Creative Ambiance Events Reviews
Reviews
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4.0 out of 5 rating
4.0 out of 5 rating
11 Reviews
80% recommend it
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Suzin J. Sent on 01/19/2023
Awesome teamwork in planning our wedding.
Dear Reader-Our wedding was on NYE and everything was perfect! The champagne wall is still being talked about by our guests! I tell you we trusted LisaMarie and her team and we are so glad we did. They were with us every step of the way in the planning and I cannot imagine doing it without them! There were so many aspects we forgot-OMG! But in the end we relaxed and enjoyed ourselves the entire day-which is unusual for us control freaks! Experience speaks for itself here! Our guests were amazed by the little details the team paid attention to, and so were we! Definitely worth their weight in gold! -
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Mb Hagan Sent on 12/09/2021
Daughters wedding
They transformed a barn for her special day… very attentive to every detail… from ceiling to floor! The fairytale wedding she always wanted! Thank you for such tremendous work and support on our big day! -
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![Catherine]()
Catherine W. Sent on 12/03/2022Fine flower, disappointing experience
Working with LisaMarie was difficult throughout. The flowers and decorations she provided were fine, but she was difficult to communicate with and underwhelmed us, including not providing the keepsake silk flower wrist corsages for our mothers. Furthermore, a month after I brought this to her attention, she told us that we owed her money and that she would not be fulfilling the terms of the contract, which stated that upon failure to provide a service, she would refund a pro-rated amount and release us from any further payment. When I quoted the contract in response to her request for an additional 4% convenience fee on top of the 4% credit card fee I had already paid, she told us that we had an earlier pick-up time and later start time than initially agreed on, though we had agreed on a pick-up time three months in advance of the wedding and our ceremony and reception were within our contracted time at the venue.
From everything I’ve heard, this was a particularly busy wedding season and we planned our wedding relatively quickly and tried to keep the budget small, so some of my experience might have been due to these factors, but even given these facts, I would not recommend this vendor.
I first contacted Creative Ambiance Events (CAE) by filling out their client intake form on May 23 (five months before our wedding) and booked a phone consultation through the online scheduler for May 25 at 6 pm. One of the reasons we contacted CAE was they had done events in the space before. I got two email reminders for this phone consultation, but apparently LisaMarie didn’t get any. I texted a few minutes after 6 pm to make sure I didn’t misunderstand our appointment structure and got a response via text over an hour later than LisaMarie hadn’t been notified of the appointment and would call in 15 minutes. She ended up calling me around 8 pm and apologized several times for the mix-up.
We got our proposal pretty quickly, by May 27. It was more than I had hoped to pay but it was within the industry standard. The cost was not itemized, so I only knew the total, including labor and taxes. LisaMarie included a picture of a cake stand, which we ended up not renting through them, rather than the sketch of the ceremony space she said she would send. I emailed back on May 31 to ask what the next steps would be. LisaMarie suggested an on-site meeting--we live in NH and were getting married in RI, so we asked if we could sign a contract without the on-site meeting. I didn’t get a response to this question, but she did send the sketch of the ceremony space.
Items included in the proposal:
-Bud vases and candles for 7 high tops.
-Pole on ‘aisle’ covered in a sheer white fabric.
-lights under fabric for cohesiveness.
-Edison style light strings strung on a 1d “maypole” display created by our workroom utilizing no hooks on pole or floor/walls per venue rules.
-Flower ‘boxes’ with daisies and larkspur and greenery/other fill flowers below along lights as backdrop for altar design. NOTE: to be reconfigured for reception after ceremony.
