Complete Weddings + Events Louisville

day. Congrats to you guys once again!

r all of the details on the planner. The reason we contact the client early the week of the event is because our DJs do events pretty much every single week (especially in May and June). The goal of speaking the week of the event is so that we can concentrate on the details of your event and your event alone that week. If we speak 2 or 3 weeks earlier, then we do 2 or 3 events prior to your event, we run the risk of mixing up details of multiple events. This process and the timing of the steps leading up to the wedding was outlined in an email that we sent to your 30 days before the wedding. To our knowledge, we have not heard and have never heard from any vendors who had any issues with Max. He has been a DJ on staff for a couple of years now and as you know, he has a super laid back personality. I can't imagine anyone saying that he was difficult to work with. If there were any issues, we certainly apologize. Again, I know the timing was a bit hectic that day due to the rain. In the end though, it sounds like everyone had a good time, which is what we always strive for! Congratulations to you and Miles once again!

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e week before their wedding date due to the government's required shutdown. Certainly, this was through no fault of their own. However, the shutdown was not COMPLETE's fault either. Our contract, which the customer signed digitally, CLEARLY states that deposits are non-refundable for any reason and that the balance of the event is still due if the event cancels within 45 days of the event date. This is pretty standard contract stuff for the wedding industry. While Chloe and Anthony mentioned that they received some refunds from vendors, that is great! Most wedding vendors I have talked to are not issuing refunds as their contract states. I know of at least one other vendor who has a similar review online because they are not issuing refunds. In the event world, when you book a venue, DJ, caterer, etc, that company is tying up their resources for you, which means they cannot sell that "spot" to anyone else. So, when an event cancels, especially so close to the event date, any monies paid are forfeited. Again, very standard in the wedding industry. To give another example, I personally had a flight booked for a trip in May 2020 that cancelled. I did not buy the extra travel insurance or anything like that. I had the basic ticket. I had to cancel the flight due to COVID. The airline would only credit me for a future flight within the next calendar year, they refused to give a refund. Again, when it happens to you, it is not pleasant and you want to blame someone. COVID is not Chloe's fault, it wasn't the airlines fault and it is not our fault either. We are happy to offer the ability to reschedule her event. In 2020 at COMPLETE, over 130 couples were forced to either postpone or cancel their wedding. The vast majority of couples postponed and rescheduled their weddings. For those folks, nobody lost any deposits or payments and we did not charge anyone any fee to reschedule. I am happy to report that we have been able to accommodate every single client who wished to reschedule. Some of those clients did postpone to summer and fall of 2020 and we have successfully completed their events and have brought joy to many, many couples. While we did zero events in late March, all of April and all of May, we DJed 89 events from 6-1-20 to today, 11-24-20. Chloe and Anthony certainly could have rescheduled for that timeframe or sometime next year in 2021, like many other people have. We also invited them to transfer their service to a non-wedding event in the future and that offer still stands. They have a paid for DJ that they can use for a family birthday party, graduation party or some other personal event. While many have postponed, we have had some couples, like Chloe and Anthony, simply cancel. That is certainly their choice, but it is indeed a CHOICE. With that choice comes a forfeit of any deposits or payments made within 45 days of the event. Again, all of that is CLEARLY outlined in the contract. I have spoken to many couples who understand that they are losing money if they cancel. We too understand that this sometimes happens as there are many moving parts to an event of this magnitude. In the event of a cancellation, we forfeit any money due to us when the cancellation is outside of 45 days. To date, we have had 26 cancellations due to COVID. Yes, it sucks for the couple, but it also sucks for us as that represents tens of thousands of dollars in lost revenue not to mention the lost cash flow this year due to postponements. We have had to lay people off, borrow money and take other measures just to stay afloat during this pandemic. When you hear stories about small businesses struggling during these times, we are that small business. Unlike some other businesses, I am happy to say that we have survived this and are continuing to stay open. We have been around for 17 years and we will be around for at least 17 more! We have 3 more painfully slow months, then it's on in Spring of 2021! We have lots of weddings coming up that we are super excited about. If Chloe and Anthony wish to reschedule or simply plan a backyard BBQ where they need a DJ, we will be there for them! We are ready to provide them service. However, it is there choice if they choose not to take us up on that. In that case, then yes, unfortunately, they are out the money that they have already paid.

