Shangri La Events

They were helpful and very flexible with the numerous changes. I would recommend them to anyone else planning on gettin married

My husband and I could not be a happier pair of newlyweds! Originally we had planned a large wedding at home, but ran into some financial hardship and decided to switch up our plans a little. We decided to take advantage of a beach ceremony package we came across while "googling" beach weddings. We called the number to Shangri-La Weddings and Events and left a message. We received a call back the next day from a bubbly and cheerful office assistant named Denise. She answered some of the questions and concerns we had with a calm voice that led us to trust this company to handle our special day. We decided to just book our trip out there together and have a private ceremony for the two of us, and no family present due to financial difficulties. The only disappointment I had was they were already booked for April 3-6, so I had to settle for April 7, Saturday. We really wanted April 4, since that's the first day we met, however postponing our wedding to the following year was not what we had in mind, and the package was too good to pass up. Needless to say, we arrived in Oahu, had a beautiful ceremony out in Waimanalo beach (bluest ocean I've ever seen!) which was gorgeous compared our small town in Fruithurst, AL. The two planners, Maile and Lesley handled our wedding with such care and are the sweetest Hawaiian women ever! We are considering coming back to this beautiful island for a future vow renewal, and look forward to meeting with them again. *A huge plus they did for us was suggest Roy's Restaurant in Hawaii Kai for a small dinner celebration after our wedding which we thoroughly enjoyed. The food was delicious and our server (Keola) was such a gentleman. It is true what they say about dream weddings in Hawaii being so beautiful, we are so happy to have had a wonderful experience on the biggest day of our lives! Thank you Shangri-La!

I had a very bad experience with this wedding planner. They were recommended by a friend of mine (will not trust her recommendation again). It was a destination wedding for me so I have to reply on emails, phone calls, skype to communicate with them but not face to face meeting.

Instead of telling a full story (which will be very long), I will bullet point the bad experience I had with them:

1. Very slow in response and even disappeared for months without any updates. They never pickup my phone call and claim that their phone cannot receive international calls! If so then why accept client from overseas?

2. Very tricky on invoice amount and contract terms. You need to be very carefull and read through the terms on Contract and the invoice amount. Both Deposit Invoice and Balance invoice amount were wrong (a higher amount than what you should pay of course!)

3. I signed the contract with them that I will only pay them and they take care of the vendors' fee. At the end, the venue charged the rental fee to my credit card which is a nightmare. Venue refuse to refund, and they refuse to take responsbility for the mistake.

3. Bad liaison with vendor like the venue. At the end, the owner of the venue needs to contact me to chase up information.

4. They sounds very flexible over the phone and gave you different ideas. They also sent me photos of what items they can get for my wedding decoration. On my wedding day, only 10% of the items were delivered.

5. I request a round wedding cake and turns out to be a retacgular shape.

6. I gave them photo reference on how to decorate the registration table, they confirmed with it but at the end, it was a half empty table, with wrinkled table cloths. Looks extremely messy.

7. None of the decoration on-site is the same as what they promised.

8. Food arrangement was bad. They did not follow my instruction and turns out no appetitizer to serve for the guests during lunch because they serve the appetitizer as finger food when guests arrived the venue.

9. The person in charge said she will follow the coach with the guests to the venue. At the end, no one follow the bus and the driver even told us he is not too familiar with the route to the venue. This is totally an heart attack to me on my wedding day.

10. They said will take my dress to steam a day before then take it to the venue and hang it in the suite. When I arrive the suite, I found out my dress not properly steam but quite wrinkle, and the worst is I found a sting mark on the bottom of my dress!!! (btw the venue is a ranch and the sting matched the dirt color)

Luckily none of my guests / family know the originally plan so they were not noticed about the bad arrangement from this wedding planner.

Overall speaking, I definitely will not recommend them to any couple who plan to have their wedding in Hawaii. The money I spend is totally a waste!