Taylor Your Memories (out of business?)

I was completely prepared to write a super long horrible review for this vendor, however after reading the other reviews, I guess I don't need to...the other reviews described the EXACT same situation that I went through with Isabelle. I did want to write something though, so that other potential customers can see how many of us had a horrible experience with Taylor Your Memories and hopefully they will avoid giving her even one penny of their business.

My invitations also turned out beautiful, but the process to get there was ridiculously stressful and completely unprofessional on Isabelle's part. I had all of the same problems that every other reviewer has described: she never answered or returned phone calls, hardly ever responded to emails, nothing was ever ready on time (there was always an excuse - the printer, the internet was down, etc.), my proofs were wrong (wrong date, wrong address, many many spelling and grammatical errors), the names and addresses on nearly 50% of my envelopes were misspelled (she had to re-do them 3 times!) Almost every time I went to her studio to pick up my stuff, it was never ready and I was always promised it would be there the next day or that she would mail them to me...that never happened...I had to hunt her down with multiple phone calls and emails in order to get my invitation materials from her. When I did get them there was never the correct amount...always short. My rsvp cards were cut crooked and I had to re-cut them. She also promised to give me 200 tabs for my candy bags (for our candy station) for free; instead she gave me the same excuses that she always gives for why they weren't ready three different times and by the week before the wedding she still didn't have them for me and she stopped answering or returning any of my phone calls...I never got the tabs (even though I didn't have pay for them, SHE was the one who brought it up and offered to do them for me!) I have to admit, at this point I pretty much expected that to happen, but I was still hoping she would have enough integrity to come through for me...of course she didn't.

Needless to say, this vendor deserves to be out of business! I hope potential customers will read these reviews and hopefully she will soon be out of business. The strangest thing about her...she seems completely carefree about her mistakes, like she's not bothered by it at all, she actually just laughs it off like it was a small little "oops", and yet she continues to make mistake after mistake and operate her business in the most horrible manner I have EVER witnessed!

Oh, and the "poor guy" that joobeelee described as the guy who had to drive her programs to her...I found out that he's Isabelle's FIANCE!!! He also had to drive to our house to gives us our envelopes that she messed up multiple times..."poor guy" is an understatement, good luck buddy.

Unfortunately Taylor Your Memories is NOT out of business, although I don't know how they can stay in business with such HORRIBLE business management. I wholeheartedly agree with all of the other posts for this vendor (and would LOVE to post a negative star). Not only were they (isabelle) the WORST VENDOR we had for our wedding, I can honestly say that she was the WORST BUSINESS I've ever had to deal with in my lifetime. Yes, she really was that bad, I'm not exaggerating. And just like the reviewer, I apologize for the long review, but Isabelle really did make that many mistakes.

Where to begin... First of all, she showed up late to our initial meeting and didn't apologize or explain for the delay. At that point, I should have been wary, but I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt because she is significantly cheaper that other vendors. Closer to the print date, I emailed Isabelle to find out about the actual design for the invitations. I sent numerous emails to which I received no reply. (This seems to be a common occurrence in her business practices, from reading other people's reviews) I also called and either nobody picked up (not even an answering machine) or Isabelle wasn't there and wouldn't be back until after business hours (you can forget about her calling back after leaving a message as well). One time I called, the phone made the weird noise that it does when it's no longer connected (it honestly wouldn't surprise me that she forgot to pay the phone bill and was disconnected). Whenever she would finally get back to me, she would blame the internet connection at the office (this apparently was a problem for an ENTIRE YEAR as she frequently quoted this problem).

When we finally were in touch, I sent her some samples of designs that I liked. She said she would have her "graphic designer" combine the different elements into a new design. She never got back to me. I asked her a ridiculous number of times for a proof and she would always promise me the next day, to which she would deliver nothing. About a month later she sent me a proof - it was the EXACT same graphic that I had given her. There was no graphic designer!

With regards to the rest of the invitation, she managed to get EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF INFORMATION WRONG. She had the wrong location, map, spelling, formatting, names, etc. We had to send her a very specific, detailed email with the corrections.

We finally went to print about 3 weeks AFTER we had planned. I told her I would pick up the invitations on Friday of a certain week. The day before I sent an email to remind her that I was coming in and she said the invitations weren't ready. So I said I'd come in the following Friday. When I came in, she STILL didn't have everything ready. She promised to mail me the missing tabs that day. Of course she didn't. So she then promised to mail them to me on the following Monday. Of course she failed at that as well. About two weeks later I received them.

