Bridezilla

I am ashamed to admit that I think I have had my first (and hopefully last!) bridezilla freak out. Now that we are getting close (3 months today!) I think I'm just starting to get nervous about having everything done on time. So, what was my bridezilla moment? I fired one of my vendors! Seriously, who am I?

Here's the story. Back in October I found a lady out of California that I contracted to do our invitations. I found her on a wedding website and figured she must be reputable. She did custom designs and her prices were unbeatable. I was really excited to work with her. In January, I contacted her for a timeline so I knew when I could expect to see some designs. She let me know that she would have 4 designs for us to choose from by mid May. Well, mid may came and went and I hadn't received anything. I am a very literal person. If you tell me mid May, then I fully expect mid May. I gave her another week and still nothing. So I emailed her asking when I could expect to see something. She apologized explaining that it's busy season and they were a couple weeks behind and she'd send my designs that week. Ok, fine. I finally got the 4 design concepts at the very end of the week, the end of May.

I was happy with the 4 concepts she designed and we chose one, but wanted her to make a couple of revisions. According to the timeline she had given me this process of finalizing a concept should take no longer than a week. A week came and went and I didn't hear from her. At this point I was really frustrated. It is one of my biggest pet peeves when people do not respond to emails. Especially with something like this! I didn't even know if she received my revisions. Finally she emailed me back and said sorry again for the delay, but she'd been out of the office due to moving. Alright, lady. Enough with the excuses. I know it's busy season and you obviously have too much on your plate, but in my opinion it's very unproffesional to miss deadlines that you have set and just kind of blow it off. I felt like this was not a priority to her. She swore she would have the final revision to me that night or the next morning. Which would have been this past Monday morning at the latest. Guess what? 2 days later still nothing!

So call me crazy, call me bridezilla, but I just had enough and was getting worried that I wouldn't have enough time to get the invitations to our caligrapher and then sent out on time. So I fired her. I let her know that I was dissapointed in her customer service, lack of responsiveness, and failure to meet deadlines. She responded saying we were still ahead of the game and they had a fast print turnaround. That's all good and great, but doesn't change the fact that she was not meeting the deadlines that she set for my particular project. She refunded part of the deposit and that was that.

I do feel bad about it and maybe I overreacted a bit. But I just found her service unacceptable. Luckily, Jason's co-worker and friend, Courtney, is going to take over designing and printing our invitaions. She did our Save the Dates so I know she will do a great job and I'm excited to work with her. I'm a lot more comfortable and confident in her and it helps that she's here in St. Louis. We are meeting Monday to go over things. She is awesome for taking this on last minute!

So, lesson learned. Don't hire a vendor off the internet that you really know nothing about and lives across the country. My dad tried to warn me about this, but of course I didn't listen and now I'm hearing the "I told you so." You were right, Dad. I admit it ;)