Belle Soiree Events

My wife and I hired Merideth Bugbee with Belle Soirée Weddings and Events to be our wedding planner. We hired her for the full planning package. Here’s some background on us, we live in Houston and we were married in New Orleans. It was very hard to contact Merideth on the phone. There were occasions where Merideth did not return our phone calls or respond to emails. When we addressed this with her, she apologized and admitted that she needed to improve her communication skills. Unfortunately, there was little improvement. After we called her and left voicemails, days would go by before she would call us back. The flower vendor we selected, only had one slot open for our wedding weekend. Merideth dragged her feet in getting the vendor’s deposit info to us. She said to expect an email with the info. We had to email her twice before we got any info on the deposit. This made us worry that we were not going to get our top choice for the flower vendor. Her lack of communication will cause you to have to worry. She would often skip over questions we asked her in emails. In our discussions with Merideth, my wife brought up many things that should have been in the works at different stages of our wedding planning. But Merideth had not even started on these things. There were also tasks my wife and I completed, that our planner should have completed. In getting the Full Service planning package from Merideth, I do not believe we should have had to handle all communications for some of our vendors, but we had too.
The budget Merideth created did not include many things. Merideth said most couples just pay for those things out of there pockets as they are planning the wedding. Hotel rooms for us, groom’s clothing, transportation from the wedding, and postage were significant amounts of money. They were not included in our budget. We realized this after the budget had been made. So our budget did not include the total cost of our wedding.
Merideth was also unorganized. We paid the wedding venue to serve passed beignets to our guests during the reception as a late night snack. Merideth was aware of this because she reviewed the contract we signed with the venue and attended the tasting when we made menu selections. The chef forgot to serve the beignets. This was the chef’s mistake. However, as a wedding planner it’s Merideth’s job to ensure that things we’ve paid for, are executed correctly. Due to her disorganization and lack of attention to detail, she totally forgot about the beignets.
We also planned to have our guest, light sparklers for our exit from the reception. Merideth told us we could not use the sparklers as we were exiting our reception. We were very disappointed we did not get to have the sparkler send-​off. My wife was really excited about pictures of us exiting the reception and our guests with their sparklers. This was just wasted money. So her disorganization will lead to you not getting everything you have planned with your wedding.
We also discovered that Merideth drafted money from our bank account without our knowledge. When we initially hired Merideth as our wedding planner we signed a credit card authorization form. This credit card authorization form was used to pay the initial down payment for her services. However, after a few months went by we noticed that Merideth had drafted a large sum of money from our bank account without our consent. My wife and I immediately contacted her to find out why. After exchanging several emails about this she realized that she had forgotten to send us a copy of the payment schedule. Because we never received a payment schedule we didn’t know when we were supposed to make payments to her. Had she communicated the payment schedule up front, we would have known why large sums of money were being drafted from our bank account. Her business practices are sloppy and irresponsible. Luckily we always had enough money in the bank to avoid overdraft fees.
Here are some other notes about Merideth. She was also rude to the attendant, that was assigned to us by the venue, during the wedding. She also called me, the groom, by the wrong name at our wedding rehearsal. I also brought my own liquor to the reception. When I asked Merideth where it was after the wedding, she said «One of the guys picked it up.» My liquor was actually still at the venue and I picked it up 2 days after the wedding. She flat out lied about this.
I urge you to do your research and read many reviews. There are others who have hired Merideth, with reviews similiar to mine. Also her prices have gone up significantly since we hired her last year. So save yourself some money.
Her attention to detail is terrible and her communication skills are seriously lacking. She doesn’t have the skill set to be a good wedding planner. So save yourself some trouble and skip over Belle Soirée Weddings and Events for your event.