Kisses By Candlelight

We live in the US and were looking for someone who could woke with our needs remotely! And Kisses by Candlelight team was happy to cater to all needs and most of all being available at all odd hours to talk to us and answer all the questions. Ayushi and her team did an awesome job I could not have asked for anything better! We wanted a minimalist wedding and there we had what we wanted! We had a outdoor event and it had poured all night before the wedding, and we had to move to plan B. Thanks to Ayushi the Plan B worked out and turned out to be more beautiful than our original plan. Thanks a lot, Ayushi for being patient and listening to all our needs! You made our day very special!

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Being the sister of the groom, I was amazed and delighted to see that my brothers 3 day wedding seemed like it ran effortlessly and was a success in every aspect! This success was only possible because of the backbone of the wedding - my brother’s wedding planners Kisses by Candlelight. Though I wasn’t an active member in making any of the choices, I was able to observe and see the services executed from another perspective with such precision and immediate back and forth communications & solutions if any challenges came up. My to be sister in law who lives in the States happened to see the same wedding organisers & was keen on getting an opportunity to work with them for her wedding with my brother. It was only later that we realised that we were talking of the same wedding planners who I also happen to know as good friends. I have known Ayushi and Namdeem for a few years now & my experience of my family and I being able to comfortably work with them professionally and keep our friendship going at the same time was only possible because of their professionalism, passion for their work and most importantly their utmost respect for their clients. That’s the moment where I knew we made the right choice. Coming from a creative field myself, I couldn’t imagine how they were going to manage multiple events in different locations and cities ( Bangalore & Coorg). Little did I know that the decor and event planning had so much to do with the overall experience. This is why I highly recommend Kisses by Candlelight because even though each event is a challenge for them as they are working against time - they treat and make sure that the work they put into every event is their best and soon making these beautiful events that they organised so wonderfully, became a part of one of our best memories of my brother’s wedding. The weddings success was truly because of their hard work and outstanding creativity, friendship and professionalism that helped myself and my family relax, sit back, enjoy and celebrate one of my brothers biggest and most important day of his life. This was only made possible by Kisses by Candlelight. Taking forward abundance of memories of the team with me and my family throughout our memory of this successful & beautiful wedding! Thank you for making memories on such important days in our lives easier to always remember!

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Kisses by Candlelight organized a wedding for which I served as the maid of honour. They handled everything from the Proposal to the Reception, even going as far as helping us organize the bachelorette party for the bride. KBC’s competence and experience ensured that any hiccup (which were few and far apart) was handled professionally and confidently. Every one of the functions of the wedding was not just organised with the perfect brevity for it, but they found a way to keep both our generation as well as the older one happy and satisfied. From the quirky décor for the Sangeet to the traditional setup of the ceremony to the chilled out after party, everything was done with the couple and their families in mind, be it ensuring that design and décor worked with their outfits or that traditions were still celebrated and respected while still being a fun, modern wedding. Everybody has an ideal image of what they want their wedding to look like and this aspect can cause issues if the ideas are not interpreted correctly or people are not on the same wavelength. It was with respect to this that KBC’s experience and understanding shone through. Ayushi and Nadeem knew exactly how to make the ideas we had in our minds a reality. At the end of the day, a wedding is an occasion that the couple, their families and close friends remember for a lifetime. Having your wedding planners in your corner can go a huge way in how memorable it is, and to this end, the passion, care and understanding that the team at KBC have for their clients is something that you don’t expect to see. Finally, I look forward to having my wedding planned and executed by Kisses by Candlelight whenever I decide to get married.

