If I knew the events that happened leading up to my wedding, would’ve happened, I would have never gone forward with the Hellenic Center. I gave them 2 stars because through all the chaos in having 3 different wedding coordinators, Deb did acco...mmodate us...however I was reminded that this is not how it goes and they were doing us a favor and to not advertise that this was previously promised to us. It was uncomfortable to be quite honest. I expressed my gratitude for them accommodating but it’s not my fault that there was a change in management.
To start, we worked with Tamie. I moved forward with The Hellenic Center because of her longevity with the venue. After seeing Tamie in action when a wedding took place, I knew she’d do everything in her power to make sure my day was perfect for us. I one day emailed Tamie only to get an auto-response from someone new, Linda. She was terrible. After a month or so of dealing with Linda, we got another coordinator about 2/3 months before our wedding day.
Things were fine up until the day before and day of the wedding. When I showed up with all my stuff, Deb was asking me where everything should go. When I originally spoke with Tamie she said she’d take care of all the decorating unless I specifically wanted something somewhere. I told her I wanted ALL the mantels decorated with the candles, along with the signs put out that I bought. I had also asked that the 4 long tables have many candles on them. The day of the wedding, I arrived to 4 bare tables, without candles and one bare mantel. I even had guests tell me it was a missed opportunity not to decorate that mantel.
Not only did I come back to find that the lack in decorations but my cocktail hour was all over the place. The cocktail hour was supposed to be outdoors. It had rained that day but stopped by the time we got there. My guestbook, seating arrangement and card box were outside while the hor d’oeuvres were served inside. There was ZERO direction for guests when they arrived. Some just walked in the front door, some walked around the side, no one knew where to go until our best man jumped out of point guests in the right direction. Because most walked in through the front door, they didn’t get a chance to see our guestbook. With 167 guests we only ended up with 15 messages. Guests couldn’t find where they were sitting because the cocktail hour was inside while my cardbox and seating chart was outside. Most guests were confused on where they were sitting because again, there was 0 direction and the logic of having the seating chart outside while everything else was inside didn’t dawn upon our guests.
There was zero supervision on the cardbox. Guests searched for my mom to let her know the box was full and it had to be emptied out. My mom connected with Deb on this she said she’d put the cards in her locked office. We had some guests arrive late and they had cards they gave us, we couldn’t find Deb but when we tried to get into her office we did so without a problem, it wasn’t locked and we came to cards all over her office. We are also missing a handful of cards to this day. It could very well be that guests came without gifts but my immediate thought is that it was probably lost somewhere in the office since there were cards scattered around the office.
All in all, we were disappointed with our experience. One thing I can say, is that we partnered with Vinwood through the Hellenic Center and the food was AMAZING! Guests raved about it.