First they were very aggressive in taking advance while constantly following up with us even before providing sample of food. It was my mistake that I trusted them and provided them a hefty advance of 65000/-. After checking their food quality when we decided not to go ahead with them they became aggressive and did not provide any service, and obviously like any thorough unprofessional and scamster did not provide us with the money. Please do not opt for their service. Ranjan Saha and Dipankar Ghosal are the people who are not only blatant liars but One can say they are thieves of the cheapest quality

I had my wedding reception on 22nd April 2017 at Amar Bangla, Kolkata for about 100 people. This was one of the worst experiences that I had about wedding planning. My email ID is thefourrupees@gmail.com, and you should feel free to contact me before even thinking about contacting them for your planning. They did not give me my wedding reception album and have refused to give that to me unless I pay them 20k more.

I will give specific details about what all went wrong, but here are my general observations first.

General observations:They charge you a lot for the services (which is perhaps ok if we get the value for money), but even after taking the charge, they try to give you the minimum possible services at the cheapest possible price that is included in the agreement. A margin of 20% might be ok for such wedding planners, however they sometimes get margins of > 100% on certain services and this shows in the service received. Specific observations are below.I had contacted them to arrange my reception, and they had to take care of my decorators, marriage hall, catering, photographer, wedding card printing, car on the day of service and beauty parlour for bride.Here is how each of them went.

Catering:This was the triggering point why I wrote this review. When signing the contract, they were quoting a price for 100-120 people. I told them that I will have only 70-80 people, but they did not reduce the price since the fixed cost for food charges are going to be the same, like hiring cooks etc. This seemed reasonable to me.Now it turned out that there were 105 guests in the reception, and they said that they will charge me 800 Rs per plate extra for an extra 20k. This was bullshit, they do not reduce the prices saying that the cost for them is the same, but they want to increase the prices randomly. Also, 800Rs was not mentioned in contract anywhere.Moreover, they were unprofessional, since they called me out of the stage during reception 3-4 times, making me sign sheet saying I have to pay extra. This is not cool, as they were threatening to stop food service if I did not sign, and so I had no option but to sign the sheet. Also, it looks bad f the groom is called out of stage so many times while the guests are still arriving.Photographer:This has to be the lowlight of the reception. The photographer seemed to be not interested at all in his work.The reception was to start at 7, and he was not ready by that time. He was arranging his lightings after we were on the stage. At one point, he went away for 15 minutes while the guests were on the stage with no backup photographer, and this lead to awkward moments when guests were waiting for photographer for 5 minutes and eventually went away. He also randomly went away to take photographs of the guests while we were on the stage, and the guests were coming, and we had to send someone urgently to ask him to come back. The photography lights went off in the middle of the even for 15 minutes. While the guest frequency was low, he came on the stage and sat beside us, busy in whatsapping or playing games on his mobile, and we had to ask him to go down and take photos no less than 10 times during the reception. He seemed to be unprofessional and extremely low paid. I honestly do not even feel like taking the album from them right now actually. DO NOT TRUST THEIR PHOTOGRAPHER, they just got the cheapest one possible. This is a common thread for Royal reception, they want to give the cheapest service and not the best for the given price. They want to inflate their margins to as high as possible, so you dont get the value for money.Beauty Parlour:While talking to them, they said that they are going to spend 12000 on the makeup for bride. I found out that the beauty parlour lady was given 5000 by them. (Their margin is about 140% here.) Also, when I asked them about the charges per extra lady (apart from the bride), they quoted 2000Rs, however the beauty parlour lady just asked for 400 when she came here. This was sheer overcharging. I had my wedding in Bhopal, and in 12k there, we had a much better experience with 4 people attending to the bride in a parlour.Car for the reception day:No issues with the driver here. However they charged me 700 extra, and I don’t know why. I had not exceeded the time or the km range.

Hall:They were supposed to show me some halls around for me to choose. Personally for me, money was not an issue at all for the hall, but the number of guests were low so I wanted a smaller place (not a garden) so that it looks filled up with people. A guy called Dipankar showed me the hall that day as apparently the main guy was not present. Dipankar was not at all interested to show me the halls, and he was calling people at Royal Reception telling them that this is not my job and I should not be made to do this. Also, he was extremely unprofessional, and anyone who wants to choose a wedding venue of their choice should just ignore him. I will talk about a specific incident.He was showing me halls which they had contract with, and I did not like them as they were very cheap. There was one particular hotel which I liked, and I asked Dipankar to take me to the hotel as I wanted to see it. I went inside and talked to them (in English) about the prices, decoration charges, etc. That particular hotel did not allow outside decorators. Now as Royal reception gets money from decorators, Dipankar got pissed off and called someone from Royal Reception telling them that this guy (me) is taking things in his own hands and we cannot have this continue. Please tell him to follow what hotels we are going to show him. (He thought that I was outside his hearing range, but I could listen to him) Dipankar then came to me and told me not to do this, since other hotels are not good and they do not have contracts with them, so I cannot do this.This made me feel as if they were not assisting me in the reception planning, but rather they wanted me to follow whatever hotel they chose.Also, I had 4 halls that I wanted to see. Nilmahal, Amar Bangla and one other was among them. He showed me one out of them (Nilmahal) and told me that the others were worse than that. I later on found out that Amar Bangla was actually better than Nilmahal, and they just showed me Nilmahal since they had some contract / understanding with them. I eventually chose Amar Bangla for the venue (cost: 40k for one floor with AC, can take about 80-100 people.) This again made me feel that they did not have my best interest in mind.Decoration:They told me that the decoration was about 15k. Amar Bangla charges about 35k for decoration with original flowers (which I had talked about with them before) so I went with Royal Reception since it was cheaper. They again called me bout 10 days before and told me that they would charge me 15k extra, which was still fine as it was cheaper than Amar Bangla charges.I later found out that Amar Bangla charges 35k for decoration with original flowers, and when I told them that I want decoration with original flowers, they quoted me a price of 70k. I negotiated and they "brought down" the price to 50-55k. However I found out that they were anyways outsourcing the decoration to Amar Bangla for 35k and were just quoting me 70k for getting their own profits with a margin on 100% (35k). I told them that I do not want decoration from them as I can get decoration from Amar Bangla directly for cheap price.They were extremely against this and were telling me not to talk to them directly, and that I should always go through them. They also said that since I signed the contract, I cannot contact anyone else. This was bullshit since they told me before that if I take decoration on my own, they would just reduce the price by 15k.They eventually also charged me 3k extra for decoration even though I was the one who talked with the guys and everything, claiming that they also need some profits. I felt this was a rip off, since I do not see any reason to pay them anything if I am the one making all the arrangements.I have decided that I am not going to recommend them for any event whatsoever. Contact me at thefourrupees@gmail.com if you want to talk to me personally before giving them the contract.