-1 bridal bouquet & other matching personal flowers: types & designs tbd
5 boutonnières
2 corsages (moms)
-1 Cake stand rental
& floral for cake
I emailed back on June 16 and agreed to an on-site meeting for July when we would be in RI for other wedding-related tasks. At this point, LisaMarie told me that there would be a $225 consultation fee for this meeting that had to be paid in cash at the meeting. She said she would send an invoice, but I did not receive one. The scheduling of this was a bit difficult because we were trying to get several things done on this day, including our cake tasting, but I suggested that a time between 11 am and 2 pm would work for us. LisaMarie scheduled our on-site meeting for 1-4 pm. I emailed back to ask if the full three hours would be needed, since the online notification with this time frame was the only information about the meeting I initially received, and LisaMarie told me that this was just for her information because it takes her an hour to travel and did not clarify the time. I did clarify that we would meet at 2 pm on July 22 and that I would confirm this a week out (the venue books up to a week out and couldn’t confirm availability for a meeting before July 15).
LisaMarie emailed us on July 8 to confirm the meeting and ask about a deposit. She acknowledged that she hadn’t created the contract yet and asked if we had any changes to the proposal. She also mentioned that it was important for us to reserve the date because CAE usually works with only one wedding per weekend. I emailed back on July 11 with what we wanted and did not want from the proposal. She emailed back that same day to say she would write up the formal contract and remind us about the consultation fee and to confirm the venue would be available for the meeting. She also asked me to put down a deposit but didn’t give me any suggestions on how I could pay a deposit without a contract (for reference, Creative Ambiance Events uses Honeybook; Honeybook allows vendors to take payment directly through a project portal or specify another payment method, such as Venmo or PayPal). I responded on July 15 that I would pay the deposit once I had a contract and LisaMarie emailed back the same day again requesting the deposit (without instructions on how to pay) and saying we could iron out the contract at our meeting.
The on-site consultation went fine. I confirmed our meeting when I heard back from the venue and LisaMarie checked in on the day of. The plan for the space didn’t change very much after the meeting; though we talked through some other possibilities, we decided the original plan was the best. It was good for us to get back into the space and take more pictures and I showed LisaMarie photos of bouquets I liked--many taken from her website and reviews. We discussed having a centerpiece flower in a jewel tone for my bouquet, such as a dahlia and we agreed that daisies and larkspurs would be used in the ceremony flowers (our birth month flowers). The ceremony flowers would be on the lanes for the ceremony and then moved to become decorations during the reception. LisaMarie did suggest that we add in a few small items that we weren’t very interested in, but we ultimately agreed because she seemed so enthusiastic and had done events there before. We agreed that CAE would provide flower petals for containers at the end of the lanes/aisles (our wedding was in a vintage bowling alley and each of the lanes had a post to tack up score sheets and bowls for pencils) and reserved signs for seating on the aisles; LisaMarie also suggested we ask about having more chairs put at the end of the lanes for all our guests (this was not possible for the venue). We paid the consultation fee in cash that day; I did not receive a receipt.
We got the contract on July 24 with the updated terms, which ended up being more expensive than our original proposal (since neither the proposal nor the contract included an itemized invoice, I don’t know how removing the cake stand, florals for the cake, and candles and adding the reserved signs and flower petals and upgrading the corsages for our mothers to keepsake silk flower corsages affected the prices). I responded on July 25 to ask about flower pick-up as I had forgotten to bring this up during our meeting--we were taking photos before the wedding at a different location. We went back and forth on this a bit to confirm that we would need the flowers between 9 and 10 am (when we were scheduled to start photos); LisaMarie said we’d work out the exact details closer to the wedding and asked about the deposit again. I signed the contract, paid the deposit, and explained I had waited in case this changed the price. Also, I didn’t notice this until much later, but LisaMarie never signed the contract.
Items included in the contract:
-Rose petals at the poles at the beginning of the aisle and Reserve signs on chairs as required for parents seats.
-Bud vases with white daisies for 7 high tops.
-Pole on ‘aisle’ covered in a sheer white fabric.
-lights under fabric for cohesiveness.
-Edison style light strings strung on a 1d “maypole” display created by our workroom utilizing no hooks on pole or floor/walls per venue rules.
-Flower ‘boxes’ with daisies and larkspur and greenery/other fill flowers below along lights as backdrop for altar design. NOTE: to be reconfigured for reception after ceremony.
