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Events by Evonne
2 reviews for Events by Evonne
Evonne Wong was the worst wedding planner I could have ever worked with. She was the MOST stressful part of planning our wedding.
I am giving only a few examples of our extremely unpleasant experience. I feel compelled to tell others about our experience so they can decide for themselves, but keep in mind that what is detailed below was our experience and our opinion only.
We lived in Santa Monica, and we hired Evonne based on meeting her when we were in Maui on vacation 1 year before our wedding. She seemed very nice at the time and touted her credentials. Biggest mistake we ever made. We had to pay 50% of her fee up front, which was over $1500, and once we did everything went downhill. From her taking 3 days to return urgent phone calls (I only called her 6 times in 11 months), to the many unacceptable vendors she recommended, we were in a constant state of stress every time we had to respond to an email or speak to her. My parents and my fiancé and I flew out for a special trip 7 months before the wedding to do tastings, meet with vendors, etc. First she said she only had 1 hour out of the 5 days we were there to spend any time with us. And when she finally met us, she had us meet her in a crowded, loud coffee shop and she was completely rude to my parents. We were shocked and embarrassed. We didn't say anything to her at that point because we had paid her a lot of money already and were hoping things would improve.
Our original agreement was that we only wanted her to recommend vendors to us and that we would do all the work. This was extremely important to us based on our budget. She said "no problem", but when the estimates started to come in much higher than we anticipated, we figured she must have been arranging kick-backs from the vendors she recommended to us. All of a sudden everything had to "go through her" because it was obvious to us that she padding all the estimates we got. We couldn't believe it.
Worst of all, most of her vendors were below par, and she only had a few that she considered "approved by her". What that meant was that she had personally met and/or worked with only the few that she had on her list. So there were many other vendors that we never even knew about because of her lack of connections. And I had already found 50% of the vendors on my own. Bottom line is that most of the ones she recommended were problematic. We also asked to have everything worked out 7 months before the wedding, so we wouldn't have to deal with things closer to the time. When we flew out to meet her vendors, we were blown away at how terrible most of them were. It was choosing the best of the worst at that point, because we were running out of time.
After heated discussions about the florist she recommended (because we were very worried about the quality of work), we ended up not being able to use this florist after seeing a mock-up of the worst arrangement we have ever seen in our lives. So 3 months before the wedding we had to start from scratch with a whole new florist.
Her cake recommendations were unacceptable, and we had to seek out our own cake maker, (Pat at Cravings Bakery who was terrific) and so on...
When she came to do our rehearsal with our wedding party, she was worthless. She had no idea what was going on. My parents asked her where they should stand and she said "it doesn't matter, just over there somewhere". Unbelievable. My fiancé and I ran the rehearsal at that point because she couldn't handle it.
The day of our wedding was truly shocking. My entire wedding party couldn't believe how little she did and her attitude. Our friends & family were running around doing everything, while Evonne, her "assistant" (who I had never heard of until then) and Evonne's husband sat on the patio and watched. So many of my guests commented on how terrible she was, and we were mortified. I've never met anyone so unprofessional in my life. Needless to say, just thinking about how horrible she was will always a bad taste in my mouth.
Lastly, she made us pay in full for everything 6-weeks in advance. At that point, our hands were tied since we were having a destination wedding. We've never heard of anyone having to pay in full until a service is performed. Ridiculous, but the chance she might ruin our wedding if we didn't pay in full was too great a risk to take, so we paid. We wanted to fire her months earlier and just hire someone for a "day of" planner, but we had already paid such a substantial amount of money and deposits. There was no recourse and we were completely at her mercy.
Horrible, horrible, horrible!
I would strongly urge anyone to not use Evonne Wong. She has no business in this business!
I hired Evonne last year to help coordinate my Maui wedding, a destination wedding. In that year, Evonne managed to make my dreams a reality. Excellent communication, expert local knowledge, absolutely on top of her wedding and event planning game. There is no way I could have had the wedding that I had without her to help me along the way.
