Ugh, what to do?

Awhile ago I wrote about the possibility of hiring a wedding planner or a decor person to help us out with everything for the wedding. We've decided at this point to hire a day of coordinator and she has been a true pleasure to work with and we're not even at the big day yet. Her prices were reasonable, her expertise is astounding and her contacts are amazing too. She does not "nickel & dime" us and we are so thankful for her help.

We also met with another lady who is by trade a wedding planner with a specialization in decor. Our day of person does not do decor. So the decor lady sat down with us before the holidays and we mapped out our "dream rooms" for both the ceremony & reception. We told her our budget (I'm 99% sure) and we waited and waited and waited for the quote to arrive. Finally after many follow up emails and phone calls we got the quote.

SHE HAD GONE MORE THAN DOUBLE OUR AGREED UPON BUDGET!!!!

Now, I admit I have been under a tremendous amount of stress lately and my fiance recently lost his job (damn economy) and it is possible that I was mistaken and we did not specify our budget for decor, but we BOTH are positive that we did tell her.

Anyways, so she came back to us with a quote of over double what we imagined/expected. Obviously that is a no go! We told her politely and she revamped the quote and go figure she magically found cheaper ways to do things and was able to decrease the costs a lot. However still not low enough. She's still about $1300 OVER what we envisioned as the top end of our budget....NOT COOL!

Since my fiance was laid off he's got more time now to run around "shopping" for better ways to do what we wanted to do without breaking the bank.

Get this...since he's a boy the vendors (special event rentals and one florist) seem disinterested in helping him. Almost as if to say that I need to send a permission slip with him advising these vendors that he's free to make decisions and to please help him out.

They don't want to provide service to him eventhough he's got in hand the exact number and names of everything we will be needing (from the quote the decor lady created for us). So he's got everything he needs to figure out costs etc. and yet they do not want to help him. They keep saying "why don't you book an appt for you & your fiance to come in together to do this stuff" and he replies "she's working full time and cannot make it in, that's why I've got this list and I'm doing the leg work ...we've already decided exactly what we want please help me".

Talk about frustrating. And to top it all off, I feel bad that we've taken the time to meet with the decor lady and in the end we may have to tell her "sorry you're too expensive we're not gonna be able to work with you". I mean, we have not signed anything and we have not put a deposit on her services so we're not tied in in any way. I just feel badly for having done this. I guess in her field she must experience that sometimes.

We cannot make money grow from anywhere so we've gotta stick with the budget as much as we can. It's just amazing how everything truly adds up...and fast!!!!