-1 bridal bouquet & other matching personal flowers: types & designs tbd
5 boutonnières
2 corsages (moms), wristlets in silk flower keepsakes.
-Move benches and flowers after ceremony
I reached out on Oct. 5, 11 days before the wedding, to confirm the flower pick-up time. That same day we arranged for them to be picked up at our venue at 10 am.
I paid the balance of the contract on Oct. 9 via credit card after I received an automated reminder about the upcoming payment. This included a 4% credit card fee that was listed as a separate item (Honeybook does not automatically add credit card fees to invoices, but vendors have the option to do this if it is legal in their state). The full amount including the credit card fee was written into my contract. Payment was due on Oct. 16, the day of the wedding. I sent an email that day (a week before the wedding) to confirm the timing of the flower pick-up, the time available for set-up, the start of the wedding, when we hoped to begin the reception, and the end time. I also asked if anything else was needed from me and mentioned I paid the balance for services. I did not receive a reply to this email.
The day of the wedding was fine (in terms of the flowers; we enjoyed our wedding and loved pretty much everything else). Upon seeing the personal flowers, namely my bouquets, for the first time, I asked my brother if he’d picked up the correct flowers. My bouquet was white and cream roses with white daisies and some ferns on the outside and did not include any jewel tones or a centerpiece flower. When we got to the family photos before the wedding, we discovered that the corsages for our mothers were pin-on corsages with fresh flowers, rather than wristlets with silk flowers. We did get more boutonnieres than I expected. I wasn’t able to spend much time looking at the ceremony space before the wedding began because some of our guests arrived early, but during the ceremony and reception I noticed that there had been some changes to the discussed design. The pole that our officiant stood in front of (a structural feature of the venue) was not wrapping lights or sheer fabric, the flower petals were not in the containers at the end of the lanes, and the flower boxes with the ceremony flowers were put in a back corner for the reception. In no way did this “ruin” our wedding, but we did feel that the end result was underwhelming compared to what we had discussed. We did not give CAE a monetary tip the day of the wedding, in part because they left after removing the ceremony decorations on the bowling lanes for the reception, which happened after our we’d completed some of the initial reception activities and we had had to wait for this to be completed to take photos on the lanes and our guests had to wait for that to be finished to begin bowling. They did come back later to complete their breakdown of the event, but we were gone at that point.
I received what I assumed was an automated email the day after the wedding asking us to leave a review as they “would appreciate that as the best tip ever!” Since I had some questions about the changes in design and was disappointed that the corsages for our mothers were not what we had agreed upon, I sent an email on Oct. 19 to discuss these issues (one of my other vendors overheard me mentioning my concerns and suggested that we might receive an apology or small discount for these issues). I received a response that same day in which LisaMarie justified the changes. She also told me that she knew in advance that the corsages were incorrect: “I actually noticed that we were doing silk keepsakes after I had already made them. I ran out of time in our production to make it to Hope for your brother’s pick up (as they are time consuming).” Several of her responses made me question the notes she had taken during our paid consultation and experience with the venue. She did apologize about the corsages and my general disappointment, and she offered to make the keepsake corsages and send them to our mothers on Oct. 24. I accepted this offer the next day and provided our mothers’ mailing addresses.
