Wedding Le Rêve – Rome Italy

My husband and I were extremely and utterly disappointed with the service we received. Given her many years of experience, we thought she would do a stellar job at organizing our special day. Sadly, this wasn't the case.

With respect to the lead-up to the wedding, here are some select examples of our experience:

- As a general comment, the entire planning process was driven by us, and Elisa had extremely limited input. While the primary service she was employed for was “planning”, we effectively planned the entire wedding ourselves. Unfortunately, her fees totaled nearly €8,000 (including IVA) and we feel that amount was not nearly reflective of the service provided. In fact, we would have preferred to not use her as she only added stress and disappointment to our planning process.

- Elisa was horrendously disorganized, which, as someone who has many years of experience is frankly shocking. We would expect that a wedding planner should, at the very least, be organized. Sadly, this was not the case. By way of example:

- We asked her to create a detailed run of show. What was provided to us was such an overly reductive attempt that it became comical. For your reference, we had to spend many hours preparing something with the level of detail befitting of a healthy six figure wedding, in which guests traveled across the globe to attend.

- She was very forgetful and and we had to consistently remind her of details previously discussed and timelines to meet. We felt compelled to arrange weekly calls with her in the lead up to the event just to keep her on track.

- In October 2024, we organized a trip to Rome to meet with vendors and conduct tastings, etc. Sadly, Elisa did very little to coordinate that and it was left to us to arrange meetings with vendors individually. Also, all of the notes she should have been taking during these appointments were never shared with the vendors and we had to do double the work ourselves.

- We had a welcome event the night before the wedding. Elisa had next to no input on that event, despite being contractually committed to providing services in relation to such event.

- Elisa was unprofessional, rude and combative towards us on multiple occasions. By way of example:

- She became angry with us on a call, completely losing her cool.

- Some basic requests, such as following up with vendors or checking in people at the venue for security purposes were met with rude responses.

- She constantly made comments about her other clients, referring to them as “difficult brides”. We can only imagine what has been said about us.

With respect to the wedding day, some examples of our experience follow:

- Elisa was accompanied by 4 staff members who she kept referring to as her “friends”. We think that is probably an apt description considering how little work they did. It felt as if they were just there as a social event (more on that to follow), with the benefit of a free dinner. We note that her “staff” were not introduced to us, nor were they present with us. Given the integral nature of a wedding planner on the day of the wedding, we found this bewildering. We were constantly relying on our photographer to direct us on the day.

- Her staff did not monitor the movements of our guests. For example, my husband was not made aware that his mother and sister were arriving. He did not get an opportunity to greet them and instead he had to seek them out himself. Additionally, the run of show was not followed with some but not all guests being led to the ceremony area unnecessarily early, creating a division between our guests.

- We have received complaints from our guests that Elisa and her staff were not present enough and not on top of their job. For example, post-dinner, she and her team were all seated in the corner away from the action and talking with each other (while vaping). On several instances (at least 4), my husband had to leave our guests to speak with them for various reasons. Similarly, during the dinner, none were present.

- Elisa was also unprofessional to my father. My father kindly provided the wine for the event (wine that he produces for a living). Elisa had audacity to tell my father that she didn’t like the wine that was served. Such comments are wildly unprofessional and rude. Candidly, we are not even sure why she was drinking on the job.

- As previously mentioned, we provided a detailed run of show, the timing of which was agreed to be followed. Through Elisa’s inattentiveness, timing slipped over an hour behind schedule.

- We had prepared beautiful bomboniere for our guests to receive as a parting gift and as a memory of our event. Sadly, even with 5 staff members, the vast majority of our guests did not receive these.

In summary, we are not convinced Elisa has the skills needed to organize events of this nature, and if we had our time again, we wish we could have used someone with adequate competence. It has been the cause of so much stress for us throughout the planning process and not a day goes by without us experiencing regret for crossing paths with her.

Highly recommend Elisa (Le Reve) we hired her as our event coordinator for our wedding. It was the BEST decision we could have made.
Initially we had zero plans of hiring a wedding planner, because we felt that we could save more time and money doing it on our own. However, the ?LIFE? called over so a WP became necessary to save time and got what we really wanted on our wedding.
So Elisa did it, orchestrating everything on the day of the wedding, and making sure all our vendors got paid. We had signed up to find a location in Rome and an original theme, but she really offered more than that - she offered us reassurance and was extremely helpful in recommendations for additional vendors we hadn't considered. She was a great help and made our day so memorable and carefree.
I am so grateful for my own wedding planning experience and truly wish every bride to be the same on her special day.

I am still receiving phone calls, text, emails and FB comments about my party. Everyone thought my birthday party was amazing. Thanks to you my ?Medieval Theme Party? was a huge success. I so look forward to using your services in the future. Your professionalism and attention to detail did not go unnoticed.
Le Reve was well worth the investment!! Way beyond my expectation!!