BEWARE Robbin Montero and her wedding planning company A Dream Wedding will defraud you. Ms. Montero operates in the Napa and Sonoma Valleys in California and has contracts with a number of the nicer wedding venues including Chateau St. Jean, St. Francis, and Simi that require you to hire her if you want the use of the venue. Ms. Monteros game is to arrange, or recommend, or tell you that the venue requires certain vendors for equipment, flowers, transportation, hotels, catering, champagne, lighting, etc. She requires the vendors that she recommends to give her a kick back equal to up to 15 percent of the cost. She strong arms the vendors and has managed to force them into her game. The 15 percent, of course, comes right out of your pocket. If you are planning a $50,000 wedding, for example, Ms. Montero will take her fee of $5,000 plus 15 percent of your vendor totals.in other words, she collects 25 percent of the cost of your wedding. She is not worth this cost and she is probably acting contrary to California agency law.in addition, Ms. Montero will tell you she handles the payment of some or all of the vendors. She will accept your credit card to do this, but she adds a fee of 5 percent to your credit card bill. This is not only illegal in California, but it adds another 5 percent to her take at your expense. It also allows her to control the money and extract her kick backs from the vendors before they even receive their payments. Carefully review Ms. Monteros contract and add the following language if you find you must deal with her: Have her remove any references to required vendors. There is no such thing. Make sure all of your vendors understand that any discounts or rebates are paid to you, not Robbin Montero. Put this in the Ms. Monteros contract. Have her remove, or note on the contract form that it is illegal, the language requiring payment of a 5 percent premium for the use of a credit card. Report her to the State Attorney Generals Office and your credit card company (the credit card company will reimburse her fees to your account). Add a statement that you will select and pay all vendors directly. If you want her to handle this for you, pay her an agreed amount for it and make sure she does not take part of the funds meant for the vendors. Add a clause that the fee she receives according to the contract is her total compensation and that any kickbacks she receives from vendors are your property as she is your agent and cannot earn undisclosed profits at your expense. Monitor Ms. Montero very carefully. One of her favorite tricks is to create a crisis and then make herself the hero (and worth her fee, I suppose) by solving it. Things she likes to do at the last minute include telling you that menu items you contracted for are not longer available, that the set up you wanted is not permitted by the venue, or that some equipment has become unavailable. She of course solves these problems for you. Another trick is to tell you after the wedding that equipment or dinnerware is missing and she of course always finds it to save you those costs. You dont need that kind of aggravation.
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