Tide The Knot Hawaii

Pains me to do this because the owner seems like a very nice person. My fiancé and I found her company through google. We were looking for companies that were able to offer small wedding ceremony packages. We also wanted to find someone that can help us arrange a small casual reception afterwards, which many companies who specialize in wedding ceremony packages didn't do. So when we found this company, we decided to contact them and see what they can offer. We were initially very excited to learn that this company was able to help us with the reception portion. The owner also seemed very enthusiastic and experienced in the industry. Even though we were envisioning a much smaller and less expensive wedding, the owner managed to convince us to have a bigger and more lavish wedding than we anticipated, because she convinced us that she could "give us our dream wedding" within our limited budget. Slightly skeptical, we asked her if she could give us a predicted budget breakdown to see how she will pull off our wedding within our budget. However, our first mistake was to sign a contract with her before she gave us this budget prediction, because she kept avoiding and delaying to give us this budget breakdown. This went on for months and she kept giving us excuses and avoiding the budget topic whenever we bring it up. If a planner can't even get it together long enough to put together a quote, how is she expected to plan a wedding? Another thing we found odd was that she asked us to give ALL of our wedding money to her so that she can "take care of the payments from her end". Not once have I met a planner that does this.Our second mistake was to follow her venue recommendation, even though we know that this venue is slightly more on the expensive side, not realizing that this will blow our budget. After the venue was booked, that's when everything went downhill, as it turns out that we had to increase our overall wedding budget by 20+% due to many things we weren't made aware of. She also told us all of the sudden that her service fees have not been included in our budget. Shocked and anxious, we asked her how much her service is, because we didn't see any specific number for her fees on her contract. And of course, like the budget, she avoided answering our question about her service fees. By not being upfront about their service fees just shows how unethical their business practice is.Nonetheless, communication with her was a nightmare. As a bride, of course I would have a myriad of questions for her, especially about cost, vendors, and scheduling vendor meetings. 9/10 times none of my emails or texts were answered for weeks at a time. And whenever she reappears again out of the blue, she would never answer any of my questions. Instead she would have some ridiculous excuse on why she ghosted on us and say "I have a lot of information for you. Let's meet up in person next week to discuss". But why are you asking a meeting in person during a pandemic? She would disappear for such long periods of time for various excuses that we had to take initiative and do the majority of the planning process ourselves, which defeats the purpose of having a wedding coordinator in the first place. If you're too busy, at least have the courtesy to let us know rather than ghosting your client.So with all of the drama and frustration that we had to go through in the 4 months working with her, we decided to terminate our contract with her. Take note that we have sent her multiple emails explaining our frustrations with her over the course of two months. But of course, she didn't answer or respond to any of my emails or address any of my concerns or frustrations. When we decided to fire her, we sent her a very long email detailing everything that was frustrating us, from the budget management to her poor communication. And her response? She didn't even apologize or acknowledge any of her mistakes and said something like "Since your wedding is still really far away, I need to work on weddings that would bring me income right now. I have worked very hard on your wedding for the short amount of time we've been working together...". Take note that at this point the only thing she has done for us is booking the venue. And how rude can you be by telling us we're just another unimportant source of income?I'm writing this review on Yelp because she only has very biased reviews on her website and nowhere else. Skip the headache and go with other companies if you don't want to go through the same thing that I did.TL;DR: claims she's experienced and organized but the complete opposite, VERY slow to no communication, mysterious service fee (read: shady business practices), didn't honor our budget, won't apologize or acknowledge mistakes, an expert at excuses & avoiding our questions

Wanted to let Kelli know that she did an awesome job putting out wedding together. She took care of everything from helping me with my dress, organizing, decorating, ordering, picking up, caterers and photographer. It was an amazing and beautiful wedding on the beach with an awesome reception to follow. Food was delicious. Due to Covid, it was just immediate family and every comment was about how amazingly beautiful it was. Kelli was very helpful, patient and full of wonderful ideas. We're glad we found her and Pastor Mark. Would definitely recommend Tide the Knot.