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Hotel Wedding Crashers: The Me-Me-Me Consultant at the Ritz-Carlton

Go To The Hotel's Web Site Where: 1401 S. Oak Knoll Avenue [map], Pasadena, CA, United States, 91106
June 25, 2007 at 2:06 PM | by | Comments (0)

Listen up Brides-to-Be and Invited Guests: Throughout the summer, we will be featuring all types of hotel wedding stories from packages to honeymoon suites to hotel wedding heaven and hell.

Whether you are getting married, planning your wedding, or just taking advantage of someone's open bar reception, we want to hear your hotel wedding tips/stories/frustrations. Send your hotel wedding stories and questions here.

Caveat nuptialists! Dispatches from the wedding-industrial complex confirm that finding the right wedding planner involves serious vetting and careful consideration. An article in yesterday's Sunday Styles section of The New York Times recounts several very close calls wedding-planning couples had with consultants and hotels.

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Jennifer Rudin and Glen Pearson got married at The Ritz-Carlton, Hunting Hotel and Spa in Pasadena in September 2005. Like many hotels, this Ritz requires a wedding planner. The couple took a meeting with one the hotel had recommended. Sitting at the hotel bar, they listened to their prospective wedding planner as she flipped through photographs of other people's weddings. According to the article, she pitched themes, like Hawaiian or Italian, colored margaritas and her brother, the wedding photographer.

"It was always about her," the bride, who now goes as Ms. Rudin Pearson, told the Times. In the end, Rudin Pearson, director of casting and talent development at Disney Theatrical Productions in New York, and her husband went with a different wedding consultant. For its part, a spokeswoman from the Ritz Pasadena said she was not aware of anyone having a complaint with one of the hotel's recommended wedding consultants.

In another tale-of-woe from the wedding planning front, David Mandel of Los Angeles, an executive producer of the HBO program "Curb Your Enthusiasm," and his bride, Dr. Rebecca Whitney, went through two consultants before settling on the one that planned their wedding this last New Year's Eve at Cipriani 42nd Street. (Yes, that's a restaurant.) But their second consultant, one of two "planzillas" that made the couple miserable to the point of keeping them up at night, tried to steer them to a hotel in Palm Springs with which she did, in the words of the Times, "frequent business." Enough! These two said. The third was a charm.

The article notes that there are about 10,000 wedding planners in the U.S. The average wedding now costs $27,852. Wedding planners often get a percentage, usually about 20. Some charge a flat fee. With the meteoric rise of destination weddings at hotels and resorts, no bride and groom is exempt from planzillas and self-involved consultants. Conclusion: Proceed with caution.

Related Stories:
· Taming the Runaway Wedding Planner [NYTimes]
· Hotel Wedding Crashers [HotelChatter]

Hotels mentioned in this story

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