Our experience with Kisses By Candlelight (KBC) was disappointing to say the very least. The only reason we hired them without any vetting was because they had come recommended by a friend. However, what we should have borne in mind was that this common friend had never used their services (he is unmarried) and was talking them up without any real experience of what they have to offer. We contemplated sharing our experience here, because it may affect their employability in the future, but in the end, we decided to give honest feedback because we did not want others to go through the ordeal we suffered at the hands of these planners, and truly wished we were forewarned by someone.
Ayushi is talented and knows her craft. She’s well-spoken and her PR skills are fantastic. She claims they have done weddings in all budgets ranging from ₹95 K to over a Crore. Honestly, she has all the attributes it takes to do all that and more, and to be a great wedding planner; unfortunately her skills are put to use only for the benefit of her company, not her clients. She will sell her brand and service to you, not to forget her ability to create a dream-wedding experience in any budget you have in mind, but in the end it’s all lip-service and big talk. It does not translate into action, as she simply does not walk the talk.
KBC always pushed us to to hire their vendors that they were related to/ good friends with regardless of the quality of their work (some of the work was so despicable that we could not believe it even made it to the table!). They even inflated the charges of their vendors by 2-3 times the market rate, and I can only assume it was a mutually benefiting arrangement for them. We rejected their vendors because they were ridiculously priced, ie, the quality of their work did not justify the price they were quoting, and asked them to send us more profiles. They sent us profiles of extremely high-end vendors, whose work was good but way out of our budget, and a few more profiles within our budget with substandard work. They made it clear to us that “in your budget this is the max you can expect”. This is absolutely not how your planner should be speaking to you. They are supposed to be making your wedding hassle-free and fun, not insulting you and stressing you out. While we were NOT on a shoestring budget (we had a fairly big wedding), we did not want to spend four times the market rate that was being consistently proposed by these planners.
They seldom called us, or followed up with anything. We had to keep calling them, most often to no avail. I wasn’t given so much as a suggestion for where to get my bridal outfit made, until three months before the wedding, so you can only imagine how the rest of the things were handled by them. Most of Ayushi’s suggestions for my outfit were shops on commercial street coz apparently that was “all I could afford”. Our family and friends stepped in, took us to a bunch of boutiques and eventually I found myself a wonderful designer who made the prettiest dress for me, for less than half the budget that Ayushi deemed “too less” btw. This was a common pattern that followed in selecting almost all our vendors, ourselves. We ended up doing our own research and were surprised when we EASILY found vendors we liked, with great work to show, and to top it all, for less than half the budget that we had shared with KBC, which as per them, was insufficient for what we wanted. From finding and selecting the venue, to makeup artists, hairdressers, caterers, outfits, designers, jewellery, jazz band, sound engineer, rings, MC, Bartender, Baker, etc. we ran around finding them all ourselves. This was their job, what they charged us money for- to find us vendors so that we didn’t have to do the hard work ourselves. Unfortunately, we did not have the luxury of having our wedding planned for us, sitting back and enjoying the wedding experience, even though we paid them for it. We ran from pillar to post for everything, till the very last minute.
I really wish KBC had done what they signed up for, not just because it was THEIR JOB, or because they had made such tall claims about their customer service, but because Ayushi is more than capable to deliver, if she chose to put her skills and talent to the benefit of her clients. If this was about incompetence, I wouldn’t have bothered writing a review like this, because when people try their best and fail, you cannot help but recognise the effort put in, despite the result. Ayushi and Nadeem did not just fail to deliver, but they failed to even try, simply because they did not care enough to do their job, well. When customer satisfaction does not hold any importance whatsoever to people running a business dealing with customer service itself, you are doomed to fail. Their apathy and unprofessional attitude, complete disregard of their clients’ wants and feelings makes them very difficult to work with and dampens your spirits, at what is meant to be the happiest time of your life.
Ayushi’s mother is a decorator, and we have used her services for our engagement as well. She did a good job and that was probably the only upside to this whole fiasco called KBC- the fact that the mother did the job she was paid (a bomb) to do. At the wedding, Ayushi got confrontational on many accounts with our close friends who were helping out in the arrangements, some family members and even vendors. This was probably the lowest blow- that we had to apologise to our guests on behalf of our wedding planners for their rude demeanour!
We were angry and even contemplated not settling their pending dues as they did not deliver the service we paid them for, and made our wedding experience so unpleasant. But we did not want to be unprofessional like them, so we paid them their dues anyway. We didn’t even address this with them because, post the wedding, we learnt of two other couples who had similar experiences with them. We realised that it wouldn't make a difference as they simply did not care. If there was one thing I could go back in time and change - I would un-hire KBC. We would have ended up doing the work we did anyway, but saved ourselves the stress and embarrassment they caused us. I wouldn’t recommend anyone hiring them to handle any event, least of all their wedding.
