Luxe & Luna Event Design

As of posting this review, my fiancé and I have terminated our relationship with Luxe and Luna. I had two major issues with Luciana. However, I do not have enough room to write about both in detail. In summary, the first issue almost cost us an extra $1500 in rental furniture due to Luciana's oversight and the only reason it was caught was because I had a feeling that things were not adding up so I contacted the vendor myself. The second issue was the rental decor. In order to finish the design of our wedding we needed to acquire additional décor, Luciana found the items needed and let us know that the amount would be $1385 to obtain these items & paid to her. There were a set of plates in the décor that I loved and considered just buying for myself. I found these plates online and realized that we were paying Luciana the full purchase price. I emailed Luciana to confirm the process with the idea that maybe I had been confused and we were actually buying these items or maybe it was only the plates we were paying full price for. Luciana responded that we were paying full price because she also includes “total cost to acquire the pieces, storage fees to process and store items prior to the event, and delivery, set-up and breakdown of the pieces on the wedding weekend.”. This was odd because 1.) the set-up of décor, organizing and packing of décor is already included in her standard services of the wedding package we purchased, so we should not be charged again, but also 2.) I had been under the assumption that renting items with all the associated fees is cheaper than purchasing. I used the example of the furniture rental company to explain my point. She stated that she is in fact “not a rental company with a warehouse and a multi-piece inventory to manage and promote” and that the total cost will be the same whether rented through her or purchased outright by me. For further clarification, I reiterated that the model she is proposing to us gives us two options, either we “rent” the décor through her for full purchase price and she keeps it after the wedding (in effect buying décor items for her) or we buy the décor ourselves and keep it after the wedding. I also expressed that I felt her use of the word “rent” was misleading because either way we are buying items…it is just a difference of who keeps them. She insisted that we had different understanding of how renting works and that the major difference is who is responsible for the pieces. We agreed to go ahead and source the items ourselves. That way we could shop for deals, cut costs and keep the items since we have to pay full price either way. I no longer felt confident working with Luciana and wanted to terminate the relationship. I felt that we were paying too much money to have to check behind our wedding planner. In addition to the named issues, I felt Luciana had acted unprofessionally at times. A few instances of note; 1.) arriving to our first meeting at the venue late without notice, 2.) she showed up to the walkthrough with design plans that I had never seen before and it felt like she took control of the entire walkthrough 3.) when we would ask for clarification on certain things it would generally be met with annoyance, i.e. “we’ve talked about this like four or five times” (which was not the case). I felt like I was building her business instead designing my wedding.