It's wedding season. And, if you're busy planning a wedding right now, this may save you unnecessary stress and tears on your wedding day. At least that's what recent brides are hoping. They want others to avoid what they say was a nightmare experience on what was supposed to be one of the happiest days of their life.
"I was in tears. My sister was in tears," Anjelica Schofield recalled.
It was not the way Schofield had wanted to start her wedding day.
When she was planning her June 30th ceremony, she decided to hire Brittany Goodrich, a hair and make up artist, who advertises on bridal pages throughout middle Tennessee.
"She didn't show," Schofield told NewsChannel 5 Investigates.
"She didn't show up (for the wedding)?" we confirmed.
"Nope," she replied.
Schofield said Goodrich confirmed the day before that she'd meet her bright and early the next morning to help Schofield and her sister get ready.
"And 8 o'clock came and went and she wouldn't answer no phone calls," Schofield shared.
Schofield said they repeatedly and frantically tried to reach Goodrich, but never heard from her until long after the wedding was over, when her sister finally got a call that evening during the reception.
"And she gave her this long story about how she was on the side of the road and her car had broken down," Schofield described.
"It makes me very irate that anyone would willingly do that to another person," Kathryn Owen told NewsChannel 5 Investigates.
Owen said Goodrich did the same thing to her four weeks earlier.
"She blew me off," Owen stated.
Owen and her bridal party had paid Goodrich nearly $800 to do their hair and makeup. But on the big day?
"We didn't hear from her until it was like 2:30 and she called me and said that her car broke down in Columbia and that she couldn't make it," Owen said.
Owen said they offered to come get Goodrich or even send a Lyft for her.
"And that's when she blocked my maid of honor and she blocked me," Owen explained, meaning Goodrich blocked their calls, texts, and even messages through social media.
In all, we've found at least half a dozen brides since April who say Goodrich ruined their big day by either failing to show up or showing up hours late. Incredibly, nearly all of the women got the car trouble story or worse. At least two brides said Goodrich didn't show because she'd supposedly been in a serious car wreck on the way to their weddings.
Kathryn Owen discovered a picture on Facebook showing Goodrich attending the Art Crawl in downtown Nashville, the night of her wedding.
"I am hot just thinking about it. It was awful," Owen recalled, adding that it just didn't make sense.
"Like if you're going on a night out but you have car trouble, but you could still make it there?" she pondered.
Goodrich refused to do an interview, but when we asked her during a phone call why she'd failed to show up she called it "a misunderstanding"..."harassment"...even "discrimination." She told us she'd had a lot of car trouble, but insisted no serious wrecks.
Yet one bride showed us a text she got from Goodrich the morning of her wedding saying, "me and my assistant just had a horrible accident on the way there. we r at the hospital right now."
Goodrich also told us she had sent letters of apology to all of the brides.
"Has she apologized to you?" we asked Anjelica Schofield.
"Not at all," she replied.
Schofield said she finally did get her money back from Goodrich, but only after we got involved, while others told us they're still waiting for their refunds.
"I want her to be stopped," Schofield stated emphatically.
The brides said no one else should have a wedding day like their's.
"Nobody's wedding day should ever be like that. It was awful," Kathryn Owen said.
