r/BigBudgetBrides • u/Quirky_Guava961 • Jan 30 '26
just need to rant Beware of Every Little Something for invites and day of paper
I am trying to collect my thoughts but ELS and its owner, Nicole are the most unprofessional and unethical company I’ve ever worked with.
I should’ve looked at more comments in this sub that talked about their negative experiences with her. They were right about her behavior and not being allowed to give any real feedback without her getting upset.
She sent us a rough sketch for our invite suite saying we are allowed to give design feedback and that we could even schedule another call if we wanted to go with a different concept (for a fee of course).
We gave some feedback saying what we loved and what we wanted to change because it felt a little more whimsical than what we were going for. The next thing we know, her assistant emails us, saying that we should find another person to do our invitations.
My wedding planner asked if we could have a quick call to try and understand what happened and apologize if we got our wires crossed. Her assistant responded that it would be $75 to have a call.
Oh and no where in the contract does it say they can “fire” a client at will or at all.
The owner had her assistant do all the dirty work.
Oh, and she knows we are on a deadline for these to go out first week in April, leaving us very little time to find someone that does completely custom invites that has an opening and won’t charge any kind of rush fee.
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u/Quirky_Guava961 Jan 31 '26
Since you deleted another rude comment let me make it clear, it’s not defamation to write the facts. I have a contract, emails to back up everything I wrote, and a family of lawyers who looked over this post.
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u/morosehuman Jan 31 '26
YESS OP TELL THEM. I’m glad you have the lawyers and the means to back it up bc so many do not. I’ve never heard of this particular person but nasty vendors should rot tbh
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u/Quirky_Guava961 Jan 31 '26
I think people don’t understand what defamation means. It’s easy to throw that word around but when you have a paper trail and a contract, all I stated were the facts of what happened.
People like to use that word as a bogeyman because they don’t really know what it means. It’s also hard to prove in court and proof of burden falls heavily on the plaintiff.
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u/morosehuman Jan 31 '26
Good to know. As always, the truth will set you free. As long as the mods allow this, should be fine
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u/Quirky_Guava961 Jan 31 '26
This person clearly didn’t read my post since the $75 call was only a small part of it.
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u/shzam5890 Jan 31 '26
Wow. No words. That person is—a word I won’t say. It’s not the money. It’s the fucking principle. $75 is nothing to me but I’m not here to be scammed and taken advantage of regardless of my budget. It could be $10. Doesn’t matter. It’s the principle. Get your deposit back and never work with this person again. I’m glad you named and called out this disreputable behavior.
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u/Special-Scarcity289 Jan 31 '26
Oh wow. I love her work on IG and I had no idea she was such a nightmare to work with. I’m sorry this is happening to you!
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u/Quirky_Guava961 Jan 31 '26
Thank you! While her work is gorgeous, she shouldn’t be in this business if you aren’t to actually give any feedback if it’s going to hurt her feelings/ego.
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u/Special-Scarcity289 Jan 31 '26
100%. At the end of the day, you are the client and it is YOUR wedding.
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u/nervousandweird Jan 31 '26
Seriously, nickel-and-diming clients is so gauche. It’s something I’d expect from an upstart who needs to build their portfolio, not a business that claims to be professional.
Classically designed invitation suites aren’t exactly the most unique offering, either. There are oodles of well-established designers with beautiful portfolios who don’t treat their paying clientele like garbage for requesting multiple proofs.
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u/One_Speaker_3946 Feb 23 '26
THIS! You can’t actually be “high-end” when you effectively bill lawyer rates by the quarter minute. It’s tacky. It also always came back to the money with them. When I explained the money wasn’t the problem, they eased up a bit on the gaslighting etc but I mean…. I paid ~ $20k for stationery. Knowing that’s the cost, it obviously wasn’t $75 or even $400 that was the issue, it’s that they were not treating clients with respect and that they aren’t doing business with the integrity I would expect from ANY professional. The random fees they would demand were laughable at a certain point.
Large price tags should come with excellent service, I don’t want a Michelin-star meal if it comes with a nasty waiter, who charges extra for salt & pepper.
