I worked with Fresh Cut Catering & Floral for my Dec. 9 wedding at The Ivy Venue.
Here's a quick breakdown of my experience (starting with the good):
The Good
-Guests loved the food
-Floral arrangements for the reception hall were beautiful
-The set-up and breakdown staff was pleasant and professional
The Bad
-After outlining décor for the ceremony in the contract and sitting with a staff member to look at conceptual images, they still failed to execute anything we discussed. This resulted in underwhelming photos and videos from our ceremony that we have to live with for the rest of our lives.
-When I contacted the staff about the aforementioned botch, instead of acknowledging their failure to execute what was clearly outlined in the contract, the staff member stated she was sorry I found the décor underwhelming and refunded me half of the price we paid for it. The thing is, we would've left the room as is if we'd known they weren't going to do it.
-We paid to feed 254 guests, but due to a rare snow storm hitting the state a day or two before the wedding, we had about 40-50 last-minute cancellations. Despite a significant cut in actual attendance, my wedding planner informed us that we'd ran out of hors d'oeuvres approximately 35 minutes into cocktail hour. How?
The Ugly
-Fresh Cut Catering & Floral defers the 3 percent transaction fee for debit or credit card to the customer, so make sure you withdraw the cash and/or write a check. We don't live in the state, so attempting to get a large check from banks where we did not have an account was pure torture, but we finally got relief.
-The owner of this business is related to the owners of The Ivy Venue, so you'd expect the two businesses to be on the same page, but they're not. My wedding planner was constantly tossed back and forth between the two business owners like a ping pong ball. And since The Ivy Venue requires you to use Fresh Cut Catering & Floral for catering, there's no getting around this silly cat-mouse chase between the two entities unless the business owners get on the same page. This was the most annoying thing, second to the botched décor for my ceremony.
Overall, I wouldn't say my experience with this company was terrible, so I'm giving a four star review because the issues I had with them did not affect our guests, and that has to be worth something.