Radiant Events

We worked with Rhea on a full planning package from summer ‘21 to summer ‘22. We live in London, UK but picked Skaneateles, NY as a destination wedding location. Some of the challenges we experienced may seem small, but they occurred consistently & ultimately meant we couldn’t trust Rhea. Across the process—and especially on the day of our wedding—little things came across as a lack of care, which hurts when you’re paying someone to help organize an event that means so much to you &your family. Examples of challenges: Attention to detail - Didn’t seek clarification when rehearsal dinner caterer changed quote from $25pp to $65pp until we asked her to go back to them & correct. Rhea was ready to have us pay more than double what we signed on for and I believe if we hadn’t raised concerns, she would have cost us an extra $1600 or left us without a vendor late in the process - DJ played wrong song for father daughter dance: I list this as something Rhea could have managed because the DJ had the wrong version at our preliminary review meeting, & I corrected him at that time. It makes sense to me that Rhea would have confirmed he had the right version prior to the dance, since she knew this moment was one of the most important to us - Day of table runners didn’t fit tables: Even though she told us repeatedly that goods &services were extremely competitive because of the pandemic, Rhea waited until only a few weeks before the wedding to order linens. We learned at the wedding, that either she hadn’t measured the tables or hadn’t been able to secure the right size bc the table runners were significantly shorter than the table on both ends. This looked sloppy & cheap. - We ran out of water multiple times on 89-degree wedding day: To me, this comes down to both coordination oversight &under delivering on day-of-services bc not only did we run out of water within hours but Rhea, who had an assistant on site with her, refused to send someone on her team to get more water (or order it) bc of the venue’s location. Since it seemed uncomfortable & unsafe to not have water available, my family made trips and had water delivered Vendor Management - Couldn’t secure wine list from alcohol vendor: When we signed on with our alcohol vendor—the only option provided— we were told they could provide wine &that we’d be able to select the wines served. After signing a contract &putting down a deposit, we asked to see a list of wines to pick from. The vendor didn’t have one, &said they couldn’t provide one, leaving us to figure out what to request on our own - Took 3+ weeks to confirm shuttle schedule: Because of limited parking at our venue, we had to have shuttles. Since we had people staying all over the area, we wanted to make a schedule available for guests. We asked Rhea to confirm times w the vendor &for over 3 weeks she said she was playing phone tag w them. As the ask stretched into a month, it felt like securing confirmation wasn’t a priority for her, even though it clearly mattered to us - Didn’t tell us she was going on vacation &would be offline for a week, 2 weeks before wedding. It was upsetting to find out unexpectedly she wasn’t available from an OOO email, especially bc we knew details like linens were outstanding My goal with this review is that prospective couples can align w her on expectations before signing a contract