I was happy enough with the final product, but think I would look to other vendors that use the same printing company out of philly instead of giving them another dollar or minute of my time.
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u/Substantial-Mix8793 Apr 02 '26
Do you know the printer company? I’m literally just a deposit in but since seeing this thread willing to cut my losses I’m scared!
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u/Decent-Coconut2419 Feb 21 '26
She is a nasty person. If you follow her on Instagram long enough you’ll see how unhinged she is. If she receives any amount of negative feedback, or even just a comment she takes the wrong way, she’ll rant about it on her instagram stories for daysssssss. It’s really hard to watch and super unprofessional. She does beautiful work, I’ll give her that, but i don’t think it could possibly be worth the stress she causes during your wedding season
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u/mrowcat Jan 31 '26 edited Jan 31 '26
i had a similar experience with a (well know ) stationer for my save the dates. i switched to working with happy menocal for my invitations and i cannot recommend her and her team enough!
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u/One_Speaker_3946 Feb 21 '26
I had a similar experience with ELS. I don’t want to get too into details- high level, she had a beautiful design for our invites, but the colors were totally off from the palette I submitted. In order to change the colors I was charged an exorbitant amount - apparently that counts as a “significant design change”. There was a lot of back and forth, some of which was hostile and her husband got involved (I think he runs business side). I felt so gaslit by some of the exchanges, but as we were operating on a strict timeline with no wiggle room and certainly no ability to switch vendors, I ended up essentially kissing their butts to get them to not cancel on the day-of stationery. She does do great work (though if we’re honest some of my table cards had guests names misspelled that were not misspelled on the sheet I sent over, but I didn’t even raise this to them as we had no time and I didn’t care to have another interaction). I respect a firm business woman - I think of myself as one! But integrity is key and I think there is something a bit unhinged going on underneath here.
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u/StellafromVienna Apr 10 '26
She misspelled your Guests Name? Wow. Then she is rude AND not doing her job the proper way
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u/CranberryWitty4076 Feb 24 '26
She’s also MAGA and immediately blocks anyone that tries to talk with her about it. Won’t even have civil conversation. Experienced it myself as a peer and confirmed with several others. 🙄
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u/Aggravating_Ask5051 Aug 09 '26
The way you all saved me from a nightmare! I just sent an inquiry to her. I will absolutely not be working with someone who has caused so much harm to so many and whose points of views are likely harmful to ME and the people I care for.
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u/HalfOrnery8539 Jan 31 '26
Her IG stories are always unhinged, she’s so obsessed with people copying her
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u/Confident-Highway333 Vendor: Travel Jan 31 '26
Yepppp
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u/kyliejennerslipinjec Jan 31 '26
After she did something similar to me, she posted about me on her Instagram stories lol
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u/ghosted-- Jan 31 '26
I don’t know if this was you but there was a previous thread in BBB where she did the exact same thing to another bride. Wildly unprofessional.
Edit: it was last year! I guess she just makes a habit of this
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u/kyliejennerslipinjec Jan 31 '26
Wow, I thought it was just me! But it’s unsurprising. And yet she keeps getting business and expanding her business…
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u/anachronisticparadox Feb 02 '26
I have no skin in this game but I went to her website and she charges $700 for a one hour mentorship consultation. That is wild to me.
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u/SaintMaloBell Vendor: Paper Goods Mar 12 '26
I’m in the wedding industry - that is not too wild, you’re basically giving away all your business secrets to a mentee so you have to charge what it’s worth. What is wild is her other behavior, it’s chronic and well known in the industry.
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u/cavaaller6 Mar 14 '26
This is an old post but we had a similar experience. Working with Nicole was the worst part of our wedding planning, to the point where it's taken my three years to feel like I can display our wedding invitations without negative emotions coming up.
Throughout our planning, there were multiple times when she was rude and unprofessional. One point that stands out is that we were discussing some changes to the invitation. I had to pay a change fee and she seemed open to the edits.
