I contracted Nadine to make a cake for my wedding last month. It was a pretty simple wedding cake with not a lot of frills so this should have been easy for them. Despite our initial pleasant interaction with her, the rest of the process was a bit of a nightmare (Don't be fooled by Nadine's old lady charm... she is shrewd and deceptive when it comes to making a buck).
We worked with over a dozen vendors for our wedding and Nadine was the worst... by far. Nearly all of the traits that we love in most of our vendors (promptness, fairness, good personality, punctuality, well-organized) Nadine lacked. She was late for meetings, failed to call back or follow up on important details and was unresponsive and disorganized when we had questions or concerns.
We set up an initial meeting with her partner Jean who I would describe as flaky and abrasive. Her role was to understand what we wanted our cake to look like, approve the design, give us the cost information and book our date for the wedding. Though she managed to approve our cake design, she apparently got the cost wrong to the tune of $200 despite me submitting a drawing explaining everything we wanted on the cake a week after our initial meeting. It took ~ 40 minutes to have her understand our simple ""minimalist"" cake design... If you've dreamt up a design or had aspirations for more than the crusty old cakes that you see in Nadine's display case, turn around and walk out now.... better yet run.
Nadine doesn't ""get it."" They are way out of touch with modern designs and today's brides' concerns and vision. Don't expect Nadine to email you or call for that matter.. expect her to lose paper work. Expect her to forget that you put down a down payment. Don't expect to pay with a credit card! You will be lucky if she shows up to your final consultation meeting!
We chose Nadine because we thought we could save a few hundred bucks on the cake... we were wrong. When it came down to it they ended up charging us more than we originally agreed to on our contract putting her pricing inline with many of the other ""more expensive"" bakeries.
Nadine called me the day before my wedding to see if the flower and ribbon on the cake was to my lliking... as if I had nothing better to do the day before my wedding! The color of the rose was nothing like the color swatch I gave her and she said there was nothing she could do about it. I told her this is why I had asked her to show me an example of the rose at our final meeting (which she did not have and called me a liar saying she never agreed to do this)
On the day of the wedding, the rose was more of a yellowish color than rose color as a I had requested and the ribbon was a much darker grey than I had asked for. And to think I ended up paying more in the end for poor customer service, added stress, and a cake that didn't look like what I had requested! What a disappointment! I DO NOT RECOMMEND ANYONE go to Nadine's!
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