A Perfect Event Debi Lilly and A Perfect Event Chicago Event and Wedding Planner Debi Lillly and A Perfect Event will ruin your wedding and steal your money! Chicago, Illinois

A Perfect Event has produced over 300 weddings and 700 addiotnal events since 1996.  We have raised over $2.3M for Chicago Public Schools, and have thrown many gratis events for the underprivaledged.  We strive to make sure all of our cleints are happy.  When issues do arise we do try to resolve the issues with our clients as quickly and fairly as possible.  issues are not common but when working with a large number of small vendors, they are possible.

The situation for which this rebuttal is written happened 9 years ago now but obviously these posts don't go away. Unfortunately we do not feel that Jennifer Lazuka and Brad Wilson were not fair to A Perfect Event or accurately represented the facts so this is to serve as our perspective when this situation happened.

Jennifer Lazuka (aka Chicago Bride - USA) and Brad Wilson (www.bradsdeals.com) hired A Perfect Event for their wedding.   The contract they signed was approxiamately 5 lines as we keep our contracts very simple and easy to understand.  One line stated that there was a non-reufndable deposit to secure the date for A Perfect Event's Services.  A seperate line item indicated that if the contract was canceled an additonal hourly consulting fee applied.  This is standard to ensure that small service based businesses can be protected to some extent (but not completely) from last minute cancellations that can casue significant financial issues.

A few weeks after signing the contrat Jennifer and Brad became unresponsive for several weeks, they had later apologized for being unavailable.  During that paeriod of time A Perfect Event had turned away 2 other weddings for their same wedding date.  Brad and Jennifer had told us that they decided that they were going to get married outside the city and would no longer need our services and woud like their money back.  As A Perfect Event had turned away other busines but wanted to compromise, A Perfect Event offered to provide store credit on the deposit for Invistations or other services that would still be useful but that was refused by Jennifer and Brad.  Jennifer and Brad did not pay the balance of the consulting and A Perfect Event elected not persue the balance due.  

The hotel Jennifer had booked was already lost before A Perfect Event was involved. Upon calling the hotel, the staff had informed Debi that the hotel had already been lost as they had made a mistake with Jennifer. Outside of providing options for venues and hotels there were no other issues and no mistakes that was ever documented by Jennifer or Brad.

We did stop repsonding to Jennifer when we found that she had immediately set up a twitter account in Debi's name (and A Perfect Events name)  and started tweeting out defamatory anonymous reviews even as she was also apologizing fto Debi via email or not being repsonsive.  

Brad also went on to register the domain name of www.aperfectevent.net. - presumably to put up a false site.  He did later release the site.

We are sorry that this issue happened, but as a small business we saw this as no different than having a person treat aonther person unfairly and take advantage of them. Especially when they themselves were running a small business.

I would never recommend Debi Lilly and A Perfect Event. I hired A
Perfect Event for wedding planning and was completely ripped off. Debi
Lilly made several mistakes and lost my wedding venue of choice (I had
booked it before I hired her).  This forced me to very quickly cancel
her services.  She billed me for 9 hours of work - an inflated number -
but did not return the difference between the 9 hours and my $3500
deposit!  When I tried to get our deposit balance back, she completely
ignored me and will not return my multiple emails and calls. She even
hung up on my mother-in-law when she called her to get our money back.  Mr. Springer then sent me threatening emails telling me how
many important people he knew.  Of course, he didn't introduce himself
as her husband but, rather, as "an investor" in A Perfect Event.  What
a poor effort at intimidation...and deception
(http://blog.aperfectevent.com/about.html)! Please do not be fooled by
Ms. Lilly's bubbly personality. She comes across so sweet and charming,
but it's all an act. I agree with previous online reviews regarding how
she has  A Perfect Event staff members write bogus reviews on various
sites. They are so easy to spot and are total lies. She posts many of
them on Yelp. When I found a bogus review, I called her out on Yelp and
somehow the review was removed within days. Please do not use A Perfect
Event or Debi Lilly. There are plenty of other wonderful bridal
consultants within Chicago who will not cause you stress or financial
pain during such a wonderful time in your life.

I would never recommend Debi Lilly and A
Perfect Event. I hired A Perfect Event for wedding planning and was
completely ripped off. Debi Lilly made several mistakes and lost my
wedding venue of choice (I had booked it before I hired her).  This
forced me to very quickly cancel her services.  She billed me for 9
hours of work - an inflated number - but did not return the difference
between the 9 hours and my $3750 deposit!  When I tried to get our
deposit balance back, she completely ignored me and will not return my
multiple emails and calls. She even hung up on my mother-in-law when
she called her to get our money back.  Then she had her husband Mike Springer ( michaelspringer@gmail.com)
send me threatening emails telling me how many important people he
knew.  Of course, he didn't introduce himself as her husband but,
rather, as "an investor" in A Perfect Event.  What a poor effort at
intimidation...and deception
(http://blog.aperfectevent.com/about.html)! Please do not be fooled by
Ms. Lilly's bubbly personality. She comes across so sweet and charming,
but it's all an act. I agree with previous online reviews regarding how
she has  A Perfect Event staff members write bogus reviews on various
sites. They are so easy to spot and are total lies. She posts many of
them on Yelp. When I found a bogus review, I called her out on Yelp and
somehow the review was removed within days. Please do not use A Perfect
Event or Debi Lilly. There are plenty of other wonderful bridal
consultants within Chicago who will not cause you stress or financial
pain during such a wonderful time in your life.