modations are being made. For your event, the DJ was required to set up outside, but the guests were inside during dinner. Certainly, this had an impact on the ability to hear clear announcements. We spoke to the wedding planner multiple times before the wedding. In fact, she insisted that most of the communication be with her. She mentioned that you had a lot going on with your job and just the anxiety leading up to having a wedding in the middle of a pandemic. Obviously, this is understandable. While wedding coordinators can be extremely helpful, the risk of miscommunication increases because we are receiving 3rd party communication instead of information directly from the bride. So, when a bride tells a wedding coordinator something to tell to the DJ or we tell the coordinator something to tell the bride, there is a risk that something is going to get misconstrued or not communicated altogether. In all honesty, I don't think the wedding planner ever communicated the fade out first dance information to us. If she did, there obviously was a miscommunication somewhere. As far as the requests go, per your instructions, we did not ask your guests for requests, which is something we normally do. However, being in the DJ business, we definitely get people coming up and asking for requests all the time. It is nearly impossible to prevent this. We know your father and sister both made requests at your wedding. It is pretty hard to turn down family members, even when the general ask is not to take guest requests. We'll try to be more careful of that going forward. Looking at the raw video footage thus far, it looks like everyone was having a good time. We'll send you the video when it is ready to go. We appreciate the feedback.

a perfect world. There were literally a handful of shots out of the hundreds of shots taken at this wedding that inexplicably disappeared. Why or how this happened is still a mystery. It could have been due to corrupt media files, another technical issue or possibly even human error. The photographer who shot this event has been on staff with us for almost 5 years and she has shot literally hundreds of weddings. It is a very unfortunate situation and everyone feels badly that this happened to the customer. Fast forward a bit and we had multiple conversations with multiple family members in an effort to reconcile this situation. We were screamed at, cursed at and threatened by two different family members. This is somewhat understandable given the situation, but quite unnecessary and not very productive. Unfortunately, we cannot turn back time and re-take the missing images. Therefore, the only thing we can do to compensate them and take responsibility for this situation is offer them some money back, which we did...multiple times! We offered everything from cash, to printing credits to raw footage. Their response is that they wanted ALL of their money back. Um, sorry, no. This customer received 800+ images when their package included up to 600 images and these images turned out great! There are images of: pre-ceremony - girls and guys getting ready; lots of detail shots of the dress, rings, flowers; awesome posed shots of the bride and groom; several posed group shots with family members, bridal party, etc.: many shots of the actual ceremony including multiple angles when the bride and groom are saying their vows and several candid shots at the reception with their guests. We have probably 15-16 hours of time in this wedding and we have technically provided everything we said we would to the customer according to the contract. We said we would take responsibility for the few missing images and refund them a percentage of the shoot and the customer refused and wanted all of their money back. I feel like we did our best to make the situation right. Unfortunately, we were not able to reach a mutual resolution with this customer.

situation right. The customer never called us back. I do know not everything about this event was bad as the internal evaluation also included the phrase, "The positive is they were flexible when we switched the cake cutting and toast to earlier in the night which was awesome." As far as the vulgar songs, her internal review cited Get Low by Lil John which is an incredibly popular dance song played at weddings. All of our music is the radio edit versions, but as everyone knows, the content of the song can still be questionable based on personal taste. It certainly was not our intent to play vulgar music or to be rude to the customer. This particular DJ was newer to the company, but completed all training phases successfully and had a couple of great shows and really good customer reviews right out of the gate. Then, for whatever reason, this DJ fell extremely short of our expectations in some subsequent events and we recently parted ways with this person. At Complete, we strive to hire talented, hard-working individuals with excellent customer service skills. We then train them and mold them to be a successful event host and wedding DJ. We have numerous checks and balances all along the way to ensure a quality service gets delivered to the customer each and every time. We are fortunate and have been blessed to have an amazing staff. I can literally say that I would feel totally comfortable with any of my staff DJing a personal event for me. I have done that actually a few times! However, at the end of the day, we employ people. People make mistakes and people are not perfect. If you have ever been a manager anywhere and have been in charge of supervising a team, you know that some people just aren't right for the team. This person did not continue to meet the high standards that we have for our company, so we let that person go.