When we started putting them together, we noticed something alarming. THE PAPER WAS CROOKED. And I'm not being anal about this - it was OBVIOUSLY crooked. At this point I couldn't take it anymore. I sent her a frustrated email about the lack of reliability that I felt with her company. I also told her how disappointed I was with the quality of the invitations. How is it that I paid her company do produce these invitations and I was the one sitting up late at night cutting paper to fix their mess? I asked for compensation and she refunded me for the crooked paper. I also told her that I was still going to do my programs through her to maintain consistency in font, colors, paper, and design, but not because I was actually impressed with anything.

As much as I can say about Isabelle's lack of follow through and efficiency, I can credit her with her ability to charge me "efficiently." I was looking at a credit card statement and noticed that she CHARGED ME FOR THE PROGRAMS BEFORE WE EVEN ORDERED THEM!!! When I tried to contact her, she was "out of town" and wouldn't be back until the following week. When she finally got back to me she said that it was a deposit to hold the order. I told her that we hadn't even ordered the programs so how could she charge me in the first place?! TALK ABOUT SHADY BUSINESS PRACTICES.

When the programs finally came in and I went to pick them up, I was shocked that she was waiting for me, bag in hand with my order. I was even mildly impressed that she remembered I was actually coming that day. That didn't last long. When we got home and started sorting the programs, we discovered that she had given us LESS THAN HALF OF OUR ORDER. She didn't say anything about this when we picked them up and quickly sent us on our way. Of course it took another week to get a hold of her to clear it up. She blamed it on the printer. Even if it was the printer's fault, she would have known that the order was incomplete because she assembled them!! And still she said nothing! She promised to mail them to me "that day" (a lie that I've heard many times), but of course this didn't happen. Finally she had some poor guy drive them over to us. You'd better believe we counted those suckers on the hood of his car! She even said she'd throw in a few extras for free (she did, ONE extra program. wow, I'm overjoyed.)

In a nutshell, learn from our mistake. STAY AWAY!

I will start off by saying a couple thinsgs. 1) sorry for the SUPER LONG review. 2) that I did love the design of our invitations but the process to get there (and after) was horrible. I worked with Isabelle, the owner. She is very nice but I felt she was very scatterbrained. It was hard to get ahold of her by phone, either no one answered or it took a very long time for my voicemails to be returned. I resorted to emailing, which I am glad I did so I could have saved conversations to refer to. I did not find the bad reviews of this company until after I placed my order and began having problems. I completely agree with everything that "chelbug" wrote in her review.

Our first appoinment she was late meeting us and did not call. We sat outside the store for at least 30 minutes waiting for her to arrive. We went through all the details after we picked the invitation design and was told we would have a proof in a couple weeks. After getting home, I realized she wrote down the incorrect date of our wedding on the receipt. I emailed her immediately to point out the error and gave her the correct date.

After not receiving a proof within a couple weeks, I emailed her to follow up. We received the first proof over a month after the initial visit. The date was spelled wrong for our wedding date, the location was spelled wrong, the RSVP card had the wrong RSVP by date and did not include wording we had discussed (that she brought up to begin with!) and the directions card was a complete mess. Things were capitalized that were not supposed to be, or not capitalized when they should be. Grammer was not consistent throughout, and the zip code and phone number for the hotel was incorrect. The directions card alone took about 4-5 proofs before it was finally ok to pring. I also did not get a proof of the outer tab after several requests. It took multiple emails (over 10 on my end) to finally get correct proofs. Because of all the errors, she offered to do an actual mock up of the invitation for me to see. While the inside was beautiful and what I wanted, the outside had wrong tab, even though we had discussed it several times and I told her EXACTLY what I wanted (it was even a tab to a sample invite she had that I referenced). It did not include the inserts so I could check and see if there were any mistakes on that.

She sent me a new proof of the tab, and the date was incorrect and she put the wrong name for the groom. I specified that I wanted his full name on the actual invite but his shortened name on the tab (aka if his name were Nick, I wanted Nicholas on the invite and Nick on the tab). She also sent revised Directions cards that again were incorrect. All in all, it took almost 2 months to get correct proofs and approve them to begin printing.

At the time of contracting, she offered to print the guest addresses on the envelopes at no additional charge, which was very nice. When I emailed her because I realized a few addresses were wrong on my part, the day before we were supposed to pick up, I asked her to add a few envelopes that I would pay for. She offered to print them and asked me to send the full list again (which means she had completely forgotten about printing the addresses)

The day the invites were supposed to be ready to pick up, we went there at the time agreed upon. She told us the printer had not arrived and didnt know when they would be there. We had to ask her to call the printer and ask when it would be delivered. She called later and said they would be in the following day. When we finally went to pick them up, there was still part of my order that was missing. She tried charging me for the printing of the addresses which I had in writing that would be no charge. I had to sit there and go line by line calculating everything to get the correct price for her.