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The groom seldom gets any say in his own wedding. And when my turn to be the groom came around, on March 11, I was dreading how mine would look. Would I have to be part of a clichéd wedding with the regular boring décor? Never did I imagine myself standing in awe at the venue decked up, looking like something straight out of a wedding catalog, yet nothing like anything I have seen before. Traditional, simple, elegant, and yet unique. Kudos to Ayushi and Nadeem! Even though I’ve never directly interacted with them, I’d like to thank them for the exemplary work they did for the Sangeet, the night before the wedding, and the wedding. The first Sangeet that I attended happens to be my own. And what a sangeet to attend! The contemporary stage and décor looked like something straight out of a Bollywood song. The night of song and dance was pure fun and excitement and the credit goes completely to the team at KBC. The wedding venue was pure beauty. The décor complemented to open venue perfectly. What wowed me more than the décor and the planning was the heart the team showed in the months leading to the wedding. Days after I got engaged, my father-in-law was hospitalized. Weeks of hiding heart troubles finally got too much and he needed urgent surgery and months of bed rest. Any other bride in such a situation would have called the groom and family intending to postpone the wedding. How else can she get the dream wedding when she has a father recovering from heart surgery? Luckily for my wife, she had KBC. They did everything! Even though it meant a lot more work for them, at no extra cost, they stepped up and made sure my wife had all the support she needed and none of the stress. While my wife and her mother were at home taking caring of her father, Ayushi and Nadeem planned every single detail and yet at no point did her father feel he could be helping more because (I don’t know what they did or how they did it) they made him feel part of the planning without ever having to get up from his bed. In the end what anyone wants in a wedding planner is not just someone who does as told. But a friend who finds it in themselves to step up and support you through the months of planning leading up to the wedding, listening to your thoughts and opinions, and gifting you the wedding of your dreams without any of the stress or pains. That was what KBC did for us on our wedding day. Gifted us the wedding we always wanted!

