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.

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.]