not so golden, after all

So this exploded all over Facebook yesterday:

 

(Click to enlarge images)

I didn't engage Peti Solek The Bridal Room and have never met or worked with them before (unless you count sponsoring my friend's gubahan trays with Pretty Chic by Peti Solek) but I've followed their progress for the last 2 years plus, I've had friends who engaged their services, heard only good things about them and I have a very good impression of them based on what I've heard, what I've read and what I've seen (their postings on Facebook have been friendly and funny + their outfits are very, very pretty!)

What I can deduce from this unfortunate exchange: Golden Moment Productions is a rude, unreasonable, difficult, nasty and unprofessional service provider who resorts to public shaming, undeserved sarcasm and vulgarities, and I wouldn't want anyone to consider or recommend their services to future clients based on this episode alone! They have obviously forgotten that now is the golden era of social media, and how you conduct yourselves on social platforms can make or break your business.

I don't care if their product is good because really, why settle for a bully who does good videos when you can engage so many other awesome companies who can produce good videos (some even better) AND get along well with other vendors? Why make your genuinely nice and hardworking vendors work with douchebags like that? 

Even their mightier-than-thou social media updates are such a turn off okay! Macam mana punya bagus je. Why would anyone in the right mind engage a service provider who is boorish and shows signs of being a total dickhead ni?

Peti Solek The Bridal Room kept their composure and tackled Golden Moment Productions' baseless attacks with intelligence, good manner and grace, in my opinion, and their civilized response only serves to heighten my level of respect and awe for the bridal company.

Seriously, Golden Moment Productions have much to learn from Peti Solek The Bridal Room in terms of good manners and professionalism! Nama company je Golden Moments Productions tapi perangai and tatasusila tak golden langsung. 

Pangkah!

enchanted wedding responds

And the saga on Enchanted Wedding continues on the front page of Berita Harian today:

[Click on images to enlarge]

To know what happened (if you don't know already), you can read this and this.

I wonder what the 'exclusive' coverage in the upcoming Berita Minggu has to say.

pengantins, beware!

The terrible story of the missing-in-action wedding vendor pretty much exploded all over social media this morning but in case you haven't seen or heard...

Enchanted Weddings is back at it again.

Conversation between the photographer and the bride, reproduced with permission.

You can also read more about the latest incident here or see pictures posted by the groom himself here or his video here.

I first wrote about this rogue wedding vendor here, and even took the trouble to scan, resize and upload the Berita Harian article written about them in my blog entry earlier this year. 

I figured - hard copy of the newspaper article gets thrown and forgotten a few days after, right? But an online copy of it stays forever and can be read by people who search for reviews on Enchanted Weddings online even after the initial fuss is over, right?

Apparently, and sadly, it seems like that is not how it works.

A common question that many have asked is this: Why is this happening again? What can be done to prevent this from happening again? How is it possible for Enchanted Weddings to do nasty again when their bad reputation has been splashed all over the news less than a year earlier? How is it possible for them to get clients? Don't people know the previous stories?

I don't really know the exact reason for this but I can only harbour a few guesses:

(1) Orang malas nak research. Never mind that a wedding is a big and special day for most pengantins. Never mind that a wedding involves tens and thousands of hard-earned dollars. Never mind that most of us in this country have access to the Internet, where information on almost every damn thing in the world is readily available. Orang just malas nak research. Seriously, all you need to do is do a Google search on Enchanted Weddings and all the bad reviews on them are contained within the first few hits. You don't even need to find and sit in front of a computer to do this. All you need is a smartphone or a tablet with working 3G/4G/Wifi and it can be done while on the go. The technology is there. Use it.

(2) Orang tak baca Berita Harian - their past incidences were already reported in Berita Harian earlier this year, on a two-page full spread article no less, but since some people don't bother reading the newspapers, the story might not have reached them.

(3) Orang masih boleh book them kat wedding exhibitions - Selagi exhibition organizers don't take a step towards actively filtering vendors with notorious reputations, selagi tu unsuspecting couples and their families will be exposed to the risk of mistakenly engaging them. Most people visit wedding exhibitions with the belief that the vendors participating in them are honest and legit - and 99.9% of them are honest and legit - but what happens when couples run into that 0.01% dishonest vendor? Once they put in their deposit, put in their payments and put in their faith up until the big day itself, there really is no point of turning back. Of course the onus is on the couples themselves to research about the vendors before committing (refer to Point No. 1) but errant wedding vendors shouldn't be allowed to step foot into an exhibition booth in the first place.

(4) Orang dah baca or dengar pasal Enchanted Weddings but still want to have faith in them - for this one, all I can say is: You take the risk, you prepare for the fall.

