers job description but she recognized it was necessary in order for our event to run smoothly the next day. (3) Poor communication was an overall theme of the planning process. I could easily blame myself for not remembering to provide Johnell with things such as the seating chart or the shuttle drivers direct cell phone number - which created unnecessary stress and confusion the day of the event (picture a bride’s makeup and hair session continually interrupted). However, my hope was that a seasoned event coordinator, like Johnell, would know what information she needs prior to the event to ensure success - I would have hoped that was not my responsibility (unfortunately for me, it was). (4) Prior to the wedding, I recognized that Johnell had incomplete information for successful set up. For example, we had used an online flower company for DIY florals combined with potted succulents/cacti. We had told Johnell our plans for florals and she ensured us that her team would help place the vases/pots on tables. Yet, she never attempted to learn how the arrangements would be placed prior to the wedding day. Anticipating chaos, I enlisted my brother, to ensure Johnell’s team knew where things went. His help was invaluable since I was busy with make-up and hair, and unable to direct Johnell on my wedding day. It would be comforting to think that if we had hired Johnell for full time planning services versus partial planning, she would have performed better. However, my mother-in-law did use her full time planning services for the rehearsal dinner (a big event complete with a band) and had just as many grievances. I recognize that my wedding had many DIY components that a planner may not be familiar with coordinating (since most people choose established vendors for things like florals and champagne wall). Yet again, our rehearsal dinner was completely through vendors and coordination with clearly classy events was still a mess.

Johnell is hands down an amazing planner! I was meeting various planners to try and find the best fit for me while planning a Texas wedding from Connecticut, and as soon as I started talking with Johnell, I knew she was the perfect fit for our wedding. She can make all your dreams and desires come true and is very up front with how things will or will not fit into your budget. We told her what was important to us, and she made sure we had the top vendors in those categories. She was able to find ways to cut expenses in all of the less-important areas for us and helped us stick to our budget. She handled all of our contracts and would negotiate on my behalf. I would essentially get an email that gave me a few options, and I would tell her out of those what I liked/wanted, and she made it happen. Our wedding day went SO smooth! If there was a problem, we had no idea about it because Johnell handled it without us having to be involved. I am SO thankful for her and 100% recommend her to other brides. Thank you Johnell!!

Johnell let us down at almost every turn and her lack of professionalism was shocking. She had little interest in truly including us in the process with vendors and would rather handle everything by herself. Florals were our biggest priority and we were eager to share ideas with her and vendors. We had some discussions with her and shared a pinterest board and she said she would take care of it but we didn't have our first conversation with the vendor until weeks later. When we did have our first contact with the vendor the quote was for 3x our discussed budget and didn't match our described vision and the vendor admitted he hadn't seen our pinterest board. We asked for some examples of his portfolio and he said he would send some but never did and wouldn't show us any examples of what it would look like unless we first signed the contract which we obviously weren't comfortable doing. We were left scrambling for a floral vendor 3 weeks before our wedding. When we would we would ask questions to try to get a full understanding of her ideas or to talk through our ideas she made us feel like we were a burden. She kept telling us to just trust her but anytime we did we it was to our detriment. She said finding a musician would be easy but two weeks later she only had one quote that she admitted wasn't really the style we were looking for. We started doing our own legwork to make sure we would at least have one vendor option. She gave us a lighting quote and we didn't know what all the different lights were so we asked her if we could see what some of them look like set up. She said no that wasn't something they do. I emailed the vendor directly asking if we could see some of the lights and two days later we were in the venue without her with all the different light options set up. We mistakenly decided lets just get through this and at least she'll come through on the day of. This is when things went from really bad to horrific. We had a walk through at the venue with her 9 days before the wedding. After she left we put the chairs down at the tables and realized it was impossible to sit 10 at a table as she had planned. The next day we asked to schedule a phone call in the next few days so we could go over adding tables and a couple other questions. She responded by email saying there was ample seating room at the tables for guests which we knew to be untrue. Again we asked for a 15 minute phone call. She said our walk through 9 days before the wedding was our final meeting and she would only be responding by email. She said we had 3 meetings and 3-4 phone calls and as far as she was concerned her job was done and any additional requests would only be heard by email. We were flabbergasted. We paid for the full service package which specifically states unlimited emails and phone calls and now were being told we weren't allowed one the week of our wedding. At this point we had already paid in full so i guess she decided now that she had our money she was going to make sure we got fed up enough to not want to deal with her anymore. It worked. She was causing us more stress than she was relieving so a week before our wedding we told her not to come and we would handle everything ourselves. And we did. We called all the vendors and they were all helpful and accommodating and a breeze to work with compared to Johnell. We also found out for a fact that she had been bad mouthing us to vendors behind our backs. Clearly not very classy.