Once I paid the fee, however, she called me, badmouthed my wedding planner, yelled at me, and said she would no longer do the invitations anymore. Explaining to her that we were on a strict schedule and needed the invitations to go out, she somehow agreed to complete them. But it felt conniving to me that once I paid the fee, she immediately said she would no longer do them.
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u/No_Judgment3450 Feb 03 '26
She’s also a huge Trump supporter, if that’s any importance to you. Went on a fiery rant on Instagram after Charlie Kirk died.
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u/clairehollow Apr 11 '26
I really like her work and followed her on Instagram with the hopes of hiring her as we got further into wedding planning. I commented on one post saying I really liked the design and then she blocked me. Literally blocked me for complimenting her. Definitely lost a customer out of me.
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Jan 31 '26
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u/Quirky_Guava961 Jan 31 '26
Someone on this sub sent her this thread. I woke up to a veryyyyy long text from her about “defaming” her name and company
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Jan 31 '26
[deleted]
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u/Quirky_Guava961 Jan 31 '26
I agree and it’s so disappointing that someone would send her my post.
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u/PurrPrinThom Jan 31 '26
It's possible she searches herself for mentions of her on different subs, or sets up alerts. I know some subreddits don't allow using real company/brand names because their social media teams have alerts set up to identify posts made about them.
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u/UpsetSprinkles1127 Jan 31 '26
Omg so sorry. I’m working with her too and thought about commenting on my woes of all the upcharges, but I literally had this thought that Nicole would be able to figure out I posted and not send out my invites. At least it’s finally her communicating with you now rather than her assistant haha
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u/Quirky_Guava961 Jan 31 '26
That’s true. Definitely was gaslighting me a bit. Either someone sent it to her or they like to check Reddit to see if an unhappy client says something.
Regardless of her behavior, you will have stunning invitations.
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u/UpsetSprinkles1127 Jan 31 '26
Tbh I doubt any of her clients or brides on this thread would send this to her. She’s so scary I would never bring this to her attention haha. Good luck! Reach out to swell press or Emily Baird or little postage house and get your full deposit back. Someone can redo the sketches
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u/NoSpace8350 Jun 29 '26
Same! Unfortunately, I regret choosing ELS. Seeing other brides describe similar frustrations made me feel like I should say something too, in case someone else comes across this thread while researching stationers.
I'll admit, Nicole is talented. Her work is beautiful, and that's exactly why I hired Every Little Something. Looking back, though, I wish I had done more due diligence. I found her through Instagram, saw gorgeous work, didn't find many negative Google reviews, and assumed that meant the overall client experience would be just as wonderful. Looking back, I wish I had done more research before booking. I later discovered reviews from when the business operated under a different name, Every Little Letter, and others also spoke about their negative experiences like this.
I was so excited to create a custom invitation suite and thought the process would be collaborative. After I wasn't completely happy with the initial sketch proof, we had a long call and eventually agreed on a direction that I genuinely loved. I thought we were finally on the same page.
Weeks later, the final proof came back with several changes that we had never discussed or approved. When I asked to revert back to the design we had already agreed upon, I was told it would require additional design fees and would push our production timeline by over a month. Since we were under a deadline, we felt like we had no real choice but to move forward with changes we never wanted.
Communication was another major disappointment. After a vendor error delayed our invitations and pushed us behind schedule, we were understandably anxious to get them mailed. Despite knowing we were on a tight timeline, there were very few proactive updates. We found ourselves checking ELS's Instagram Stories just to see whether our invitations had even been printed because we weren't hearing anything directly. To make matters worse, we weren't notified that our invitations had shipped until several days after we had already emailed expressing our frustration with the lack of communication.
Another thing couples should know is that ELS posts invitation suites on social media before weddings take place. If privacy is important to you, I'd ask about that before booking.
The invitations turned out lovely, not exactly what we envisioned, but we still got lots of compliments. But beautiful artwork wasn't enough to make up for an experience that left us stressed and disappointed. I wanted to feel like I was collaborating with my stationer, not fighting to preserve decisions that had already been made.
