My negative review is being disputed?????

Don't worry; WW will ask you to send them proof that you had a contact with the venue and then it will go back up. I know it's annoying, but if you send them that, it'll be back up.

Keep on it!

Let the buyer beware: wedding factory type venues (I'm a floral designer) most certainly can book right before you or right after you. I did a huge wedding on Labor Day weekend, and even with two assistants we were RUNNING in the one hour the venue gave us to set up.

I've also been a floral designer waiting for the wedding before to finish to get in and set up. Literally got finished with each area right before the guests arrived. It was too stressful, I will never work that venue again and will turn down a bride if that is her venue.

It MUST be in your contract if you or your vendors want a specific amount of time to set up; usually you are given one hour (but check that contract!!) and if you want more time expect to pay by the hour as they have to bring in their staff an hour earlier and it might not work with their earlier booking slots.

As Celia said, WW has to check it out to be sure that you are an actual client.

It was at the Hilton. So not necessarily "wedding factory." And our Djs contract stated that he needed at least three hours. The Hilton had worked with him previously. Knew that we were working with him and that he needed three hours. They knew the plan the entire time we were planning. What really blows my mind though is that one, they waited to tell us TWO DAYS before hand. And two, why they would book something that would leave a wedding reception with two hours to set up, knowing they needed at least three. And for WW to only interrogate the negative reviews is sketchy and shallow. Why would I go out of my way to review a place I didn't even use ? And why wouldnt they want couples to get every angle before making a decision?

Unfortunately, there have been instances in which a competitor left a negative review of a business, pretending to be a bride. So if a review is disputed, they will ask for proof that you actually had a contract. However, the business can't contest the review just based on its being negative--it will go back up once you show you contracted with them.

The only way in which the WW policy bugs me is that you can't leave a review based on a negative contact that did not result in signing a contract. For example, you have a meeting with a vendor. You agree to use that vendor, and the vendor is supposed to send you a contract to sign. The vendor never does. You call, you write, you e-mail, and finally you give up and go with another vendor. At that point, the vendor leaves you a bunch of nasty e-mails. WW will not let you leave a review for that vendor, because there was never a contract.

However, in your situation, you should be good to go.

I hate that WW won't let you review if you didn't have a contract. I had a vendor who emailed me that he would get me a contract, and then dragged it out for months (didn't respond to emails or phone messages for weeks, then would give us a ridiculous story of how life got so out of hand) and I'm so glad we walked away from it and found someone more professional who was able to get us a contract and take our deposit - but then I saw he was advertising again to book private events! Makes me livid that he could get some other bride/event strung along and screw them up. The only reason we had booked our venue was because he was going to be our caterer and we were super excited about it, but we are still pretty happy now with the other two vendors we've booked to provide catering. I just wish he hadn't been so awful to deal with.

What does it say in your contract for set-up time?

We found that site like WW and the knot had reviews that were pretty much only positive. You have to go out to sites like Yelp or whatever else a search brings up to get a fuller story. We almost went with one caterer until we heard something from us that made us uneasy. We then went and did a more thorough search for reviews and our suspicions were confirmed. The funny thing is we went back and read the knot reviews and the same info was in them just presented as a positive instead of a negative. It was very interesting and has taught me to get info from multiple sources going forward. I hope you can get your review posted but if not try to post it to some other sites so it is at least out there for future brides to find if the search hard enough!

..... I only trust sites like ww and the knot because they check up on reveiws... have you been on the internet lately? People are crazy, stupid ,and sometimes just plain mean. Places like yelp and yellow pages dont check up on reviews and you can even leave multiple anonymous reviews if you want. Which skews their ratings. So one person will leave multiple negatives or whatnot.

Personaly I am happy to hear WW is asking for more info from you.

But back to your situation, that sounds horrible and I hope that everything gets worked out :]

Please don't trust anything you read on Yelp. They don't qualify reviewers in any way; anyone can write anything about any business.

I know that the system here isn't perfect; as a vendor, I'd love couples to have the opportunity to review the process (especially since I feel that is very important to the whole experience, not just behaviour on the day.....) but WW probably just doesn't have the personnel to ferret out real and false claims. They don't only investigate negative reviews; they investigate anything a vendor disputes, for any reason; the narrative doesn't match the stars, the vendor doesn't recognize the event (even if the review is okay), or the information is incorrect.

But if you have a contract, your review will go back up (another stellar reason for having a contract....)

Good vendors welcome honest feedback; it makes us rethink policies, possibly clean up practices that have gotten a little sloppy. So keep on it!

WW just has to make sure that you actually did business with the venue. They do this to make sure there aren't being fraudulent reviews being made. Which I understand, but I think that we should be able to review a vendor that we have had bad experiences with that made us choose to go with another vendor. There were a few vendors that I had consultations with that were terrible experiences and because I didn't do business with them, I can't leave a review. That's the one thing I don't like about the WW review process.

I had a 5-star review, but it was not for me! I asked WW to reassign it to the correct vendor.

So, we do dispute other things besides bad reviews.

I have an anonymous review without a date, so I don't know if it is actually mine or not. It's a good one, so I have not questioned it. If it were a bad one, I'd dispute it so it can be proved it is not mine.

This is exactly why I don't trust WW reviews and why I have yet to review our venue and DJ.

Hi Melissa! Like Celia and others have said, if you had a contract with this vendor and supply proof of the contract when asked by WeddingWire's support team - then the review will go back up. It is only temporarily removed while the support team can verify if you were a contracted client. Don't worry!

Hi Melissa! I had a similar thing happend on here, as long as you have a signed contract by you AND the hotel, you'll be fine. If not, WW also accepts proof of payment i believe.

WW was very helpful with getting my review back up!

@Annie, how does not reviewing your venue or DJ help future brides at all? They're more reliable than Yelp where competitors can leave reviews.

It also seems its back up! Unless you posted it twice, which is a no no, there is a review that is identical what you said in your post showing!

Melissa it appears you created another account to leave a review, this is against the WW "review rules" or whatever. Just let the process go, and stop making new accounts to leave reviews.

I didn't make a new account to leave another review. I had forgot my original account information so I made a new one with my correct information. It let me start the review on the old one but asked me to log in when I hit submit and didn't know it actually posted until I received that email. By that time I had already reviewed again because I didn't see my old review and was hoping to get the free gift.

Well your old account is the one being verified, maybe the owner disputed since there were TWO of the same negative reviews. I don't blame the vendor.

Way to be extremely judgmental though. To the rest, I understand that they want to make sure I'm real, but again why would I go our of my way to review something? And any business can say oh that never happened. So the bride loses. Its bogus.

@Emily, way to support businesses who know they messed up but get to cover it up via WW. This place is a joke. If all you get is positive reviews, this isn't reliable. Most of us only get this day once, it's a shame that WW doesn't care.