Fairy Tale Dream Events by Monica - Chicago, Illinois

Paxton S.

Ghosted us and took our money. We're having to bring Monica to small claims court for $1500 she promised to refund after repeated failure to deliver and poor communication. This has ironically been the most stressful part of planning our wedding.

In December 2022, my fiancé and I reached out to Monica on The Knot about full wedding planning for our Chicago event. Our initial conversation with her was promising and we were excited to have Monica on the ground in Chicago (we’re planning remotely from Seattle). She shared her pricing with us and even offered a discount if we booked before the end of the year; in retrospect this sort of pressure tactic is a red flag.

With the contract signed, we were motivated to get started, but unfortunately the issues were immediate.

Our first order of business was choosing a venue, we had even narrowed it down ourselves to three we really liked. We asked for help weighing the pros and cons of each venue and what the approximate total costs might look like. Monica promised to follow up with details. Unfortunately, what we could’ve done ourselves, took weeks to deliver and came nowhere near answering the questions we asked. We gave this feedback to Monica and hoped to see an improvement going forward.

While we continued to wait for what we were promised, we were under increasing pressure to make a decision and ultimately we had to make an uninformed decision and move forward with a venue. Before signing the contract, we shared it with Monica to see if there was anything we should take note of, but she replied it was fine. After we read the contract more carefully we noticed several issues, including discrepancies in cost and stipulations we weren’t made aware of. Had we taken Monica’s word, we would’ve overpaid and been surprised later in planning. We discussed whether we should cut our losses and forfeit the contract, but Monica assured us things would improve.

This, sadly, was a theme throughout the rest of our experience. Despite much patience on our part, we repeated a similar experience selecting a caterer. Communication was slow, often going days between email responses, and even then the replies were rarely sufficient to make progress. We felt like our wedding planning was creating more work and stress for us than alleviating it. A final attempt to share detailed feedback and expectations, did nothing to improve the situation and so we finally agreed to part ways.

As part of severing our ties with Monica, we agreed to receive a partial refund for the time spent up until this point. A full two weeks, and several unanswered emails later, we were asked to wait an additional two weeks for the refund. Despite wanting to put this behind us, we're understanding, so we agreed. Unfortunately the agreed to date was missed, our emails and texts ignored, and it wasn’t until two months later we received only 1/3rd of the agreed to refund with a promise to return the rest ASAP.

We’ve continued to reach out to Monica for the balance of $1500 and have yet to hear back. We’re sad that it’s come to the point that we have to travel to Chicago to take Monica to small claims court to resolve this issue. This is perhaps the worst experience we’ve had with a professional in any industry and all we can hope to do is recover our money and warn others to avoid falling into the same trap we did. Our experiences with our new planner has been spectacular. Please do yourself a favor and look elsewhere.

Stephanie B.

I hired this company to plan my wedding, in-full, from the winter-summer of 2022. Shortly after we signed a contract with them, a legal dispute broke out between them and my wedding reception venue. Planning the wedding from that moment onward was incredibly difficult. This planner was slow to respond to my requests throughout the entire time we worked together. Furthermore, she complicated issues when, for example, she provided to me completely incorrect information from a florist and created more work for me when I had to switch back to the original florist we preferred. I ended up finding many of our vendors on my own because this planner was not pro-active and was not referring me to vendors who were within my budget. I designed my own website and invitations, and I got my DJ, hair/makeup, and linens completely on my own. Then, on the day of the wedding, very little went as planned. When we arrived at the reception venue to take personal photos, just an hour before our guests were set to arrive for cocktail hour, very little was actually set up. I was heartbroken. Then, as the set-up continued in a rush, things were not set up correctly. A beautiful mirror we had paid for to display the dinner seating table arrangements for our guests was never set up. So, my guests had to find out where they were sitting from a few understandably panicked employees of the planning company, who were verbally assigning people with table numbers. I later found out that many of the assignments verbally provided were wrong. For example, husbands and wives were seated at different tables during dinner. I also later found out that many guests received the wrong entrée and not every seating arrangement had a favor present. These favors were cultural pieces that my mother and I hand-made. Many of our guests never received one. The seating arrangement situation was truly a complete disaster. It was incredibly embarrassing. Other tangible items were also set up incorrectly. Despite all of these things being agreed to ahead of time, none of them happened, correctly: Free parking was provided for our guests, but confusing signage was posted, so many of them parked in the wrong lot and almost got towed. Our DJ was asked to make an announcement during the dinner and dancing hours, encouraging our guests to move their cars. There was also no signage directing guests where to enter the facility, so many of them came in through a back “kitchen-like” door and never viewed our welcome floral display. Our cake table (which had a special family display on it) was not where we wanted it, so very few guests got to see it. A video that I made for my husband and guests never aired. This was particularly emotional and devastating. Many, many things went wrong both in preparation for and on our actual wedding day. The owner of this company did reimburse us some money before the wedding day, but has not taken any accountability or refunded us anything to compensate for the many mishaps that occurred that day. In short, working with this event planning company was one of the most horrible professional experiences of my life.

Cecilia R.