Couple Of Bartenders CT LLC

My friends had an absolutely devastating experience with Couple Of Bartenders CT LLC, and I feel compelled to warn others to avoid this company at all costs. They hired this business to bartend their wedding—a day that was supposed to be one of the happiest of their lives. Instead, it turned into a nightmare thanks to this scam operation.

Initially, everything seemed fine during the booking process. But as the wedding date approached, the company claimed their Venmo account had been “hacked” and insisted my friends resend all the payments through another method. They promised the original transactions would be refunded, but that never happened. This was nothing but a calculated lie to steal their money.

In total, my friends lost thousands of dollars to this scam. Not only did they fail to provide the services they promised, but they also caused an enormous amount of stress and financial hardship during what should have been a joyous occasion.

It’s clear this company is completely unprofessional and unethical. They prey on people during vulnerable and important life events, which makes their behavior even more appalling. When contacted about the missing money, they either refused to respond or offered vague, unhelpful excuses. There’s no accountability, no honesty, and no integrity in how they operate.

Please, for the sake of your peace of mind and your wallet, DO NOT hire Couple Of Bartenders CT LLC. They cannot be trusted and will likely scam you too. There are plenty of reputable bartending services out there—this is NOT one of them. Save yourself the heartache and choose a company with better reviews and a proven track record.

**Just as a short message to the company's reply, it was not for the family they are talking about, it's so unfortunate that there are Mutiple cases like this, just as a clarification the family that I'm refereeing to are not the Zano's Family. Who knows how many families out there went through the same thing, so no I don't think I need to take down my review when you just confirmed that this has happened to more than one family. Since you care about your business like you state in reply, make some changes and you will have many 5 star reviews and happy customers not 1 star and Mutiple unhappy customers, family members and friends**

Do not use this vendor for any event ever! She will ask for full payment up front, and then will ask for additional money at a later date. She will then lie about everything. She scammed my family member, and still has not paid back the money she owes, nor has she returned the alcohol she stole. RUN fast away from this vendor!

Update: two weeks after this review and after her response she has NOT refunded me in full. She still owes me thousands for liquor that I never received (and she was never able to provide a receipt). I only was able to get the initial deposit back since I disputed it with my credit card. Warning: Do not cash app or Apple Pay her if she asks for it.

I hired Marcella Mcweeney with Couple of Bartenders for a party I was having. Marcella was responsive to the point of texting me every day to every other day pushing me to book her services. Other reviews have said this but I interpreted it to mean she would be very involved in my event. Once hired she wanted the entire amount up front (the first red flag).

She then asked me if I wanted her to purchase and bring liquor for the event which required more money. She came back to me two more times the following day to ask for additional amounts of money (more red flags). She promised she’d send a receipt for this liquor purchase which I never received and instead I got a typed list of liquors and prices (red flag). After this many red flags and the growing uneasiness I was experiencing with the entire thing I asked her for the liquor we had purchased prior to the event. I planned two separate times to meet her to pick up the alcohol and both times, the night before, she had an excuse of the liquor being locked in a storage unit to which she had no access.

At this point I terminated our agreement realizing what was happening and I had no confidence that she would even show up for the event. This is three weeks prior to the event. She stated she was “in no position to refund the event”. There were a few back and forths giving her time to get the money back to me, but it has been a month now with no refund. I also highly encourage anyone thinking of hiring her to google her name first.

Do not use this vendor for any event ever! She will ask for full payment up front, and then will ask for additional money at a later date. She will then lie about everything. She scammed my family member, and still has not paid back the money she owes, nor has she returned the alcohol she stole. RUN fast away from this vendor!

Atmosphere: 1

Service: 1

Horrible experience. Would give zero stars if I could. We paid for our wedding in full and one month before the date they demanded 800 dollars extra. When we refused they became belligerent, making treats and just acting absolutely crazy. We agreed to pay a portion of the 800 as soon as they gave our venue all the proper licensing and permits needed to do the event. Turns out they did not have a liquor license ( which they told us they had) and hadn't even applied for the daily permit. They called us 14 days before the wedding saying that they couldn't do the event and that they would issue us a full refund. Its almost 1 year later and we haven't seen a cent. We have filed a lawsuit with small claims and they failed to appear at our hearing. These people are criminal and will rip you off. Do NOT trust them with your event.

Thanks so much for jumping in and making an amazing experience!!! It was great!

I would not recommend, there was an issue in regards to our honeymoon fund for the bar at our wedding and it’s been 3 months since then and all we have gotten is the run around. Nothing of what we were told was true and they even changed the terms of our contract during our time with them. Causing us to pay in advance for tip (20%) and we obliged because we wanted to be respectful of this small business .. but came to be so underwhelming and ruined a huge part of our big day. If you are looking for someone for your event, I would encourage to look elsewhere

I had a horrible experience. In the beginning of wedding planning, we wanted a more affordable option for an open bar.. however, we were told we were going to be able to try drinks beforehand, and that never happened. We also signed a contract.. and the contract we had specifically stated that tips would be collected the night of our event. Marcella then reached out saying that she was changing the contract and would need a 20% tip in advance …. Which doesn’t make sense considering I haven’t even been serviced yet and you want more money … when we haven’t even had our event yet. We also wanted to collect money for a honeymoon fund at the bar and she proceeded to serve drinks to guests that were only buying them to donate to our “honeymoon fund”. There was a miscommunication and we tried to be understanding of the discrepancy. However, she then said money would be sent back but she NEVER DID. all in all it was a terrible experience, if you are looking for a bartender on your special day … find someone else

Couple of Bartenders served at our wedding on 6/22/2024 and it was absolutely incredible!