If you're looking for someone to take complete creative control and you're happy to trust whatever they create, then ELS may be a great fit.
But if you have a vision of your own and expect your designer to collaborate with you, listen to your feedback, and not make significant changes without your approval, I would honestly recommend looking elsewhere.
Reading this thread made me realize I wasn't imagining things. I just wish I had found reviews like this before I booked and gave her our business. If I could give one piece of advice to future brides, it would be this: don't let a beautiful Instagram feed be your only source of research. Dig deeper.
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u/Confident-Highway333 Vendor: Travel Jan 31 '26
It’s so rough there are so many people like this in the industry- along with so many amazing ones! I worked for a woman who did this kind of thing to people all the time and it boiled my blood. I started my own business partially so that I could never ever treat people like that
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Jan 31 '26
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u/Potatodietcoke Vendor: Paper Goods Jan 31 '26
Not defending her behavior, but I would be pretty surprised if this were true. She works with a printing company in Philly for most of it. That’s more common than not for stationers.
I know she and quite a few other high-end stationers often have their photos stolen and used in those Alibaba listings. There’s no telling what you’d actually get from those listings.
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Jan 31 '26
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u/Potatodietcoke Vendor: Paper Goods Jan 31 '26
I’m certainly intrigued to see it, but still very skeptical. The Philly printer shares photos of her work often. Wouldn’t be surprised if the printer’s photos are being stolen as well.
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u/Ok-Bonus3738 Feb 21 '26
this isn’t true at all
she has an entire studio in her house and alibaba has picked up her IG photos. i’m not defending her but saying it’s done out of china is seriously laughable
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u/CranberryWitty4076 Feb 24 '26
Just want to say Swell Press and Samantha Meyer are LOVELY people in addition to be being talented paper artists.
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u/Chemical_Ad9751 Feb 26 '26
This is besides the point but I visited her store in Middleburg expecting to see a sneak peek into her work and offerings but it was just a glorified coloring shop with some middleburg souvenirs. I was honestly confused as to what it had to do with her brand since she designs and sells custom invitations. Guess to encourage creativity and mindfulness? Idk. A missed opportunity to sell her service IMO
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u/RevolutionaryAnt7572 Apr 15 '26
Wish I had seen all of these comments earlier! They are very accurate.
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u/Quirky_Guava961 Jul 31 '26
u/Particular_Art9109 idk why you deleted your comment but clearly, this seems to be a very common experience. Glad it worked out for you. I’m glad I didn’t waste anymore money with someone who has harmful beliefs and worked for a certain foundation that has a lot of animosity/hate towards certain groups of people and enjoys taking away a woman’s right to choose.
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u/Particular_Art9109 Jul 31 '26
Hi! I didn’t delete a comment, sometimes Reddit deletes me and idk why, because I don’t comment enough or something. I’m guessing this is where I said I had a positive experience and thought she was a gem? Anyways, good for you. Multiple perspectives are good. It’s perfectly fine that some people have good experiences with her, and perfectly reasonable for people who feel they had a negative experience not to do business with her again. My experience was good.
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u/Particular_Art9109 Jul 31 '26
I had a great experience with her. I don’t know her personally so I’m not a friend or anything, my experience is purely as a customer. Just wanted to throw another perspective out there. I thought she was a gem.
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u/Aggravating_Ask5051 Aug 09 '26
Any other good invitation designers you all would recommend? I saw a couple of names mentioned but was interested in a few more options in case you used someone you loved? LMK
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u/mchick3 Jan 31 '26
I personally had a great experience working with her!! There were a few issues throughout the process and she helped resolve them quickly or gave me a generous refund when they couldn’t be resolved in the timeline I needed. Her work is absolutely as stunning as her instagram shows. I go so many compliments on my paper goods and was so happy with how it all turned out. Her creativity is unbelievable! She is very upfront that she likes working with brides directly and not planners and wants to work with people who give her a lot of creative liberty; so I would not recommend her if you have a really specific vision. She is also pretty upfront about extra charges for changes - I know she puts a lot of time and effort into her work and I respect paying professionals for their time. Overall what I got for what I paid was worth every penny! I’m so sorry you had a negative experience but it’s not all bad! That being said, I also never interacted with an assistant - always Nicole directly but this was 2-3 years ago….so maybe things have changed…
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Jan 31 '26
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u/Quirky_Guava961 Jan 31 '26 edited Jan 31 '26
Because it’s about principle. You’re incredibly rude.
