I didn't want to detail the scandal surrounding the previously mentioned wedding vendor. However, we got our money back and it's all over the news so I'm ready to spill the beans!
After Eric and I got engaged, one of the first things we made sure to do was find a photographer. We met with somebody from
Celebration Studios, a tri-state wedding photography and videography company. Celebration was referred to me by a coworker whose daughter is getting married a month before we are. They were recommended to her by some other happy clients.
CS had many different locations all throughout NJ, NY and Philadelphia. We met with Karen Towerton from the Montclair office. She offered us a phenomenal package which included a videographer too! I should have realized it might be too good to be true.
The catch? If you pay up front, you get a 20% discount. The red flags should have popped up then. Over lunch that day, we decided to book this company. We were later able to choose our photographer based on an online gallery of some samples of different photographers' work. We then met him in person and were really excited about his style and thought he'd do a wonderful job shooting our wedding.
Things were fine until last month, while perusing message boards on
The Knot, I came across some negative feedback about CS. I was shocked. The more I dug, the more information I unearthed. Brides and grooms, married for 1, 2, 3, even 4 years, still waiting for wedding albums, videos, proofs, all paid in full. Some turned in baby pictures to be used as a montage for their videos. Phone call after phone call, email after email, they were fed lie after lie. And by late fall, it was impossible to get a hold of anybody by phone.
Celebration Studios was going to be "new and improved," or so they claimed. They were just backlogged. Their design center was closed in order to restructure things, to make it better, they claimed. It was supposed to reopen January 2nd. However, on that day, a sign was on the door at the center in Clifton, promising a reopen by January 31st.
However, just a couple days later, there was a for lease sign hanging in the window.
It was that week, I started to really get frightened. I started spending every waking minute on the
Wronged by Celebration Studios yahoo group. I found out CS stopped paying their photographers and videographers. Some are owed $10,000 or more. They quietly closed each and every office. Sales staff quit. Basicallly within the course of a week, there was nobody left working for this guy.
Except one office actually didn't close. Their Philadelphia office became
Accent Studios. Marc Schwartz, the owner of CS, claims it's an unaffiliated business. Then why did it not only have an identical website until people caught on? Why is it owned by Marc's girlfriend, Shani Whittemore? Clients of CS claim that they booked with CS, yet their credit card statements say Accent.
Schwartz is claiming to have no money left. His lawyer says he's going to be filing bankruptcy. Then he won't have to pay back anybody. But where did all this money go? There were SO many shady dealings. It's been all over the news. Check out these links if you're curious.
By the way, we're sooo lucky that we disputed our charges with the credit card company. We got every penny back that we paid that scamming CS! Not everyone was so lucky though. Hundreds of brides and grooms may never see those pictures and albums they paid so much for. My friend was telling me about her coworker who hired CS to shoot her wedding this weekend. She paid up front. In cash. Even though she has retained a lawyer, she'll never see that money again. People have been filing criminal complants and there are a couple class action law suits that are forming against Schwartz.
And we found an awesome photographer to boot. We really did our research this time. His name is
Josh Lynn and we can't wait for him to shoot our wedding!
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