Complaint Review: Destiny Weddings - Suze Panrock - Key West Florida

My wife and I had the most uncoordinated wedding coordinator in Key West. Her name is Suze Panrock of Destiny Weddings. From the beginning we had limited confidence in her and should have found someone else or just planned the wedding ourselves. Instead we gave Suze limited responsibilities. Her main job was to reserve the wedding site and perform the ceremony. Also, she was to get the flowers from the florist, provide doves to be released and a portable stereo for music during the ceremony. She also offered champagne for a toast after the ceremony. We took care of the reception ourselves.

Suze has no office, she prefers to meet engaged couples in bars. It should have been our first clue but it is Key West. We first met with Suze seven months before the wedding date. We live in Broward County Florida which is a four hour drive from Key West which is why we felt we needed someone down there to look after out best interests. She did not. We sent her $287. $150 of it was to resereve the wedding site at West Martello Tower (a beautiful site before Hurricane season) The rest was a deposit on her services.

We started to notice odd things. She wouldn't let us know who our florist was. There are four florists in Key West and only one of them is particulary good. Also, every time we called her all she ever talk about was how terrible her life was after these hurricanes hit. We were interested in finalizing our weddings plans but instead of helping us with that she just told us "Don't worry, everthing will be wonderful." We are not insensitive to people effected by hurricanes. We were hit directly by two hurricane where we live this year. However, she had a job to do. After Hurricane Wilma came tearing through South Florida, we called and asked how our wedding site had faired and if our hotel was ok. We could get no useful information from her. All she could tell us was how her car got damaged.

You can get to anywhere in Key West in about ten minutes but she could not make it over there to check it out. Again she said "Don't worry, everthing will be wonderful." Keep in mind we were without electricity for over two weeks after Wilma. We did not have access to information (internet, tv and radio). Eleven days later, the day before we were to leave for Key West, Two days before our wedding she calls us to say that our wedding site has been closed indefinately due to damage from the storm. At this point we have relatives and friends in transit all over the United States and no real good way to let people know that the wedding plans have been changed. Eleven days she waited, now only two days before the wedding we have to change the whole ceremony.

We got down to Key West, angry and frustrated with Suze. We did not want to have our most happy day officiated by someone who we don't even like anymore. We found somone else to perform the ceremony. We went to the florist to check on the flowers and Suze really screwed that up too. We fixed that ourselves and had the wedding at the hotel where we were having the reception.

We fired Suze.

We spent hours the day before the wedding doing all of this and we also had to track down our guests and have the word spread about the wedding changes. In the end our wedding worked out fine. We took a short honeymoon and came home after the power came back on. We have called Suze to request or money back. All we really wanted was the deposit for the wedding site returned to us ($150) but she spent it and would not return any money. Key West is a great place to get married but don't ever do business with this woman. Suze Panrock is extremely incompetent and self centered. Destiny weddings is a joke. When you are in business, sometimes you need to put your personal problems aside and do your job.

Since she won't return our money, I am submitting this report.

Michael

Pompano Beach, Florida
U.S.A.