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Our experience with Kisses By Candlelight (KBC) was disappointing to say the very least. The only reason we hired them without any vetting was because they had come recommended by a friend. However, what we should have borne in mind was that this common friend had never used their services (he is unmarried) and was talking them up without any real experience of what they have to offer. We contemplated sharing our experience here, because it may affect their employability in the future, but in the end, we decided to give honest feedback because we did not want others to go through the ordeal we suffered at the hands of these planners, and truly wished we were forewarned by someone. Ayushi is talented and knows her craft. She’s well-spoken and her PR skills are fantastic. She claims they have done weddings in all budgets ranging from ₹95 K to over a Crore. Honestly, she has all the attributes it takes to do all that and more, and to be a great wedding planner; unfortunately her skills are put to use only for the benefit of her company, not her clients. She will sell her brand and service to you, not to forget her ability to create a dream-wedding experience in any budget you have in mind, but in the end it’s all lip-service and big talk. It does not translate into action, as she simply does not walk the talk. KBC always pushed us to to hire their vendors that they were related to/ good friends with regardless of the quality of their work (some of the work was so despicable that we could not believe it even made it to the table!). They even inflated the charges of their vendors by 2-3 times the market rate, and I can only assume it was a mutually benefiting arrangement for them. We rejected their vendors because they were ridiculously priced, ie, the quality of their work did not justify the price they were quoting, and asked them to send us more profiles. They sent us profiles of extremely high-end vendors, whose work was good but way out of our budget, and a few more profiles within our budget with substandard work. They made it clear to us that “in your budget this is the max you can expect”. This is absolutely not how your planner should be speaking to you. They are supposed to be making your wedding hassle-free and fun, not insulting you and stressing you out. While we were NOT on a shoestring budget (we had a fairly big wedding), we did not want to spend four times the market rate that was being consistently proposed by these planners. They seldom called us, or followed up with anything. We had to keep calling them, most often to no avail. I wasn’t given so much as a suggestion for where to get my bridal outfit made, until three months before the wedding, so you can only imagine how the rest of the things were handled by them. Most of Ayushi’s suggestions for my outfit were shops on commercial street coz apparently that was “all I could afford”. Our family and friends stepped in, took us to a bunch of boutiques and eventually I found myself a wonderful designer who made the prettiest dress for me, for less than half the budget that Ayushi deemed “too less” btw. This was a common pattern that followed in selecting almost all our vendors, ourselves. We ended up doing our own research and were surprised when we EASILY found vendors we liked, with great work to show, and to top it all, for less than half the budget that we had shared with KBC, which as per them, was insufficient for what we wanted. From finding and selecting the venue, to makeup artists, hairdressers, caterers, outfits, designers, jewellery, jazz band, sound engineer, rings, MC, Bartender, Baker, etc. we ran around finding them all ourselves. This was their job, what they charged us money for- to find us vendors so that we didn’t have to do the hard work ourselves. Unfortunately, we did not have the luxury of having our wedding planned for us, sitting back and enjoying the wedding experience, even though we paid them for it. We ran from pillar to post for everything, till the very last minute. I really wish KBC had done what they signed up for, not just because it was THEIR JOB, or because they had made such tall claims about their customer service, but because Ayushi is beyond capable to deliver, if she chose to put her skills and talent to the benefit of her clients. If this was about incompetence, I wouldn’t have bothered writing a review like this, because when people try their best and fail, you cannot help but recognise the effort put in, despite the result. Ayushi and Nadeem did not just fail to deliver, but they failed to even try, simply because they did not care enough to do their job, well. When customer satisfaction does not hold any importance whatsoever to people running a business dealing with customer service itself, you are doomed to fail. Their apathy and unprofessional attitude, complete disregard of their clients’ wants and feelings makes them very difficult to work with and dampens your spirits, at what is meant to be the happiest time of your life. Ayushi’s mother is a decorator, and we have used her services for our engagement as well. She did a good job and that was probably the only upside to this whole fiasco called KBC- the fact that the mother did the job she was paid (a bomb) to do. At the wedding, Ayushi got confrontational on many accounts with our close friends who were helping out in the arrangements, some family members and even vendors. This was probably the lowest blow- that we had to apologise to our guests on behalf of our wedding planners for their rude demeanour! We were angry and even contemplated not settling their pending dues as they did not deliver the service we paid them for, and made our wedding experience so unpleasant. But we did not want to be unprofessional like them, so we paid them their dues anyway. We didn’t even address this with them because, post the wedding, we learnt of two other couples who had similar experiences with them. We realised that it wouldn't make a difference as they simply did not care. If there was one thing I could go back in time and change - I would un-hire KBC. We would have ended up doing the work we did anyway, but saved ourselves the stress and embarrassment they caused us. I wouldn’t recommend anyone hiring them to handle any event, least of all their wedding. (Dear Ayushi, This is in response to your reply to my review above. You have Ya 10 reviews in 10 years! For starters, that says a lot! We didn’t think you were “out of our budget” for our engagement, we simply didn’t need a planner for a party of 40 people, which is what we told you as well. But I’m not surprised you twisted that story to your convenience. We didn’t shop around for planners, like I already mentioned, we hired you without any vetting because you came recommended by a friend, who may have worked with you (we know you work with friends and family) but hasn’t used your terrible services himself. Halfway through though, we did shop around and were surprised indeed, that we found planners that seemed way better than you guys by a large margin, had a much better attitude and had hundreds of good reviews unlike your measly 10! But we decided to make it work with you guys coz we didn’t want the stress of having that uncomfortable conversation and making things negative before the wedding. Despite you giving us such a hard time, we were trying to stay happy and positive. In hindsight, we should have fired you at that time. Yes, you rightly said that we had issues about the timeline and the communication rate (that you would never follow up and call) towards the early part of our wedding planning, but we continued to work with you anyway. You didn’t mention that it was because you apologised to us for your misconduct and promised to mend your ways, which we were naive enough to believe. We HAD TO find our own venue because you were not helping!! We had no choice. Same reason we chose our makeup artists, band and all the other vendors that we were forced to find ourselves coz you failed to do your job! We had individual meetings, trials, calls, follow-ups with ALL vendors, no one “brought vendors along” and no vendors are “small”. It’s terrible that you describe vendors like that. You boast about doing multiple venue visits? We did all the hard work, and in the end you would show up like a Maharani to be introduced to the vendor that we found and selected! Isn’t it suppose to be the other way around? Who was working for whom?! The vegan placards were your responsibility, not our caterers. Again, another task you’re fashionably palming off to someone else. Readers have probably noticed the trend I mentioned by now- that you shirk all responsibility and expect everyone else to do your job! Our friends brought the dessert freezer to the venue, all we had asked YOU to do was have it collected. Instead of using your own manpower, you fought with our other vendor (and friend) to do the job that again you failed to do yourself. He didn’t “mess up at your event”, in fact he bailed you out while YOU kept our friends waiting outside the venue like delivery agents for over 45 minutes, while continuously telling them “5 minutes more” every time they called you to enquire what was taking so long. They missed the first part of our wedding because of you! Later you got rude and confrontational with them as well, instead of apologising for keeping them waiting outside. We were so embarrassed by your terrible conduct and had to apologise profusely to them for what you put them through. We apologised to so many people on your behalf because you went around insulting our friends and family at our wedding! The thing you mentioned about the wine and cake- that is exactly why one hires a planner - to handle last minute problems like this, to take control of the situation and mitigate the circumstances. But you don’t even have control over your temper, let alone a stressful situation. Nobody wants and out of control and frenzied person at their wedding, least of all as their planner, who loses their shit on guests and vendors. You so callously say “yes I got angry” without considering how detrimental that was to our wedding and how embarrassed our parents and family members were because “you got angry” and at multiple occasions created a scene at our wedding! You need help with anger management; your temperament is not conducive to your line of work, or fair to clients who you charge a fat bill after embarrassing them by your rage and temper at their wedding and in front of guests! Yes, my husband did ask your printer (who made envelopes for our wedding card) for a discount, but you forgot to mention that not only was the print order delayed, but they messed up the folding of the envelope, and that it didn’t fit! It was way too tight. The card once inserted into the envelope was stuck and had to be yanked out with a ton of pressure. Once the card was removed from the envelope it was impossible to get it back into the envelope. When we went distributing cards it was embarrassing to see people struggle with the cards! How can something like this be an acceptable standard of work? You should be embarrassed that your vendor messed up the job, instead of being embarrassed that we were not comfortable paying a pre-decided price for a job that was botched up so badly! You’re clearly used to clients paying money for a job that was messed up, so it’s no surprise that this one didn’t occur to you as unfair either. I will not share the names of the other couples who suffered your terrible services, because that is the kind of thing you would do, coz it comes under the “unprofessional” category. They may have not reached out; we didn’t reach out to you about your bad service either! You can see why- because there is no point! Your response makes it pretty clear that you take no accountability, just as we expected. So why would anyone reach out?! But I’m pretty sure you remember that guests were not picked up, left stranded and didn’t make it to the venue coz you messed up transportation, etc. Just one of the many screw-ups at one of the other weddings. Anyway, I’m glad you responded to my review above. You reinforced my points by trying to justify your mistakes instead of taking accountability and apologising for ruining our wedding. Anyway, I’m done responding to you. I didn’t write this to get into some sort of banter with you. I would have emailed you directly if that was my intent. I just wanted to forewarn people because no one deserves their wedding day to be ruined by the people that are hired to protect it. Take care.)

