At the end of September I was contacted by a gorgeous couple from Switzerland whose wedding was being sabotaged by a venue coordinator.
They were in shock and utterly distraught as to what was happening to them when all they wanted to do was have the most fabulous time here with their family and friends.
When they realised what was happening they started trying to find more information about this person online.
Of course there wasn't any online footprint, not even a Facebook profile, but finally they stumbled across a 2016 article in the Confeti magazine all about this person, how she had been ripping people off including a lot of wedding suppliers at that time.
They contacted the Confeti magazine who told them to contact me immediately to save their wedding. I knew of this person and had just three weeks to sort out a mess.
They told me it had been awfully stressful working with this 'wedding coordinator' on site at one of the beautiful venues here and I later find out, thankfully, they had organised a lot of their suppliers directly.
But alarm bells started ringing more when they contacted another one of the venues they were going to have a welcome drinks at to finalise the details, guest numbers, etc.
They had paid a deposit to this 'coordinator' in February to secure the venue for their welcome drinks.
You can guess what is coming next, the venue didn't have any details or deposit of their event.
They then started checking what else had been paid directly to the 'coordinator'.
Hotel room booking deposits paid to her by their guests, no rooms were booked.
The Nanny service during the wedding to look after 15 small children, again they had paid the deposit to this person, thankfully she had received it but you can imagine their stress and anxiety was going through the roof.
What I found disappointing was one of the companies involved were extremely difficult to deal with, the main hotel where most of the guests were supposed to be staying. I visited four times in person.
The hotel was vague, couldn't just confirm the rooms booked but we found out despite having rooms available for 2 of the nights they didn't have as many as needed for the third night. We actually overheard a conversation between the 'I am just the wedding planner groups booking person, to one of the hotel receptionists telling her to just try to get rid of us!
With just two weeks to go until their wedding the groom flew here and stayed at this hotel, he was also none the wiser, can you believe this!
In the end we resolved it by just coming clean with the guests and realised most of them had smelt a rat and hadn't booked via her, thank goodness.
However one guest did cancel due to the hotel booking disaster which I thought was sad.
My other surprise was the owner of the venue blocked me, I was taking over this wedding and needed information but realised she had little control over her 'coordinator' and was apparently upset.
Then the worst email was sent to the couple two weeks before telling them the villa rental had been terminated. As suspected, this person had control over the venue's email system and was using it.
I couldn't believe such a weird email had been sent and when I jumped onto a zoom with them it was heartbreaking to see the lovely bride be so flattened and watching her dream wedding being technically 'cancelled'.
I explained to them they had a contract in place, they hadn't defaulted on it and therefore the contract couldn't be broken just because this person realised the net had closed in and was using the cancel culture to get rid of them.
We realised this email hadn't come from the owner so I drafted a reply they used to explain the contract was valid, it couldn't be cancelled otherwise they would sue for compensation.
By this time they had paid off the top of my head about 11k and weren't about to lose this too.
Finally we received an email from the venue owner and they paid the balance and it was confirmed with the final rooming list sent. Can you believe my clients were asking me questions such as what do we do if we turn up and they don't let us in 🥹
We would have called the police and had the contract ready to show them.
I had to dig very deep and fight tooth and nail to save their wedding, we called it the 'Swiss Wedding Rescue Mission'.
Thankfully I do have a sense of humour and as this whole saga went on so did the couple, they were so pleased to have me fighting in their corner and despite the awfulness and complete stress I was managing to bring some light and relief into the situation they were in.
They should never had been in this situation to start with which is what angers me the most.
We had little jokes going about the awfully difficult hotel, I am just the wedding planner bleat and don't do the group bookings, so who does the group bookings, the wedding planner.... circles and circles. Now when we drive past we call it the 'I am just the wedding planner hotel'!
The next week I spent contacting all the suppliers, creating a timeline that had never been done and finalising the details with them.
I focused on taking their minds off their problems and made them concentrate on their amazing wedding day instead.
When they arrived and were safely in their venue I spent a lot of time beforehand popping in and making sure I knew every detail. It was sad to see their parents, particularly her mother well up in tears when recalling the stress it had caused everyone.
The day was a success, everything else was a success but of course their memories are blighted by the horror of having their wedding sabotaged so brazenly by this sadly well known person for the wrong reasons on the coast.
Three days later they were in the local police station filing what we call a 'denuncia' here in Spain. I had advised them to go and they spent hours with the police compiling all the evidence and timelines of deposits paid, dates, what should have been booked, the attempt to cancel their contracts, etc.
How someone can do this to a young charming couple I have absolutely no idea.
Sadly the way this person operates, and has done for years, is she 'pops' up at venues, she is of course utterly charming, as scammers are, charms the venues into thinking they don't have to do anything if she is on board and then quietly starts her scams.
At first it will be to scam the suppliers, she will take the balance payments off the clients promising to pay the smaller suppliers on the day, they of course don't receive them.
On this occasion she had obviously decided to get braver and take money off the clients and their guests and not book what was agreed, how she didn't think she wouldn't get found out is beyond me, hence the trying to cancel their wedding venue booking.
So my one tip to you, especially if you are a supplier, is do your homework. If you cannot find out anything about them online ask yourself why. My couple realised this when they started trying to search for this person online.
Scammers are charming, don't be sucked in and check them out, they can disappear without a trace, she has done before.
I have had a few people contact me over the years trying to find her including supposedly a niece of her sister.... the sister was ill and presume dying but they couldn't get hold of her 🤷♀️
There will be no internet fingerprint on them at all, no Facebook, a tiny let's not be seen Instagram account purely because they have to have something to show some sort of credibility.
Ironically what you will find is blog posts and articles about them, the blogs that were created previously as they were so angry about being scammed, these last on the internet forever and there are a few about this one, from ripping off a priest, a cake maker, she ripped off a florist friend of mine and since I posted this into a private wedding suppliers group on FB I realise she has ripped off so many more of the wonderful suppliers I know and work with. In particular targeting the newer suppliers here.
Sadly they all felt stupid and didn't shout out about it at the time. Yet she was ripping off so many, they had no reason to feel stupid at being caught out.
It only takes one person to ruin the reputation for all the hard working suppliers in the wedding industry here hence the reason I have written this post.
If you are a supplier and have been taken for a ride let me know as it is time to do some more features in the press.
For the purpose of this blog post no images relating to weddings or venues here have been used, just a generic Wix photo.