On Nov. 17, I emailed LisaMarie back because neither of our mothers had received the promised corsages and I hadn’t heard anything from LisaMarie or CAE. I said that if CAE was unable or unwilling to make the corsages, we would appreciate a small refund. She emailed me back that same day to explain that someone should have been in touch with me as a shipment with the silk flowers was delayed and hence they had not been able to complete the corsages. At this point, she also introduced her claim that I did not pay a 4% “convenience fee” for paying the balance by credit card--I assumed this was just a misunderstanding. I emailed back the next day to clarify that I did pay a 4% credit card fee and I did get a little snippy about the fact that a shipment was delaying a service I had expected to be completed a month earlier. In her response later that day she told me she had “done dozens of weddings since your wedding” and that they “tend to use what we have” to complete upcoming orders since they are a “small shop.” She also said “the credit card fee was charged to you by the credit card company after the sale” and again said I did not pay the convenience fee. She continued: “I am guessing that you are not in business for yourself as I am sure that this would make much more logical sense to you. Every business gets charged for every transaction a convenience fee. Larger businesses are able to absorb these fees.” I am not in business for myself, but I have worked for small businesses and nonprofits that use credit card processors and I have reviewed fee structures for credit card processing. At this point, I was very frustrated with our interaction. I waited a few days to email back and quoted the “Failure to Perform Services” portion of our contract:
"Failure to Perform Services. In the event Vendor cannot or will not perform its obligations in any or all parts of this Agreement, it (or a responsible party) will:
1. Immediately give Notice to Client via the Notice provisions detailed in this Agreement; and
2. Issue a refund or credit based on a reasonably accurate percentage of Services rendered; and
3. Excuse Client of any further performance and/or payment obligations in this Agreement."
LisaMarie emailed me back at 9:06 pm that night:
“As I have already explained this situation has already been remedied by your failure to keep up your end of the agreement. We agreed to your insisting on your very low price budget in exchange for the savings of the credit card fees with your payment in cash on the day of. You went ahead and used the credit card so now the convenience fee is owed to us. Your earlier pick up time and later start time (without informing us btw) This balances out the cost of the keepsakes.”
This final email (I have not sent a reply) was the first time she had ever mentioned that our wedding started later than she expected, as well as the first time she implied that the pick-up time had been a problem or a discount, though I had delayed signing the contract in case it affected the price. I am very confused by the suggestion that our wedding had a later start time, as our contract clearly notes that the wedding began at 1 pm, which is also on our contract for the venue. Our ceremony likely started slightly later, 1:15 pm or so, but we had completed our first dance, mother-son dance, and father-daughter dance by 1:50 pm, so it couldn’t have been too late. Additionally, our wedding did begin at 1 pm as that was when our guests were there; some of our guests even arrived earlier during the set-up time (noon-1pm). She also ignored the fact that the contract she issued (though did not sign) excuses the client of any further payment obligations should a service not be performed to again insist that her convenience fee, which was not included in the contract nor invoice, was not paid properly. Finally, much like the deposit that she badgered me for earlier in the process, she has never suggested how I could pay an additional $75.80 to cover said fee, for example by adding it to the invoice on Honeybook, sending me information on paying it via Venmo or PayPal, or suggesting I mail cash to her home address.
It was a busy wedding season and I am sure many vendors are stretched thin. My wedding was small (60 guests and only four hours including the ceremony) and my budget went along with that. Perhaps the fact that LisaMarie was running for political office during this time affected my experience. While the flowers were fine, it was difficult to get in touch with LisaMarie and receive the information I needed to pay her and feel confident that my wedding was a priority for her and her business. When she failed to meet expectations, including failing to perform agreed upon services, she began grasping at straws to bully me into agreeing that it was a “wash.” I can only hope that if you use this company, they provide all the services expected, because there will be no recourse or resolution if they do not.Creative Ambiance Events's reply:
Your entire review drags on with no remorse for the time and goods you have stolen from us. Your wedding was scheduled to be a quick ceremony in a bowling alley with a tiny budget. You receive far more than you paid for as a courtesy for the venue. Start time was late and your late end time with dancing added without notice blocked us from cleaning up and leaving on schedule , and then you demanded refund for rose petals that were not put in the chalk bowls. We were not allowed by the venue to leave petals on the historic lanes. Seriously rose petals? Nevertheless as a nice gesture Instead I packaged them & extra up with instructions to your photographer to give those to guests for a great photo sendoff, or an elegant & romantic bath afterwards. We are professional, imaginative and courteous but for some reason you wanted to flaunt that you are both doctors, meanwhile being selfish and stiffing our hardworking staff of their hard earned pay. Honestly you should be ashamed. May your partner see through your antics. -
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