pengantins, beware!

The terrible story of the missing-in-action wedding vendor pretty much exploded all over social media this morning but in case you haven't seen or heard...

Enchanted Weddings is back at it again.

Conversation between the photographer and the bride, reproduced with permission.

You can also read more about the latest incident here or see pictures posted by the groom himself here or his video here.

I first wrote about this rogue wedding vendor here, and even took the trouble to scan, resize and upload the Berita Harian article written about them in my blog entry earlier this year. 

I figured - hard copy of the newspaper article gets thrown and forgotten a few days after, right? But an online copy of it stays forever and can be read by people who search for reviews on Enchanted Weddings online even after the initial fuss is over, right?

Apparently, and sadly, it seems like that is not how it works.

A common question that many have asked is this: Why is this happening again? What can be done to prevent this from happening again? How is it possible for Enchanted Weddings to do nasty again when their bad reputation has been splashed all over the news less than a year earlier? How is it possible for them to get clients? Don't people know the previous stories?

I don't really know the exact reason for this but I can only harbour a few guesses:

(1) Orang malas nak research. Never mind that a wedding is a big and special day for most pengantins. Never mind that a wedding involves tens and thousands of hard-earned dollars. Never mind that most of us in this country have access to the Internet, where information on almost every damn thing in the world is readily available. Orang just malas nak research. Seriously, all you need to do is do a Google search on Enchanted Weddings and all the bad reviews on them are contained within the first few hits. You don't even need to find and sit in front of a computer to do this. All you need is a smartphone or a tablet with working 3G/4G/Wifi and it can be done while on the go. The technology is there. Use it.

(2) Orang tak baca Berita Harian - their past incidences were already reported in Berita Harian earlier this year, on a two-page full spread article no less, but since some people don't bother reading the newspapers, the story might not have reached them.

(3) Orang masih boleh book them kat wedding exhibitions - Selagi exhibition organizers don't take a step towards actively filtering vendors with notorious reputations, selagi tu unsuspecting couples and their families will be exposed to the risk of mistakenly engaging them. Most people visit wedding exhibitions with the belief that the vendors participating in them are honest and legit - and 99.9% of them are honest and legit - but what happens when couples run into that 0.01% dishonest vendor? Once they put in their deposit, put in their payments and put in their faith up until the big day itself, there really is no point of turning back. Of course the onus is on the couples themselves to research about the vendors before committing (refer to Point No. 1) but errant wedding vendors shouldn't be allowed to step foot into an exhibition booth in the first place.

(4) Orang dah baca or dengar pasal Enchanted Weddings but still want to have faith in them - for this one, all I can say is: You take the risk, you prepare for the fall.

Thank you Bride Barista, for breaking this unfortunate news here earlier this morning, updating me with all the deets and providing the above screenshots via Whatsapp. Pagi pagi Ahad dah kecoh pasal cerita orang kejam sebegini... benci! 

To the pengantins and their families who were affected by this irresponsible and dishonest vendor, my heart goes out to you. I cannot even begin to imagine the pain, the loss, and the heartbreak this incident must have caused you but I hope God gives you the strength and will to get over it with much peace.

To everyone else... please, please, please be more careful when engaging wedding vendors and please do your research thoroughly. I can never stress this enough. Please.