Everlasting Elopements

Early March my husband and I decided to cancel our wedding, alerting the wedding party on March 13, 2020 due to the pandemic. We started to look for alternatives, we settled on Texas Wedding Ministries. We decided to have a virtual zoom wedding, I called and talked to several people at Texas Weddings Ministries who talked to me about the process and asked that I call Everlasting Elopements to ask more questions about who would officiate and what would be said. We paid for the virtual wedding on June 15, 2020 through Texas Wedding Ministries website, we decided it would be nice to have a recording and paid for that on June 25, 2020 directly with Everlasting Elopements. From that moment on my customer service experience started to decline rapidly. I was told I would know and could choose what the officiant would say for a Christian non-denominational wedding. When I sent an email to inquire on Jul 6, 2020, Kari dismissed my request saying, “So we do not send vows for these quick $75 ceremonies. When you reserved it asked you if you wanted religious or non-religious vows. All vows are non-denominational. I'll make a note you are requesting to see them but I can't guarantee they will be sent. Let us know if you have any other questions.” She never sent any information about the ceremony and what would be said. I explained although she considered this virtual wedding a quick wedding, it’s my wedding nonetheless and it’s an important day. No reply to anything. I was originally told I would be told what would be said during the wedding by Texas Ministries website. The day of July 11, 2020 the virtual zoom wedding was supposed to start at 3:00pm, at 3:01 Kari text me they’ll be on the call shortly they were having connection issues. I text her back at 3:06pm to see how things were going, she said Zoom was making them do an update which was taking a while and they were at the port for a beach wedding so the internet was spotty on the island. Now it’s 3:17pm, I asked if there is someone in the San Antonio office to officiate. No reply. During this entire time my mother was on the phone with a cousin who’s also a pastor as a backup, I didn’t think we would be able to proceed. At 3:18pm the reverend let us into the zoom call. Once we were on the zoom call, it was obvious they were unprepared, as Kari mentioned in her email $75 virtual weddings aren’t important to Everlasting Elopements, they were using a cellphone for the ceremony. I asked that they make me the host so I can record it from my end as they struggled to get the phone adjusted. I use Zoom daily at work and know that from a cellphone you can not record a full screen video from a cell phone. Kari said she didn’t know how to do that, so we proceeded. At the time it seemed as if she didn’t want to provide host privileges, not that she didn’t know how. As a company that advertises virtual weddings, I find it hard to believe they don’t know how to grant host privileges. The officiant did a good job, that went well. Overall, this experience has been lower than a one start rating if I could rate this Everlasting Elopements as zero stars I would. Kari is rude, no customer service skills and they were unprepared. Every wedding is important, doesn’t matter if it’s $75 or $40,000. Since July 11, 2020 I have called six times, left voicemails and emailed six times. One email, the only reply to all my emails on Jul 18, 2020 said, “Our marketing manager is working on it I will follow up with her.” I’ve received nothing else. I know that don’t have a video, it’s not possible to create a full screen video from a cellphone that was wobbling and not even turned in the correct direction. No one will speak with me or email me back. I’m disputing the charge for the video payment; I haven’t received the wedding video I paid for. Proceed with caution booking anything through Everlasting Elopements. They are unprofessional, ill-equipped and Kari is rude. Avoid this company at all costs.