Vanilla Brides

My wedding was on 3/19/23. I hired Vanilla Brides (VB) 11/2022. They were responsible by providing their licensing to my venue to be approved. Before ...I hired VB, I asked if they were able to provide that to my venue and they said of course and to be worry-free. 1 week b4 my wedding, my venue told me that they are waiting for VB to provide them with their licensing or I would have to find someone else. I contacted VB and they said they provided everything required except they did not. They are not licensed in the State of Florida. They obtained/provided their license to my venue the day of the deadline. I am leaving out multiple back and forth despicable communication with the owner and assistants. I was very stressed and crying thinking that I would have to find another photographer last minute. I'm on a budget. Photos are the one thing that I treasure the most and VB could not deliver.
-They showed up almost an hour late (I paid $199 extra for - & no refund)
-Alex was the main photographer. He showed up in a black T-shirt with a ghetto graphic design on the back. This was a semi-formal wedding. Alice was his asst. photographer.
-Both photographers kept disappearing. We had to continuously track them down to get them to take pictures. Found them outside smoking or relaxing doing nothing.
-Did not help with poses for photos.
-I didn't receive my photos until 11 weeks later. Recieved my photos that were dark, blurry and cut-off. Angles were not great. Grainy quality. They only had one camera/lens each. Photographers hired for a wedding bring at least 3. Some of my edited photos also have red dots.
-I requested to speak with the owner about my photos and she refused to speak with me.
-They would not refund me any money.
-I instantly cry when I try to comb thru my wedding photos because of how awful they are and that I cannot go back and redo them.
-They don't care about their customers, they care about money. The way VB treats its customers is grotesque.

Date of wedding: 03-19-2023

This company was removed from the knot and wedding wire for scamming clients and employees do not hire or work for them!! The owner Alice goes by mult...iple aliases. She harasses clients and employees. She doesn’t pay employees for the hours they work and doesn’t do the jobs clients paid her to do then will refuse to refund money. She is a scam artist, wannabe instagram model with fake followers @alice.yaro. She pays for fake reviews on here and Facebook and fake followers on her social media pages. It’s all smoke and mirrors do not work for or hire this company you’ve been warned!

Date of wedding: 08-14-2022

Despite being promised the names of my videographers and photographers 2 months prior to my wedding, I did not receive their names until a mere 18 day...s before the event. Also, despite being given an estimated timeline of 4-5 weeks for edited photos and up to 8 weeks for the videos, it took them a staggering 9 weeks to send the edited products. I also had to follow up on the matter 5 times before receiving the final products.

As a result of the ridiculous communication process before and after the wedding, and horrifying unprofessionalism on Vanilla Bride's part, I requested a partial refund RATHER than receiving the edited products (I requested this before the edited products were sent to me). They said I would not receive a refund of any kind in a dreadfully patronizing response.

The solution they did offer was an Instagram Video for the "inconvenience" however, I ALREADY paid for the Instagram video in my original purchase. It's clear that my dedicated Wedding Consultant, Natalia, had no comprehension of the package I paid for and she didn't give me or the email a second thought before insulting me. All my communication with Natalia only led to frustration and broken promises.

My experience with Vanilla Brides can only be described as disastrous, and I would never recommend their services to anyone seeking to capture the cherished moments of their wedding day.

Vanilla Brides seems understaffed and prone to negative reviews, as evidenced by the numerous complaints on the Better Business Bureau website. Some of their reviews even make it very clear that they don't pay their photographers/videographers well or at all sometimes. It's clear that all they want is their money and they don't really care that they're ruining the documentation of someone's once-in-a-lifetime event.

Date of wedding: 01-28-2023

We had a horrific experience with this company and the owner Alice. Please do not choose your wedding photo & videographers just based on their pr...ice & limited reviews. We chose Vanilla Brides based on the cheap pricing & positive reviews we saw on Knot & other platforms. But we ignored the bad reviews as they were limited in number. Below are our detailed comments.

The photo & videographers were very polite & courteous. They took many vibrant stills & motions & were very patient with us. Nonetheless, they were amateurs. They missed many of the important parts of the wedding - the ring exchange, the kiss at the end of the first dance, parts of the toasts, etc. For the ceremony, the videographer placed a still camera behind the guests which was blocked by one of our guests' head. Throughout the ceremony, you can see the infamous head making appearances instead of the bride & the groom! The irony is that the videographer placed the camera after all the guests were seated. Our vows were not recorded properly - many sentences were unclear & missing. The photographs were not taken with specialized lenses for different lighting & background settings - we only got to know about this when we edited the photos with professional editors. The camera used was very old. Instead of doing manual-focus when required, auto-focus was used, hence missing some very beautiful background. Some of the photos were distorted along the border as in when fisheye lenses are used.

The company personnel were courteous during our conversations & were flexible with our requests. But these changed when it was time to deliver the photos & videos. In total, it took more than 6 months to have our final photos & videos. I had to email them for updates persistently. In the first round of delivering the photos & videos, they did not consult with us on which photos we wanted. Moreover, they just put 1 type of filter for ALL the photos (indoor & outdoor)! In most of them, I & my groomsmen's skin look orange-ish! (The example pics are after we told them to change the filter, not the original edits. You can still see the difference compared to an external professional photo editor we hired for the final photos - more on this below). You can see that even redundant edits/photoshop like the sunburn marks on my wife's back was not edited by Vanilla Brides. For the videos, the editors did not even cut the parts with the guest’s head in the ceremony. The sound during the ceremony was misaligned with the video. We had to go over thousands of raw photos & videos to give them a detailed list of items to include, replace, & edit. They sent us a semi-edited version based on our comments, but most of the edits were not performed.

They claim in the agreement that there would be 1 free edit for the videos & photos. But later on, they said that this does not include any form of photoshop or retouching work. They only change the filter used for the photos. They said they could photoshop up to 5 images but we have to pay $10/photo for the rest of the photos! Some of the images were ridiculous! I pointed these to the owner, Alice, & she agreed that they were not good. I asked them to either edit them appropriately or else provide a refund. She tried her best to convince me to not go with the refund, which she said could be only $150 as most of the money was for the photo & videography. It reached a point when Alice tried to bargain with me by offering free albums instead of refunding even the $150 - not sure what was the logic in using absurdly edited images in a wedding photo album. She eventually refunded the money & we ended up hiring another professional photo editor to go over the photos, which cost us an additional $950.

We emailed Alice to get a refund for the $950 and send her this review. She denied everything we wrote here, claimed that we are blackmailing them, and said we had to look at their catalog/style before booking. Apparently not doing any basic photoshop, leaving sunburn marks on the skin, and having the guest's head on the ceremony video is their style!

Date of wedding: 05-03-2022