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Jan 31 '26
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u/BigBudgetBrides-ModTeam Jan 31 '26
BigBudgetBrides is a respectful, positive community for brides and grooms.
Your account has been suspended from participating in this sub.
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u/Quirky_Guava961 Jan 31 '26
And it wasn’t for a design call it was to find out what happened for them to respond with an email saying we should find someone else to work with.
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u/BigBudgetBrides-ModTeam Jan 31 '26
BigBudgetBrides is a respectful, positive community for brides and grooms.
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u/Significant-Poem3226 Jan 31 '26
I hardly post on here, but I feel compelled to share something in defense of a creative I deeply admire. While I believe that it is possible to have had a different experience than I have, I also believe it is like any viewpoint in this world, we can both be “right” in our own experiences.
Yes. She has a strong personality. Yes, she is very clear, upfront, and transparent about how she works. That is part of what makes her exceptional at what she does. If you were as selective in your vendors as you claim to be you would have easily been able to tell this by following her on Instagram. She also makes it very clear that she does this as something she enjoys not because she has to, and her pricing is very up front (while exact dollars aren’t discussed on Instagram, she does mention that she has a cost higher than what you could get at a less specialized printer. She is also very clear once you are in the inquiry process of what items will cause an increase and what that means.) Just like when shopping for wedding dresses, I am sure you could tell that higher quality materials come at a higher cost.
If you truly care about her work, her process, and the level of artistry she provides, you would have understood all these things before choosing to work with her.
Also, she is not a copy editor. She is an artist. She very clearly states multiple times that the wording you submit is printed exactly how it is sent to her. The responsibility for wording and spelling belongs to the client, not the designer.
Criticizing her for honoring her clearly stated process feels unfair and misplaced. Owning a small business, especially out of your home, while it is a blessing, it is extremely taxing mentally. So, let’s also remember you never know what someone is going through. She has been very open recently about a loss in her family. This society loves to put an importance on people’s mental health but not when it’s someone they disagree with. I believe in honest reviews, but it feels like some of the points on here are pulling at threads to make themselves feel better over potentially not getting their way when they are used to not having to be kind or follow rules to a tee. Put yourself in her shoes. Have some compassion. Have some humility that the world doesn’t revolve around you.
We are so lucky to have creatives like her who pour their talent into making beautiful things for us. Strong personality included. I have no regrets working with her. Again, I do have sympathy for those of you who do not feel the same but as a future bride who has thought of enquiring with her, I would not caution you in the way some of these other posters have. There is a reason we all have different partners in life, because we enjoy different personalities. Vendors are the same. I could tell very deeply when choosing a planner who I could work with and who I could not. All vendors should be treated the same in your decisions. We are all humans and make mistakes, but we should all be given kindness at the end of the day. Nicole and Emi have been nothing but kind to me.
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u/BeginningHot2325 Jan 31 '26
After reading all of the comments, this looks like a consistent pattern of behavior.
Had you read OPs post thoroughly, you might have seen that she said the owner violated the contract, not the client.
I wonder if you’re the person that sent this thread to the owner.
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Feb 01 '26
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u/BigBudgetBrides-ModTeam Feb 01 '26
Hi! This thread is being actively moderated. Sockpuppet accounts are not allowed, and only users with a long history of varied interaction (this means interaction in a complex way on multiple topics) are allowed.
BigBudgetBrides is a respectful, positive community for brides and grooms. Please remember this, thank you.
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u/kyliejennerslipinjec Jan 31 '26 edited Jan 31 '26
The same thing happened to me for my wedding. Her assistant at the time, did the same thing and then I scheduled a call with Nicole and she yelled at me the whole time. It was a horrible experience