Thank you Bride Barista, for breaking this unfortunate news here earlier this morning, updating me with all the deets and providing the above screenshots via Whatsapp. Pagi pagi Ahad dah kecoh pasal cerita orang kejam sebegini... benci! 

To the pengantins and their families who were affected by this irresponsible and dishonest vendor, my heart goes out to you. I cannot even begin to imagine the pain, the loss, and the heartbreak this incident must have caused you but I hope God gives you the strength and will to get over it with much peace.

To everyone else... please, please, please be more careful when engaging wedding vendors and please do your research thoroughly. I can never stress this enough. Please.

impian anganku musnah... lagi?!

You all ingat tak my entries about Anggerik Impian????? Yang ini and yang ini.)

Nampak nampaknya dia dah buat lagi..........

(Source: Cozycot - Malay Muslim Weddings)

Very terrible and very frustrating to keep on hearing and reading such things, knowing this is not the first time it has happened. Dah lah, dah tak nak cakap banyak banyak and panjang panjang lagi lah ok, just consider yourselves warned maha warned.

enchanted wedding... terkena enchanted?

On 16 December 2012, Enchanted Wedding was featured in Berita Minggu's Mahligai section:

When I first read the article, I felt impartial - it is a well-known fact that some makciks pakciks sedara maras can be pretty unreasonable and difficult bila dah masuk campur hal ehwal majlis kahwin yang bukan dorang punya and comments and instructions dorang akan datang melulu tanpa diundang. But at the same time, even though I understand that sometimes what is requested will not be exactly the same as the actual final product, I also think variations and quality that are too far off from what pengantins want should not be tolerated. It's a classic 'he said, she said, they said' story so I didn't think much about the article after I finished reading...

And then, someone on my Twitter feed posted pictures of dais and decor allegedly done by Enchanted Wedding for a wedding reception last week:

   

I don't know about you but that looks like -  in the words of my major lazer bridesmaid Nina - macam Big Bird vomited all over seh! I refuse to believe any pengantin had requested for this preposterousness. 

And in case you haven't had the time to read Berita Minggu's Mahligai section today:

All I can say is - for as long as there are parties willing to take the risk with such controversial vendors, for as long as there are parties who do not do thorough research when it comes their special days involving thousands of dollars (even with the power of technology at their fingertips), for as long as there are parties who put in blind faith, there will always be victims' accounts and newspaper reports of irresponsible vendors who can and will get away with their trickery and substandard work, or worse, no work done at all. 

This kakak kahwin khronicles does not approve.

(Another report here.)

[Editted as at 29 September 2013: Looks like Enchanted Wedding has struck again. To read the follow up entry, click here.]

never ending story about Atira Weddings / Love Weddings

(Source: Twitter and Malay/Muslim Weddings Cozycot Forum)

Looks like the never-ending stories about Atira Weddings / Love Weddings International has surfaced again.

Blogged about this bloody wedding company here and here before and another bride-to-be blogger, Nuptial Nervosa also posted about this issue here before.

I cannot stress enough how important research is when it comes to something as momentous as planning a wedding. We're lucky to have internet search engines and social media platforms like Google, Facebook, Twitter, online forums and blogs in our era - search them, read them, utilize them - not all are reliable, but with overwhelming reviews, the right assessment and good old common sense, in shaa Allah you'll be able to steer clear of such unscrupulous wedding companies who are out to cheat your hard-earned savings.

impian yang musnah brought to you by anggerik impian

As an update to my earlier entry about Anggerik Impian:

And from one that just happened last weekend:

 (More details here and here.)

Kalau dah takde minat, dah takde hati dan takde resources nak buat decor untuk majlis kahwin, then retire sudah lah. Yang sebok menipu, sebok hancurkan majlis kahwin orang tu apesal?!

Jijik punya orang.

impian yang musnah (jiwang pe title)

Those who regularly read Cozycot Forum (Thread: Malay/Muslim Weddings) would have seen these postings on the forum last month:

 (Source: Cozycot Forum)

This struck a chord with me because a few weeks before the above postings were posted on Cozycot forum, one of my friends and his tunang told me about their negative experience with Anggerik Impian. I won't go into details since it's not my story to tell but essentially it involved pretty much the same bullshit: empty promises, unanswered calls and messages, bad attitude and lousy service, siap dengan threats being thrown at each other via Facebook. My friend told me that a few days after the showdown happened, he received private messages from two other couples who said that they had problems with the same wedding vendor as well.

I thought of posting about this on my blog - even had a draft ready! - but decided to withhold it first.

Until I received this email this morning:

SO TERRIBLE!!!!!!!!!!

My fellow comrades... you have been warned.

[Updated as at 24 October 2012 here.]