Memoire Events

If I could, I would give –5 stars to Christine: it’s INCREDIBLE HOW BAD SHE IS.
My wedding was a disaster, she was a mess during the wedding, because she purposely decided to ignore the fact that it could rain and didn’t plan for it. RAIN QUOTE The months before the wedding she was hard to reach: we had to write her the same email 5 – 6 times before she remembered to answer. Till the week before the wedding she was getting confused on what date the wedding was and then what time it started.
From the beginning we had a VERY CLEAR idea of what the wedding would be like and we explained it to her: she seemed very excited about it and professed to have understood what we wanted. However every vendor and idea she proposed didn’t have anything to do with what we told her we wanted. She seemed to be going the same well of venders. Ultimately we ended up having to pay her but we were the ones doing the planning.
She tried to convince us that her chef friend was a great Italian cook: I am Italian and I have never eaten such mediocre food. Yet we ended up driving an hour across LA to spend 200 $ for a exceedingly lacklustre and awkward tasting session. Then when we got to the wedding day where she was supposed to coordinate we found out that she hadn’t talked with half of our vendors and they didn’t know what time they had to arrive or where to park. They kept asking us why the planner wouldn’t get in touch or return their emails/​calls.
Here are some specific lowlights of the experience:
— on the night of our wedding, after her crew packed up and left there were still tons of garbage leftover. My husband and I had to clean up alone until 3am in the morning and transport the stuff downhill from the location to our cars — in our wedding outfits so we wouldn’t lose our deposit;
— But that didn’t matter because she made us lose our deposit by telling the owner of the property that we wrote her too many emails during the wedding planning and that we changed vendors 3 days before the event when we have emails introducing her to them A MONTH before the event;
— she said that she was just a coordinator, even if she wasn’t able to coordinate a single thing: she came to us in tears on the day of the wedding, because she didn’t know what to do for the rain, after the forecasts had predicted rain for that day two weeks in advance and after we brought this information to her attention multiple times: her unforgettable answer was «It won’t rain»;
–Oh and get this, she came to both me and my husband to find out the seating chart and who was getting what meal because she neglected to print it out in advance. We had to coordinate all of that she had all this info 2 weeks to the event. So, while my husband and I are getting dressed for what should’ve been the best day of our lives, she was running around panicky, and panicking us trying to get the seating list to the caterer. I’ve never seen someone so unorganized and irresponsible.
–Her «five star staff» who she said was exceeding professional, were actually lazy students who spent the time bumming cigarettes from our guests and taking breaks to drink beers near our guests
— she and the owner of the property ruined not only our wedding but the entire 10 days after — they invented excuses not to give us our deposit back. Christine lied over and over in order not to pick up the phone and when I finally managed to get her on the phone, she accused me of incredible things — like a child and it is impossible to reason with her. And then she hang up on me and from that moment it was impossible to talk to her. During the email discussions she made the property owner tell us she was supposed to manage only the vendors she found, but not the ones we found and put her in contact with… of course this never came up before the wedding day;
–These are just a few of the lowlights of the time spent with her. Believe us there are multitudes of further examples that we’ve spared you from.
Needless to say, because of all the stress of planning, the price and the let-​down, it’s been one of the worst days of our lives as well as the worst period. She sold us her services as a way to be relaxed the months before the wedding and on the day: at this is the exact opposite. I stayed up every night after work in the months prior in order to do the job that she wasn’t doing.
If you really want a good and stress-​free wedding, don’t work with her: the opposite will happen, she’ll disappear because she cannot accept responsibility and she will make you lose a ton of money for something that won’t be worth it.
If for some reason you do decide to work with her, make sure you sign a contract: at least this will give you a way to do something legally, if needed. Christine tends to say the contract is not needed and that she’ll just send an invoice with the detail of what she’ll do: don’t accept that — she is going to screw everything up and you won’t have any action available but writing a review.