they were amazing at executing all the ideas we had in mind for our dream wedding.

Working with Ayushi was a such a pleasure from day one. Living abroad we were very concerned about getting the fun and classy

I remember the first call I had with Ayushi and she told me "We don't just plan your wedding as a planner but as your extended family member". Ayushi and Nadeem, the dynamic duo of Kisses by Candlelight went ahead and didn't just come in as an extended family, but even a better way as a "family of friends". Right from the first meeting, they understood our personality as a couple and designed and executed the kind of wedding we always wanted. We never had even a minute of stress before, during or after the wedding. The setup designed by them was truly magical. The best part about them is that they don't force their ideas on you, instead they understand what you want and take it as a reference point to give a wonderful shape even better than your "dream wedding" for you.When it comes to having a wedding that is even better than your dreams, look no further than "Kisses by Candlelight" :) Thank you Ayushi and Nadeem and your entire team for designing a wedding even better than what we always wanted :)

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Working with Ayushi was a such a pleasure from day one. Living abroad we were very concerned about getting the fun and classy deco that we wanted. Ayushi and her team worked tirelessly to deliver just that. The wedding venue looked very beautiful for both the day and night events. Ayushi and her team's creativity is amazing and each and every element at our wedding seemed to have a personal touch. Ayushi addressed any and all of our concerns with a lot of ease and was very accommodative of any changes that we requested. Together with Ayushi's recommended vendors for mehendi and catering, our wedding was a beautiful celebration and everybody enjoyed every aspect of it. We truly would recommend kissesByCandlelight to everyone and wish them great success in the future.

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Ayushi, Nadeem and team were fantastic. We truly couldn't have been more happy that we got to work with them for our wedding! For background, my husband and I live in Singapore, and had to plan a Bangalore wedding remotely, which we thought would be a real challenge. Ayushi and Nadeem went above and beyond to ensure that nothing felt like a chore. Everything was seamless, and they truly held their own and went above and beyond to make the entire experience of planning to the actual wedding a joy. Every detail and request that we had was taken care of - nothing was too difficult for this team! They are amazing and I would recommend them to anyone! Thank you so so much KbC team, you were such a pleasure to work with. The wedding was such a whirlwind, but the one thing that stands out is how incredible you were and how lucky we were to have you. Thanks again! xx

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