ATLANTA — Brides from all over the country are complaining about an Atlanta-based wedding photography business, Lace & Vine Photography.
Frustrated clients say the photographer either did not show up or did not provide the final product.
Channel 2 Consumer Investigator Justin Gray talked to Mimmi Phan, who only has photos of her September New England wedding because a guest stepped in at the last minute to take pictures.
She received a text from the owner of Lace & Vine at 2:30 p.m. on the afternoon of the wedding saying he was not coming and would not be providing a replacement.
“We had tried to give them outs multiple times like, ‘If you can’t make this wedding, we can get another photographer instead.’ But they told the coordinator they were going to show up,” Phan said
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She says the photographer told the wedding planner the morning of the big day that he would be there, before bailing with a text message just hours before the ceremony.
Phan still has not gotten her money back.
“The day of the wedding we were very angry. We’re more frustrated at this point because we just want it to be over,” Phan said.
Jasmine Murphy hired Lace & Vine to shoot and edit a video of her April wedding.
Nearly six months later, she still does not have the video that was supposed to be provided within 90 days.
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“It’s not like we’re about to go back and do this all over again,” Murphy said
Channel 2 Action News has talked with several other brides with similar stories.
There is even a “Victims of Lace & Vine” Facebook group.
A bride who wanted to remain anonymous as she fights to get a refund wrote us “they completely no showed my wedding. No communication at all after I sent them the final payment.”
“Do you want the truth, or you want me to validate what your concerns and your feelings are?” Lace & Vine’s co-owner Anthony Brown told Channel 2 Consumer Investigator Justin Gray by phone.
Gray spoke for more than 30 minutes to Brown, who also sent us dozens of text messages but only allowed a small portion of the conversation to be on the record.
“Now that we are on the record, yes, Mimmi Phan, I did not show up for her wedding. My engine blew up. I told her that I wouldn’t be able to be there, and I told her to file a dispute for her refund,” he said.
Lace & Vine says the car breakdown happened in North Carolina on the wedding day. But Phan got the cancelation text just 3 hours before the ceremony. North Carolina is a 14-hour drive from the wedding location north of Boston.
Lace & Vine’s website is now shut down.
The couple who owned it have gone their separate ways and tell me that has led to a major backup of work.
Mimmi Phan still has not received a promised refund.
Lace & Vine told her by text that negative reviews and canceled weddings have led to a deficit in their account.
“If you were already at a point where it’s too much to handle why would you keep taking more weddings or not letting your clients know what is going on,” Phan said.
Lace & Vine’s owner says the company is no longer accepting new clients, and tells Channel 2 they are working to complete all the backlogged edits and get photos and videos to customers.
Just half an hour before Gray’s story was scheduled to air, Lace and Vine turned their website back on. They also posted a statement for customers that read, in part:
“Lace and Vine has experienced a shift in management in the past few months that has, unfortunately, impacted the quality of service and communication with our clients.”
The statement does object to some of the negative online reviews the company received, saying that “some reviews that have been posted online are completely fraudulent in nature.”
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