For years, my family and I have been loyal patrons of On the Rocks, a casual but cozy restaurant located within the Fox Hopyard facility. We have celebrated birthdays, Christmas and other holidays here and have always had a positive experience. Little did our family know that when it came to planning one of our own's big day, this team would completely drop the ball and destroy the loyalty our family had to this business.

My sister and her fiance got engaged in the fall of 2017. They are two of the most selfless, hard-working, yet low-key individuals who wanted a familiar environment to celebrate their wedding day. I will save all of the gruesome details between what happened from the moment they were misled into thinking their event date was held - to where we are now - which is, as a family, furious, disgusted, and honestly questioning the moral compass of Fox Hopyard's questionable (at her very best, might I add) leader, Kristi.

Kristi could have won an Oscar for her performance in destroying my sister & her fiance's plans for their wedding. Not only did Kristi never follow up to confirm their date, she lied throughout the entire pre-contract process only to strip them of their venue, through an email, because she had another couple who was willing to pay more money for the same date. This is when I stepped in.

As a working professional with not only a background at one of the most prestigious golf clubs in Connecticut, but also in Event Management, Hospitality, Food and Beverage, and the Club Industry, I knew that if I could simply have a conversation with Kristi, I could make things right for my sister. I explained my work history and background to her, so she knew I was not an upset sister, but an actually colleague that was trying to work with her. I felt more than a little confident that I could help clear up the miscommunications and make things right; I refused to believe that my sister was losing her date for the reasons outlined above.

After about 45 attempts to connect with Kristi over a 24 hour period, I finally reached her - only to be greeted with the same condescension that my sister had warned me of. The conversation with nothing short of painful, but by the end of the call, I had Kristi's word that if this other "couple" had not put a deposit down for the date by THAT night at 11:59pm, they would lose the date and I could call first thing on Saturday morning when Kristi arrived to put down the deposit and again, make things right.

When I called Kristi (again, multiple times) on Saturday morning, I was greeted with yet another of her bold-faced lies. Though the other couple had not paid a deposit at that time, which she assured me was the only obstacle between our family and the date in question, they were "interested in moving forward with the contracting process". This is about the time I gave Kristi a lesson on business ethics.

AS A KICKER, In the time I spoke to Kristi on the Friday (our first conversation) to the last time I checked my emails on Friday night, this "Director of Operations/general Manager/Event Planner", aka Kristi, decided she wanted to see if what I had told her about myself was true, so she visited my page on LinkedIn. Instead of working hard to undo a terrible mistake on her part, she spent her afternoon perusing MY SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNT to see if I was lying, just like she had been doing to my family and me throughout this unbelievable runaround. Nice to know where this woman was prioritizing her time while someone's most IMPORTANT DAY OF THEIR LIFE was very quickly unraveling. She truly did not care about our family and our relationship with Fox Hopyard. All she saw were dollar signs.

Moral of the story: If you want to deal with an unprofessional, morally corrupt, dollar hungry and uneducated "Jack of All Trades" - I say this as Kristi's title(s) are not only plentiful, but truly overstatements - then please, I encourage you to try to book, and then lose your wedding date at Fox Hopyard. If you like being spoken down to, misled, and have weeks of time go by without any communication from your Event planner, Kristi is your girl! She seriously did not even have an email address for my sister until the week this whole scenario came to a screeching hault - and it was from MY sister emailing HER. To summarize: beautiful facility; amazing line-level staff; consistent food and beverage offerings; deplorable management.