I would run the other way! I had 160 people at my wedding and Christine was a MESS!!! She had absolutely no organizational skills. My husband and I had met with her 3 times prior to our wedding expelling what we wanted and what needed to be done and she dropped the ball, despite having «made notes.» Not only didn’t she do what we wanted but she was hell bent on doing it her way and there was simply no room to be flexible. She pissed off my guests and my mother! She was meant to be my day of and I paid $ 1000 because she was part of some dumb package deal and the friend of the Chef. I was so disappointed! We also used her lighting which if I’d known I had to deal with Christine I would have done my wedding in the dark! Anything to keep her and her wreck of a personality away from me and my guests! Not worth it! Pay the extra for someone else to do the lighting and be your day of.
At one point there was some seating issue (go figure because she had no freakin’ idea about anything despite my detail seating lists etc) and instead of saying «not a problem I’ll fix that» she says «who doesn’t belong at this table».oh did I mention it was my mother that somehow got screwed out of a seat. Luckily my mom is amazing and went and picked up a wooden chair and brought it over to the table and told Christine to «SHUT UP»! Yes people that’s the level we are dealing with!
I had people congratulate me and then follow up with «your day of is really a piece of work» followed by some rude comment Christine made to them or they overheard her make! Christine was unprofessional toward her staff and yelled at them etc in front of guests.
Christine is not worth your money or the stress that follows being around her!
I had asked her to put out a big wooden W, which people were meant to sign, but she hadn’t done that. I had asked her to put out the little party favors and she hadn’t done that. I mean this is the day of persons job. I had given her a sheet telling her who of my friends and family were the fish eating people so that the servers could serve them fish and she hadn’t communicated that to her friend the chef so some got the fish others didn’t. Amazing, I know!
Forget this woman she needs help and she shouldn’t be working in the service industry of any kind as she has zero focus and no idea how to organize and deal with things that come up last minute.
If there were minus points I’d give her that! She doesn’t even deserve ONE star. She didn’t even have the balls to apologize to me for having messed up the three main things I told her to do!
Save your money and hire someone else!

Wedding: ⁷⁄₁₅
Orcutt Ranch
Grab a cup of coffee and a muffin because I have a lot to say. It’s unfortunate that Chrisitne isn’t a mature adult who can have a normal conversation without throwing out ludicrous statements and screaming like a petulant child, so writing the events leading up to the wedding is the best way, so everyone knows how deceitful she really is…
PRE WEDDING PLANNING:
Let me start off by saying that my wedding experience with Christine has been sub par. The overall wedding day came out good, but there were many issues and absence leading up the wedding and after. She didn’t really include our money dance and had us cut the cake when people were still eating, (which was not previously spoken about in our itinerary) taking away that special moment.
For starters, she was paid $ 3,400 give or take a few hundred, for her entire service and attention from the date she was hired until the end of the wedding. This included lights decorations, some of her «decorations» that were along side her house, that we never were given after we were told we can use.
From the start, we had little to no attention because what most clients don’t know, is that she tends to pile on weddings, back to back and sometimes handles 2 or more weddings within a close time frame. what does this mean for you, the «client». it means, very little attention.
With the exception of a few early appointments, my wife and I did the majority of the work. Scheduled most of the appointments. Met with all the vendors. Speaking of vendors, here’s a little tip for all you lucky boys and girls getting married. Tip #1, find another coordinator. Tip #2, if you’re going to dismiss my experience based on all the other «authentic» reviews that rave about her and her staff and how wonderful she is as a coordinator, here’s what you should know: Unless you’re using all Christine’s preferred vendors, she really won’t cater to you like she claims before you pay her an unreasonable amount of money for a very small amount of work leading up to the wedding. She wants you to use her vendors so she can get a percentage of the profit on top of what she’s charging you for her service, which wasn’t met.
Since my wife and I decided to use only 3 of her vendors, she felt like we weren’t really worth the time and effort to situate our wedding early on so there’s less stress as the wedding approaches. My wife was very patient and understanding and gave Christine too much slack in my opinion.
Which brings me to my next issue. Christine had some personal issues going on at the time of planning our wedding which caused her to go missing for about 2 and a half months. We sent numerous texts, emails (all documented) and received no word. Finally, a miracle struck and we were blessed to learn that she did not disappear, but was attending to a personal matter which BOTH my wife and I had and still have sympathy and compassion for. As hard as these personal issues are, they are still «personal» which do not relate to our agreement for a wedding. Throughout the lengthy period of her attending to her personal problems, my wife and I still stayed patient. She only told us about the issues she was facing more than 2 months of us trying to find out why she wasn’t responding.
We made some communication and were able to meet and organize how the wedding was going to be planned (3 – 4 months after she was hired at this point) She dropped the ball with the vendors she was supposed to get us quotes for. The rental agreement was given days before the wedding. She asked my wife and I to call the florist to get a quote days before the wedding when she was asked to do so herself. Isn’t this why you have a coordinator? She’s getting paid and delegating to us what we should be doing.
REHEARSAL:
At the rehearsal of our wedding she asked my wife and I if we scheduled the rehearsal for Thursday 7÷9÷15. I’m sorry, what? Uh, no, we didn’t. She had a wedding on 7÷10÷15, the day before ours so she was obviously out of it, tired from doing too much and forgot to schedule our rehearsal. Luckily we were able to sneak in and get our rehearsal done. She then asked us during the rehearsal if we can find someone to point people in the right direction so people know where the ceremony is and to usher in guests to their seats. Christine wanted to know if WE can found someone. Again, she fumbled.
DAY/​NIGHT OF WEDDING:
Leading up to the wedding, the cake vendor, which was Portos is calling me 3 hrs before the wedding asking me if Christine is around, so they know where to put the cake. the vendor couldn’t get a hold of Christine, causing me to show him where the main room was. Another fumble. Is the groom supposed to be delegating to vendors on the day of the wedding? Crazy right? Wait, it gets better.
CONTINUED NEXT REVIEW —-

