Do I have to tip this planner for this level of service? I feel like she's done nothing:
-On several occasions, most recently 1 month out from the wedding, didn't respond for weeks at a time, coming back and saying she was "sick" or "traveling and didn't have internet" with no heads up ahead of time.
-The only vendors she recommended to us were DJ and florist. We'd already chosen the venue, who recommended her in the first place. Catering, hair/makeup, photographer, and baker we found ourselves; she never recommended anyone for catering/baker.
-We didn't like the 3 DJs she recommended; when we received a separate recommendation by word of mouth and asked her about it, she claimed that DJ didn't do weddings and told us we had to reach out ourselves. We reached out and the DJ did in fact do weddings; we had to handle all the booking ourselves. She did help somewhat with booking the sound guy (who the DJ--not she--recommended).
-I sent her an entire moodboard of flower photos from Instagram. She recommended a florist whose portfolio was nothing like what I sent, and they sent a quote that just said the items "bouquet, centerpiece" etc. with no specific flowers listed. I had no idea how any of this worked, and asked her if they could be more specific about types of flowers, and set up a phone call with them, without her every explaining to me how important it is to choose based on the portfolio rather than trying to micromanage flowers and get them to change their aesthetic for you. We got on the call, florist couldn't do anything we were asking for, wasting everyone's time (florist's and ours). We went out and found our own florist that matched our moodboard and she said she could do what we asked for and it was perfectly fine.
-I asked her back in August to arrange a disco ball rental; she said she
was on it and then we never heard anything again. She said because we
didn't go with her florist she wasn't dealing with it. I had to arrange
it with our florist on my own 3 weeks before the wedding. She refused to take part in any discussion between the florist and venue in the logistics of setting up the disco ball, which required us moving the dance floor to a different spot. She had sent us a selection of layouts with no note on whether a disco ball could be installed in them; we had to change the layout choice via the florist when we learned the one we chose with her could not support a disco ball.
-Her photographer recommendations were also not the look we asked for; we had to go out and find one on our own via Instagram.
-She sent a run of show schedule doc over a month after she initially promised it (3 weeks out from wedding): all the scheduled times were wrong for everything after the ceremony onward - dinner, start of DJ, etc. This was not based on just word of mouth, but our written schedule on our wedding website and the vendor contracts, which stated the times clearly. She got it wrong when she could have just reviewed the documents (which she probably has not reviewed at all). We had to send a whole list of corrections, which I'm not sure she's even read (We are a little over 1 week out from the wedding now). We are going to have to go directly to the vendors to confirm all the arrival times ourselves.
-She's supposed to book shuttles for all the guests; the only way the venue allows people to get there. She hasn't yet.
-Our florist gave us a very expensive quote for candles, acknowledging that we might be able to find cheaper options. We saw that outside rental companies had candles for much cheaper. We asked her about how the price would compare factoring in labor costs for another rental company; she just said we "can't" do an outside rental company and to go with the florist. No explanation or response.
-She said nothing to us about advice for any additional rental items; we had to ask her if there was anything we were forgetting.
I think my wedding is going to be a Fyre Fest; every time I gently brought up some of these individual issues to the venue owner (like asking if she has any vendor recommendations) she would just say the planner could handle it and she had faith in the planner.