I went home immediately and proceeded to count each and every piece to my order (after reading chelbug's review that she was shorted stuff). I hoped for the best and after counting realized I had 4 different parts of the invitations that I was shorted! Each part was short anywhere from 20-40 pieces! I emailed her and told her what was missing and set up a time a week later to go pick everything up. Even after that, I was still short 3 pieces of 1 part of the invite but gave up. I had to email her at least 4 more times to find out if another part of the invitations I ordered had come in yet before she answered me.

When putting together my invitations, I was also dismayed to find another part of chelbug's review was correct - at least half of the tabs were cut crooked! I had to recut each piece to make sure it didnt look crooked. The actual invites were also printed off-center. Only by about 1/4 an inch which is something probably only I would notice but it still made me mad. I put together my invitations and went through and alphabetized the envelopes when I realized an entire column of addresses were not printed on the envelopes and therefore I was shorted 11 envelopes!

The invitations look beautiful (after I cut the crooked parts and made them straight) and I am very happy with them overall. However, I would have paid someone else more money to do my invitations so I did not have anxiety every single time I got an email from her fearing that something else in the proof would be wrong or that they would be completely wrong when I went to pick them up. Spend more money and get better quality somewhere else! Though I did not end up using them for my invitations I did seek out Artiface in Costa Mesa during this process. They were VERY helpful and accommodating and I ended up ordered bulk paper from them at a cheaper cost to make my own menu cards and place cards (and to use on the invites that were missing pieces!) I highly recommend them if you are looking for quality work.

EDITED TO ADD on 10-5-09 - This vendor HAS gone out of business, my SIL just called to tell me she drove by there going to another store and Taylor Your Memories was closed and locked up! Good riddance!

I had to click on a "one star" rating, but actually would give this vendor NEGATIVE stars... we had an absolutely HORRIBLE experience through this company!!! Though still long, here is the short version: This is a small company, seems to be run by Isabelle and her husband (?). Main contact person is Isabelle. This is an invitation company that seems to have recently expended into a wedding coordination service. I used them for invitations alone, and that was more than enough for me.

We were looking for someone able to print our custom-designed in vitation in thermography (raised) printing. Isabelle assured me that they could. On our initial meeting, I even showed her a sample of what we wanted, and was assured that thermography was okay...only to find out much later that it wouldn't work with our design, and she even claims to never have seen that original design in the first meeting.

As we designed our own invitation, I tried to get printing specifics from Isabelle, as far as program file preferred, CMYK or RGB, room for margin, bleed, etc. (my fiance is a graphic designer and is used to dealing with the technical specifications of printers). Isabelle told me "not to worry"...to just send the file and they'd work with it. I should have worried. Needless to say, we had to change our files several times along the way. Isabelle was horrible with returning calls AND emails, and usually I was the one to have to track her down, even to simply let me know if she did or did not receive a file. I found out along the way that her company DOESN'T normally take custom orders (probably just didn't want to turn down my business and was making it up as she went along...), and that they were working with an outside printer (I could have sent it directly to the printer and bypassed her and all this grief)!!!

I was told that the turnaround time would be 3 weeks at the LATEST, but it went longer than that and, again, I was the one to call her and figure out what was going on...the printer still hadn't even started our order and only then (after the "guaranteed" turaround time) did we learn that the files needed to be altered a bit MORE. We picked up the envelopes so we could at least start addressing those, only to be given the wrong envelopes. When I realized this and called Isabelle to notify her...she already knew, but just hadn't bothered to call me to let me know, saying "I thought you would just come back when you realized the mistake."

They cut the printed invitations, rsvps and maps in-house, and all were cut CROOKED... most are at a distinct angle, and the colored borders are off on most of them (some sides cut thinner than others). Some of the actual INFORMATION on the maps were cut off on the bottom!

The last straw came when we picked up the printed portions of the invitations on a Wednesday...and I was finishing putting them together a week and a half later, only to RUN OUT OF MAPS AND RSVPS!!! I called and emailed Isabelle, and only received a call the following day, several hours after they had opened (and after I called a second time).

She tried to laugh it off, saying that when my fiance had picked up the order, the rest of the rsvps and maps had been mistakenly left on the counter...as before, she assumed we would be back in when we realized this, so she never even bothered to follow up with us!!! Absolutely HORRIBLE.

And beware...she also runs wedding coordination service.