When we first contracted with Jess we were very excited about the detailed level of service that she stated she offered for wedding planning. And in the first few months things were great, but as time went on we started to see concerns. There w...ere several months when items were committed but received extremely late, and often only after repeated prodding. And when that had reached a point of frustration Jess did offer a $200 discount off her rate, but our assumption was that her service level would return to what was committed but that did not happen.
That then led us up to the weekend of my wedding (10/2), which started with her being over 20 minutes late to meet us in Knoxville to pick up decor items I needed to finish. We were hoping that was going to be an isolated event but unfortunately it was not. Jess was then 30 minutes late to the rehearsal on Friday (which she had planned), which left us with 30+ individuals (including grandparents) standing outside waiting on her arrival, her response, which she had used on other occasions, was “pregnancy brain”.
On Saturday we were hoping that things would be much more organized but they were not. When it was getting close to time for the ceremony there was little to no direction provided by Jess to the wedding party on where to go, when to line up & how to proceed. The mothers were all left wondering where they needed to be and wandered out into the parking lot once they saw a procession of grandparents being led across the lot. No one was managing the procession to ensure things were going smoothly and that the bride wouldn't be seen early. Additionally, there was no direction of where the bride, groom, wedding party and parents were supposed to walk to after the recessional.
No one adequately cared for the private dinner for the bride & groom, as committed, therefore it was entirely missed. Then at the reception there were tables where there were no knives or napkins present, and the small plates did not get put out with the cake table. Party favors and photo booth pictures were overlooked, which meant those items weren't taken by guests thus missing out on the whole intent for those items. And at the end of the evening, while I know everyone was likely tired, my family & parents friends were trying to help clean up and Jess’s reaction of being short, curt, and even in some circumstances disrespectful was really disappointing.
To put in reference, my husband and I did try to address these issues with Jess post wedding before writing this review. But not to our surprise, she decided to blame “pregnancy brain” and other vendors involved in the day such as the DJ for not making announcements she told him, the photographer for directing us differently to ensure we got our couple photos, the food catering for not having things set up to make plates for us, and even her day of assistant for missing the plate set up. Overall, our experience with Jess was extremely disappointing.
We realize our review seems to differ quite significantly from the experience I have read of others. I am not sure why we did not receive the same quality of service that others did. As stated, we did contact Jess about these issues and she agreed these things did occur.