Fresa Weddings Mexico
Kristee from Fresa Weddings resigned as my wedding planner 11 days before my 100 person wedding at Grand Coral Beach Club in Playa del Carmen. She resigned because my fiance (who is Mexican) was not willing to pay Kristee for the Grand Coral Venue costs, preferring to pay them directly. We had found GCBC and negotiated our food/drink package with them on our own and he wanted to pay the club directly as per his communication with them. We had told Kristee this from the VERY beginning as we'd decided on the venue prior to hiring her services. However, less than 2 weeks before the wedding, she demanded that we wire transfer her the full amount to pay all the vendors or she would quit. Rolando, being Mexican, and with a Mexican bank account, felt it was ridiculous to have to make wire transfers to Canada (Kristee's Account) and then have her transfer it to Mexico. All of it was making us very suspicious of why she was being so adamant about us paying her directly. . .was she going to take a cut from the funds? Was she inflating some costs? It all felt really nerve wracking and terrible. I agreed with Rolando not to make the wire transfer of over 20K to Kristee- and she QUIT! Leading up to this awful moment, she had been really flaky- sometimes she would email back right away, sometimes she would email back with partial answers. Spelling, grammar, clarity were all wanting in the communication, but usually I could gleam what she was trying to say from her emails. However, trying to get her on the phone was next to impossible despite the fact I was offering to call All the Time!
Before the awful moment where she quit, there were MANY other times when I lost faith in Kristee and wasn't sure how to proceed, but as a bride planning a 100 person wedding in Mexico, I wanted to have an advocate on the ground and was reluctant to fire her as we'd already paid $500 as a retainer for her services. A prime example of her sub par wedding planning was that I had sent a thorough brief to her regarding exactly what I wanted included in the wedding and asked her to provide a quote based on this information. 8 weeks later, I still had NO quote! She went to Canada for around 6 weeks and was rarely, if ever, available. I asked her to show me linen options and she sent me awful photos that looked nothing like what I was requesting and tried to "convince" me that I needed to do her option as it was the only thing I could afford.
I had a budget (around 20K for the wedding event) that was MORE than enough for an amazing wedding in Mexico and Kristee kept making me feel like it was completely inadequate. She tried to push me into options like a "welcome juice bar" for $4 per person when the venue was more than willing to serve fresh lemonade and juice to guests upon arrival. She tried to charge me $3pp for late night Chilaquiles when it was ALREADY INCLUDED in my quote with Grand Coral.
One of the WORST things she did was regarding hair and makeup. I had asked her who she would be contracting for hair and makeup and after about 4 emails to get the names, she finally sent the names of Yukatan Brides. When she resigned, I found their info and contacted them to see if they would still be willing to do hair/makeup for me and the bridal party. The lovely people at Yukatan Hair informed me they had let Kristee know they weren't available for my wedding. So Kristee was going to have someone I had never heard of, never checked the portfolio of, had no idea about DO MY HAIR & MAKEUP for the MOST important day of my life!!! I can't imagine how it would have turned out as my MIL and SIL had their hair done by a local vendor and it was AWFUL! I am so glad I found out in advance and was able to book Fernando Fuentes from Makeup Pros and my hair/makeup turned out amazingly well.
In fact, my entire wedding turned out amazingly and well under budget. Every vendor we hired on our own did an incredible job at a fraction of the majorly inflated prices Kristee was charging. For example, transporting our guests from PDC to the venue cost around $250 instead of the over $600 Kristee was charging.
On a side note, I recommend to any Grand Coral brides that they just work with Luis and Alejandro directly as they ended up coordinating everything and my wedding was a flawless, gorgeous, amazing experience blessed with love and so much happiness.
I hate to have to write this review, but I want future brides to know that they should not waste their time and money on Kristee. She is super friendly and sweet and makes it seem like she's going to help so much, but she will make your wedding more expensive and much more complicated than it needs to be. Feel free to PM me for any recommendations on how to do it on your own. If you do it at Grand Coral, you aren't on your own, they can totally take care of you and I also have another contact who is an amazing, professional Mexican wedding planner named Amelia who blows Fresa Weddings out of the water because she gets great deals and owns a lot of her own decor.
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