Mother Wins Lawsuit Over Wedding Goofs
Sarasota Herald Tribune February 8, 2008
Mother Wins Lawsuit Over Wedding Goofs
Jury Awards $322,751 for a decorator's botched effort on the big day
By TODD RUGER
todd.ruger@heraldtribune.com
Ilene Mirman wanted a fairy-tale wedding for her only daughter, and spent more than a year planning small details such as 50 parrot tulips lining the aisle.
She got a flower massacre.
Her daughter, who had tried on more than 500 dresses and took two trips to New York to find the right gown, had to walk down an aisle lined with sagging tulips that appeared to be dying,
Boutonnieres and flowers for the chairs lining the aisle were missing in action. And a discovery in the flower girl's basket was even more gruesome.
"She was given chopped off heads of roses'" said Julie Mirman, the bride. "As I walked down the aisle, all I saw were decapitated roses."
The decorator, who charged $25,000, was responsible for those and a lot of other problems at the high-end wedding on the Gulf behind the Mirmans' $3.8 million Siesta Key house, a jury found Thursday.
The two-man, four-woman jury awarded Ilene Mirman $322,751 in damages after the mother and daughter spent Thursday reliving the March 2006 wedding from the witness stand.
Julie Mirman says she could not stand to look at wedding photos until two months ago because her eyes drifted only to the imperfections - exposed poles and support beams in the tents; a sadly decorated traditional structure where the vows were exchanged; and dead flowers.
"It affected the whole night," Julie Mirman told the jury, recalling the limo ride with her new husband.
"I said, 'I want to do it again because I want to fix what wasn't right.'"
Ilene Mirman said she filed the lawsuit against Outside the Lines Event Decor and its owner, Aviva Samuels, because she never heard from them after the botched wedding and wanted to hold them accountable.
"You can't put them in jail," Ilene Mirman told the jury. "I can't recoup the wedding. We even talked about doing it again in her fifth year, but you just can't."
It took the jury about two minutes of deliberation Thursday to award $300,000 in damages for fraud, negligence and breach of duty and $22,751 for a breach in contract.
The next step is trying to collect it.
Outside the Lines did not show up for the trial, respond to any summons in the case or return phone calls from the Herald-Tribune. An answering machine said Samuels would be out of town this week.
Mirman's attorney, Jon Rosenthal, told the jury that Julie Mirman is no "bride-zilla," a term used to describe a bride who is not happy when even the smallest details are wrong.
Wedding planners say the mistakes at the Mirman wedding are the most basic kind, and there are no excuses. And it is a good reminder to brides to check a company's references before trusting it for the big day.
Julie Mirman told the jury that she selected Samuels as the decorator for the job when Samuels sent her an e-mail with a photo of an elegant chuppah, a traditional Jewish wedding structure.
'"I was like, 'We found our person,' Julie Mirman told the jury. It was just like chuppahs she had shown Samuels as examples.
Only later did she find out Samuels had not designed that chuppah. And on the wedding day, the chuppah was almost bare except for two bouquets at the top of the front pillars -- exactly what the bride had asked Samuels not to do.
The biggest disappointment to Julie Mirman was the tent holding the
reception, which had taut fabric on the ceiling that was cut raggedly.
It was supposed to be billowy, romantic and dreamlike, and Ilene Mirman had even paid an extra $1,500 for an expert tent designer.
"I wanted you to walk in and it be magical," she said. "I remember we walked into the tent and it was so bright in there, like it was lit by fluorescent light."
It was, since Samuels delivered only a few of the 24 Victorian-style lanterns with fringe she was supposed to hang, and Ilene Mirman had to bring in more lighting.
What were supposed to be delicate, white cotton napkins with an embroidered border turned out to be the heavy restaurant-type. And they were not folded a certain way that had been agreed on.
"It's not anything I would wish on anybody," Ilene Mirman said
"Every other vendor was great. The most visible vendor just didn't produce."