We had 125 guests and they were all raving about the drinks and service. Marcella prepared some of our signature drinks ahead of cocktail hour to help with the rush and line which was awesome. The line was very short the rest of the night because COBCT were so quick.

The drinks were amazing. We did a Lavender Lemonade and Rum Punch for our signature drinks. Everyone was raving about the smokey bubbles too.

COBCT made our wedding day incredible and so much fun. The communication throughout the planning process made for a seamless event.

Marcella and Jeff exceeded our expectations! Marcella communicated with us ahead of the party to create an amazing event.The custom drinks they created for our son’s 30th birthday were awesome! They arrived on time, their set up was perfect, they served people around the party wherever they happen to be and always made sure all guests were well tended too. They even helped with picking up and helped wash dishes!So accommodating! Everyone absolutely loved it!We would absolutely hire them again for an event!

I had the pleasure of hiring Marcella to provide open bar services for my bridal shower. From the moment we started communication, she never left me hanging. She was prompt, professional and created the most delicious & beautiful cocktails that wowed each and every guest!She even went above and beyond the bar, and helped clear used plates & empty glassware from the tables as my guests finished. Not to mention, she emptied & packed up all of our hotel pans for us- without us even having to ask. She let us take home whatever liquor had been opened & left over, which was an unexpected but pleasant surprise! I would definitely recommend her for all of your bartending/party planning needs. We truly couldn’t have pulled this off without her!

If I could give this business zero stars, I would. They lied, stole our money, broke contract, and now won’t respond to us.We booked them in December of 2022 after they confirmed via email (I still have it) that they have a liquor license. This was required by our venue, and they are strict so I made a big deal about it.Marcella seemed friendly and very excited to work with us. We gave a deposit, and in January 2023, she reached out saying if we pay the balance we can take advantage of a 10% liquor discount from their wholesaler so we did it. We were paid in full according to our contract 9 months before our wedding.In April of 2023, Marcella said she needed to add an additional staff member in order to be in compliance with her insurance… so we paid the extra fee (even though she should have known this to begin with).At this point I had asked several times for their liquor license info. The story started changing… they have a temporary but the permanent one is coming through, then the date kept changing for when they would have it… this continued for months.We did a walk through of our venue with Marcella and Jeff in June. She said her liquor license info would be in the folder with all the other paperwork she was giving to our venue (it was not). The walk through made me nervous and our venue owner even said she didn’t feel good about it. They were rushing, preoccupied, not really paying attention and scattered. But we chalked it up to the fact that they had their young daughter with them and it was probably a long day for her.We spoke over the summer of 2023 about signature drinks, cups, etc. our phone calls were usually rescheduled or cut short, but again I chalked it up to having a young child at home and gave her the benefit of the doubt.September 2023, 30 days before our wedding Marcella told us she had been having issues with other clients and needed to make an amendment to our contract. She told us we had to pay an extra $800+ and we told her that we couldn’t. We already paid them the amount in the contract PLUS the extra money they asked for in April (over $400).At this point she became combative and manic. Paragraph after paragraph of text messages that were often difficult to follow. She even reached out to our venue to tell them I was being difficult and started a fight with our venue owner. She became very nasty overall. I have documentation of all of this.At this point, I started doing some digging on the internet. Several bad reviews on Google and the Knot had appeared, and a Reddit forum was started that other clients she had screwed over were on. The biggest lesson I learned from this is to Google people’s names for criminal history… I would have never hired them if I had done that.On September 30th, 2023 she called and said they could not do our wedding. She admitted to not actually having a liquor license but that they were in the process and they were being “backed” by a restaurant in the meantime.I called the CT liquor authority and they not only confirmed that this business had no license, but they had no record of any applications from them at all.So 2 weeks before our wedding, they canceled on us with over $5,800 of our money in their pocket. They promised a refund, and 5 months later we have had excuse after excuse, but no refund. She has officially stopped responding to us, and she probably thinks we are just going to go away.Marcella and Couple of Bartenders CT should be avoided at all costs. Check the Reddit thread on them, and a simple Google search about criminal history will give you all the answers you need. I wish I had done that before hiring a company that stole my money and left us in a panic 2 weeks before our wedding.I hope that no other couple has to go through the anxiety and stress that they put us through. Fortunately we found a replacement bartending service that did an amazing job, and our wedding night was perfect, but the amount of time spent dealing with them is time I can never get back.

Steer away for the simple fact that they don’t have a liquor license.

I recently had the pleasure of working with Marcella on a baby shower event. She was extremely responsive to my inquiry and to all of my questions. Marcella was very informative and very pleasant to work with. Unfortunately due to a complication with the event hall, I was unable to utilize her company. I would not hesitate to recommend A Couple Of Bartenders for any event you be planning. I sincerely hope to be able to use their services in the future.

A True Connection

Our wedding was full of obstacles from the very beginning between venues, vendors, legal boundaries etc. Marcella was so kind & supportive through everything, we instantly connected and she made me feel very comfortable with the whole process. We had some complications with liquor laws which had pushed us toward an open bar adding a lot to our original estimate, but Marcella & Jeff tried their best to make it worth every penny with extra care, emotional support and a personable attitude. Marcella especially helped guide me through wedding things I never even thought of, introduced me to our day of coordinator and leant a shoulder to cry on. By the end of the day, our guests had a great time, drank a lot of wine and enjoyed the open bar and everything looked beautiful!!