Introduction

I proposed to my wife in Belize, in March of 2007. We both fell in love with the country and decided we wanted to get married down there, to share the country with our family and friends. We started looking for wedding planners in Placencia and came upon Malcolm and Britannia.

At first we were impressed with them, they were offering exactly what we were looking for - a pretty and simple beach front wedding. They were also very good at getting back to us and answering our questions. We did our homework and asked for references - we got a good reference from someone in the US who just got married. Everything seemed fine.

We arranged a contract with them, with a payment scheme of 25 % down, 25% paid 3 months before the wedding, and 50% at the time of the wedding. We wanted to have an open bar, so rather than pay per drink, we arranged a per bottle fee and a bartender/corkage fee.

A few months passed and we tried to get in contact with them again. Strangely they weren't as responsive as they were before. In fact, they stopped answering our emails all together. The phone number stopped working, we couldn't get ahold of them. We were starting to worry, but just as we were about to cancel the contract and find new arrangements, Malcolm finally answered a phone call. He said he never received any emails, we must have been writing to an address that has been retired. He gave us a new address, we were so relieved that we didn't question his explanation much. Coincidentally it was time for our next payment so we paid the next installment.

Malcolm also told us he could set up tours for us and our guests if we wanted, and with discounts if we had large enough groups. We thought it would be nice to do a sailing/snorkelling trip for the girls, and a cave tubing/zip lining trip for the guys. He explained that since it was high tourism season down there at the time, the tour operators would need a deposit - if we paid him for 5 people on each tour, that would be enough to hold the spots. We agreed and he charged our credit card.

As we neared the date, my wife and I grew more and more excited about the wedding. We flew down to Belize for our special day. We never realised how stressful and aggravating the experience would wind up because of these horrible people.