K. Hancock Events

Reading the review by Rue (8/3/22), it sounds like we had similar experiences. Highlighting a few similar sentiments: - Feeling as though I wanted to jump ship and cut our losses multiple times through the process - Feeling as though I was being treated as if I should know how weddings work, and also how I know nothing at all, all at the same time - Feeling as though we were supposed to tell Kiara what we liked, then keep our fingers crossed and eyes closed and hope that things turn out on our wedding day to our liking. My decision to write this review is purely based on the fact that I don’t want other brides to go through what I went through. Professionally I am a marketer that has put on many events myself. Going into this wedding planning process I was very forthcoming with the fact that I have put on large events but have never planned a wedding so I will be looking to my planner to lead me and offer input along the way. I hired Kiara as a full Wedding Planner, Designer & Florist. Our flowers turned out beautifully and I think Kiara is a skilled florist. Below I will list some of my red flags (facts). It is possible Kiara does not see these as red flags herself or for her business, but if you have a problem with any of the below, I would recommend looking elsewhere: - Undisclosed working hours: her business hours for wedding planning conflict with her full-time employment (she is a FTE at a different company) - Waiting 2-3 weeks for a response (slack is the primary channel of communication) - Resistant to negotiating or advocating for her client with vendors for fear that it would hurt her relationship/reputation - No budgeting/tracking for her clients (it was made clear that it was on me to track spend and ensure we were in budget). - No final walk-through, minimal inspo photos or samples for setup - Minimal assistance filling out forms/questions from vendors or venue (i.e. things that the wedding planning team should know the answers to) - Consistently having to ask for big deliverables (example: wedding timeline - was sent to me the day it was due to the venue; with a variety of mistakes like cutting our photographer coverage by 50% of what we contractually paid for & incorrect event start times) The theme I’m seeing above, and what I think summarizes my experience well is a sense of secrecy and sloppiness. Kiara seemed to keep everything close to her chest, and other than whispers under her breath or comments mentioned off the cuff, I had no real indication of how things were progressing or what came next. Although I do agree that things can get lost in translation, like comms over slack, Kiara seemed comfortable with her business's status-quo being on slack and was not proactive nor seemed to want phone/zoom calls. About 6 months out, I strongly advocated for a recurring zoom meeting to speed planning- we settled on 30 mins every 2 weeks. Up until the wedding, that was the extent of our in-person meetings, and often it was on me to come up with talking points. There were a myriad of things that did not go as planned on my wedding day/weekend...but that I expected. What I did not expect was to have Kiarra & team to be the cause for some of those. Note: Kiara has not reached out to me after my wedding, nor has she requested feedback through any channel. Although I would be happy to give this feedback and more in detail, I don’t believe any of the above is new information for her.

Our wedding would not have functioned without Kiara. She juggled all our many vendors, a changing schedule, a table cloth snafu, eccentric family members, a big wedding party, and everything in between. Her presence was calming and her work was top notch. Everyone kept complimenting us on how smoothly everything ran. We can't recommend her enough!

“Best Wedding Ever”. For months after, we have had nothing but rave reviews from our guests. They didn’t want the night to end. It felt so nice but also very “us”. Kiara helped us put together the perfect celebration of us and helped us navigate from what we thought would be an intimate wedding that became a bigger event with over 100 guests. Kiara helped find exactly what we needed when we needed it. Always on time for scheduled meetings and clear with timelines, boundaries, and deliverables, I can’t imagine having done this event without her. On the day of, all we needed to worry about was ourselves and our families. The event ran so smoothly and the little touches that were just so use made our day extra special. We also hired her for florals and this was our best choice. The arrangements were enchanting and the flowers she chose were some I’d never have thought of by myself but were gorgeous and unique. In the beginning we had doubts as to if we needed such a hands on coordinator and if we should have saved money for a cheaper planner or done it all ourselves, but as the lists started to grow and the day grew closer, we knew we’d made the right choice and she was worth every penny for us. So much less stress and she helped us pull off an event that will have our friends and families joyfully recounting for years to come. Really couldn’t thank her and her team enough!

There were quite a few issues with meeting time mix ups and the initial excitement we felt in our first call quickly died down after we decided to work with her and had locked in our first payment. There were a couple of times we thought we should jump ship and cut our losses but we had already put down a large deposit. We decided to be optimistic that everything would work out on wedding day. The flowers on our wedding day were stunning. She is no doubt an extremely talented florist , but it was not what we asked for or envisioned. We wanted lots of cacti mixed with lavender and some florals as our wedding flowers but we got an abdance of dark purple roses. We were treated like we should know how weddings work and that we do this all the time. It felt like we were supposed to tell her what we liked, then keep our fingers crossed, our eyes closed and hope that things potentially turn out on our wedding day to our liking. We asked for a floral sash, something pretty and feminine to complement the bouquet. Instead we got a full tropical grass sash that is typically what men in Hawaii wear on their wedding day. It was very masculine and completely out of place with the rest of the wedding florals. It looked nothing like the inspiration pictures she showed us. The day of our wedding I didn’t see her until 20 minutes before I walked down the aisle and the first thing she said was, “I’ve been texting you and you haven’t responded”. (I had given my phone to my sister so I wasn’t answering emails as I walked to my future wife). It was a very strange greeting on such an important day. No “How are you feeling? Things are going to be great!” Just a no nonsense and honestly kind of rude vibe which personally made me feel uneasy prior to walking down the aisle. My wife had a similar experience as well with her first interaction on wedding day. She seemed annoyed the entirety of the wedding. She told us two days before our wedding that she would be leaving at 6pm. That would have been the very middle of our cocktail hour since our wedding started at 5pm. It was confusing that the person paid to coordinate the day would be leaving an hour after the event started. We told her we would like her to stay later and she obliged but then put a passive aggressive post on instagram about how she had to “stay late” at a wedding. Our wedding day timeline had issues as our wedding performer didn’t know what time or how many performances she was supposed to be doing because multiple timelines were sent including one a couple hours before the wedding started. We were informed of the issue and it stressed us out as that should be something your day of coordinator handles. The largest chunk of money that we paid to one vendor, besides the wedding venue, went to K Hancock Events, so to put such an investment on something only to have most parts of it fall through were truly heartbreaking. We chose her based on what we saw and really liked on her instagram and her reality tv floral show that she was a contestant but we didn’t get what we expected. Having one person do multiple jobs (i.e floral design and coordinating) seemed to all get lumped together and not treated as individual job assignments. This review was really hard to write because we wanted all of our vendors to be either female, lgbtq+ or poc, so we took the vendor selection process very seriously. This was a wild disappointment for us but we wanted to be honest about our experience.