The booth was scheduled 5-9 pm and was to be set-up by 4pm. That detail somehow got overlooked in the communication process. The photobooth arrived at 3:45 pm and we opened the photobooth at 4:30pm, a half hour before it's official start time, at no extra charge to compensate for the error.

nted to meet in-person with his DJ much earlier than we normally schedule. We did that, no problem. We ask on the planner how you want your photo strips laid out, he sent us back a template. We customized a strip for him, no problem. He sent us back at least 3 revisions if not more on the photo strips. We spent several hours at no additional charge revising the strips multiple times and sending them back and forth to the customer in order to try to make him happy. As far as the video, the customer specifically requested that particular videographer. So, he hand picked that person to shoot the video on his wedding day based on that videographer's work. Videographers are not DJs. Most are not super-outgoing people and many are introverts. However, we captured everything we normally capture on that day. The customer has yet to even see the final video product, so I think it is a little unfair to rank that service without even seeing the actual product. With this customer, as well as all our customers, we try very hard to make sure the customer has a good experience with us. In fact, he did book some extra video time, but we also gave him a half hour of DJ time for free...just because we were trying to be nice. I'm not sure what else we could have done to make this customer any happier.

behavior. With that being said, people are human and people make mistakes. That doesn't make it OK, but mistakes can happen. So here is how this situation happened. We have worked with MANY OTHER NON-COMPLETE vendors over the years including videographers, photographers, caterers, wedding coordinators, etc. that patronize the bar at receptions. It starts with the mentality that "the buffet is available to me, so the bar must be too." Many vendors, including us, have been invited by our customers to "grab a drink." We have even had customers bring us drinks and hand them to us! After all, we are in the celebration business, so this is not an uncommon scenario. So, even if you work for a company like COMPLETE that has a strict no drinking on the job policy, when the bride or groom or Mom or Dad invite you to the bar at one wedding and actually get offended that you don't take them up on their offer, it is easy to just say, well Ok, I'll have a drink. Then you go to the next wedding and you get invited to drink again. Then, before you know it, you think it is not a big deal and you are drinking at every wedding, because everyone else is too including the NON-COMPLETE photographers, wedding coordinators, etc. Then, it just becomes routine, just like eating at the buffet. It is easy to think nothing about it. That is how it starts and again I am not just talking about COMPLETE employees, I am talking about ALL wedding vendors. This is absolutely NOT OK, but this is how this scenario can happen. Fast forward a bit and then we have a problem. There were in fact, 2 DJs at this event. One was veteran DJ who knew better and the other was a newer DJ in training, who actually used to be a former bartendar at weddings. He probably was not as aware of our company policy as he should have been. Both DJs have been reprimanded and disciplined for their actions at this point. Because of this review, we will review our no-drinking policy with all of our staff members today. For the rest of the performance of the event, the ceremony songs were played out of order because the wedding party line-up got changed at the last possible second by a family member. As far as the rest of the night, people danced and had a great time. We even introduced the U of L Cardinal Mascot at the reception. As far as music, dancing, announcements and flow, it was a good event. At the end of the night, the customer went to the DJs and said, "Thanks, we had a great time!" then handed them a $100 cash tip. No joke! So, there are two sides to every story. That does not excuse our staff members behavior with the drinking, but it also was not as horrible as the review makes it sound. As the review states, we did apologize profusely for the actions of our staff members and the customer did accept our apology. As far as refunding the cost of the drinks, if asked, when we spoke to the customer on the phone, we certainly would have been happy to do that.

n advance. We then call to confirm times, locations and basic information about 2 weeks out, then the DJ texts about 7-10 days to set up a final call to go over all of the specific details (music, pronunciation of names, flow, etc). We do this process with every customer to minimize and eliminate any miscommunications so that the event runs smoothly and the customer and their guests have a great time that evening.