The bridal car that never came

It’s been almost a year since my last post. Sorry about that, I’ve been pretty busy with my day job and other blogs. That’s why I’m opening this blog for contributions… If you’re interested, feel free to send me an email! 

Funny, the first post I’ll made after such a long hiatus would be this. But you see, something like this shouldn’t really happen — there are so many ways it could have been avoided, and yet, it still happened.

Last December, my husband and I attended the wedding of our friends, Aileen and Jay. As a guest, we were very impressed with the way their wedding turned out. Not surprising really, as Aileen and Jay were very hands-on in planning their wedding. Everything went smoothly, save for one: their bridal car did not show up.

Aileen and Jay hired Jack and Jenn Catering to service their bridal car needs. They were supposed to pick up Aileen from the hotel and bring her to the Church, but they never came. The couple desperately tried contacting the supplier, but they were not answering their calls. Aileen had to use the taxi she hired to shuttle things around. Imagine that: taking a taxi to your wedding! Luckily, it was a white taxi. But that wasn’t the worse.

We really had no idea that such boo-boo happened. Well, not until the end of the reception, that is. My fellow blogger friends and I stayed behind a bit after the reception during clean-up, and thank goodness we did. Because as it turned out, Aileen and Jay didn’t have a ride going back to the hotel.

Unfortunately, the old second-hand Toyota Corolla my husband and I brought to the wedding took such an opportune moment to break down (our car was a victim of Ondoy, so we had no choice but to use a second-hand car until the parts we ordered from Hyundai arrives). The break pads were shot while we were parking at the church, so my husband had to bring it to a nearly car repair shop and pick it up after the reception. But the problem was, the car wasn’t ready until the evening. Aileen and Jay’s reception was done by 2pm, so waiting for the car was out of the question. Luckily though, Juned was there to offer help: his spanking red Tamaraw FX delivery van.

Juned and I thought that Aileen would be changing out of her wedding gown before we left the reception venue. We were shocked when she said her clothes were at the hotel.

So there. In the absurdity of the situation, we couldn’t do anything else about it but just joke around amongst ourselves as we escorted the newly-weds to their hotel. To add insult to injury, another pair of newly-weds got off their sparkling white bridal car right in front of us at the hotel lobby, while our wedding couple got off a delivery van.

I was lucky that when Marc and I got married, one of our principal sponsors volunteered her Mercedes Benz for our bridal car. We experienced some minor mishaps like some technical issues with the background music of the reception presentation, but nothing really significant. I don’t know what I could have done if I were in their situation.

What Jack and Jenn Catering did to our friends was horrible. Just imagine the stress and embarrassment the couple experienced. After the wedding day, Aileen and Jay were finally able to contact the supplier. The couple had to demand that supplier personally hand over their refund and meet with them. Their excuse was that a staff member had to take a sudden leave. But the thing is, they booked way ahead of time and Jay even followed up with them days before the wedding. You’d expect that even if somebody in the staff had to take a leave, adjustments should have been made. For more information, take a look at Aileen’s post on her wedding blog.

I have to admire Aileen and Jay for the calm way they handled the situation. No use ruining a wedding day for an incompetent supplier.

I review a lot of wedding suppliers in this blog, as its main purpose is to help couples plan their wedding in some way or another. And I definitely won’t recommend Jack and Jenn Catering.