Christine was a god send for my wedding. I wanted to do it myself and my hubby convinced me to meet with Christine, so glad I did. Not only did she help us find vendors and arrange everything she also got us discounts and was so easy to work with.
I can’t recommend her enough, she’s amazing.

Christine, takes her work very seriously. She handles her events as if it were going to be her VERY own. She is very hands on, for example, even if some else is charge of the flowers, cake, or food, she is there to follow through, to make sure they don’t or won’t screw it up!!! She personally takes accountability with every area of coordinating the events to perfection, while being price and budget conscious of your specific wants and needs. I highly recommend Christine for any party event you are considering to having her do, because she always wants to make sure that the people she works for are always VERY happy with the end result, and that is really the bottom line for her. Christine takes great pride in what she does, and it shows in every company corporate event that I have seen her do. If you want a absolutely perfect party event, then Christine without question, is the person to call and use for your party or company event.

My fiancé and I have been working with Christine for about 9 months now and she has been superb!!! She is really down to earth and an extremely hard worker. She’s on top of her things even though she’s juggling several events at a time. She always answers promptly either via email, phone or text. We love how accessible she’s been and so far has scored 10’s across the board on finding us our vendors with the biggest one being the venue. It took us all 9 months to find the perfect venue and time after time that we said no to them she kept working hard at it until she found THE ONE for us! We are so happy and so pleased with her and her work! She definitely makes you feel like you’re more than just another number. We still have 13 months left before our wedding and I will be reviewing her again after the wedding but thus far she has been exceptional!

I am so incredibly happy with Christine that I’m writting this before the big day has even happened! My fiancé and I are around the corner from our wedding day, (June 23^rd!!) and Christine has been so fantastic with dealing with my nervousness and helping us with our budget. She’s even doing my lighting for me which is awesome! We hired her for day of coordination & it includes way more then just day off work. Our meeting tonight is the 4^th in person meeting we’ve had and I’ve lost count on the number of email and texts I’ve sent. On our second meeting she came to our home and sat with us and did our whole itinerary for the wedding day which I now can’t imagine having to have done alone! I’ll be back to update this review after the ceremony day but I just had to write to say how incredibly happy I am & how this was SOOO the best money I spent. Thank you Chrisitne! Patience M.

I just recently gave a baby shower for my boss using Memoire Events at my office. Memoir Events was fantastic as I knew they would be because they did my wedding in Massachusetts 2 years ago. The baby shower came out amazing and not one detail was missed. They, again, were easy to work with and I didn’t have to do anything. We had our initial meeting, was offered their professional opinion on how this baby shower could be approached, and that was it. It took 5 minutes. I few measurements was taken of the conference room, and that was it. The baby shower came out superb. People went and got their cell phones to take pictures. It was standing room only and in conjunction with everything else, people were hoping and praying to win the door prize. Well done Memoire Events! I will certainly use them again, and again and again. They saved me a bundle of money. This baby shower was July 10, 2011, and I am still hearing about how great it was!!! Why do your own events when you can call Memoire Events!!!

Christine Lalonde is the most loving and talented event planner ever — and quite a Miracle Worker! We held our
non-​profit launch event on two floor of Hollywood’s Sunset Vine Tower with zero budget. Christine turned the event into something magical and spectacular. It was an incredible evening and would never have happened without her love and selfless and tireless spirit! Thank you so much, Christine!

Having a 50^th birthday party is almost as important as getting married, especially to a woman. The owner of Memoire Events, Ms. Lalonde, created and made happen a truly memorable event for me AND my guests. It was unique and a real expression of me (wild animals and origami), within my budget and she took care of everything! The best example I can give to how satisfied I was is ALL my guests thanked me for the most memorable event they had been to EVER! I’d highly recommend Memoire Events to anyone.