Dalton Restaurant Guide

This review is strictly pertaining to the current wedding officiant the Inne of the Abingtons uses for their ceremonies, Pastor Jason Gardner, to relate my experience to potential couples considering using his services. We met with the Pastor in the fall of 2009 and he left a decent impression. He required ½ of his fee of $300 up front & did not have us sign any sort of contract. He did not show us any credentials as to professional experience as an ordained pastor, theology education, or education and training in marriage counseling. I’m still not sure what type of training he possesses, he has a full time day job, & to the best of my knowledge he is a youth pastor at a local church. Typically youth pastors do not marry or counsel couples as this is handled by senior clergy in the church because youth pastors usually don’t have the proper experience & are not qualified to do so. He uses a standard ceremony with everyone which he emails for you to add any elements to make it more your own. Due to his day job and wanting to get home as soon as possible he only meets with couples for interviews and marriage counseling weekdays, no weekends, and the latest appointment he can accommodate is 6pm. So my fiancé had to leave work early just to meet with him since his hours are so limited. The second meeting we setup for marriage counseling in the winter left us with MAJOR reservations. The pastor was going through the counseling material & had considerable difficulty reading some of the words. I’m not sure whether this was due to illness, tiredness, etc. It made us worry that on the day of the wedding guests might not be able to understand him & the ceremony might lose some of its meaning. What made us most uncomfortable was the story he related to us. He was talking about honesty in relationships and started talking about his wife & a time he questioned hers. I guess his wife had been cleaning houses for someone & had something VERY bad happen to her but instead of telling her husband right away, calling him to pick her up, or simply leaving she continued to go back to clean for this person because the house needed cleaning. We sat there in complete shock & wanted very much to get up & leave. We felt bad for them both but felt very uncomfortable when we left & felt this was something so personal, irrelevant, inappropriate, unprofessional, & depressing to share with a happy couple about to be wed. We checked his reference with Amy at the Inne & she said all his ceremonies were beautiful. We didn’t share the story he told us initially because we ourselves were embarrassed. So 4 weeks before the wedding we called to confirm out last meeting & when asking what he & his wife would like to eat because we needed him to bless our meal he told us that he doesn’t do that anymore because ‘receptions get out of hand’. We had mentioned at the 1st meeting that a blessing would be needed & he never told us otherwise until 4 weeks before, after we had already given a deposit. This was the last straw which led us to locate someone else. We had to scramble at last minute to find someone else, fortunately my godfather who I haven’t seen in years, & reprint the wedding programs entirely. When we explained to him why we wouldn’t be using him & that we wanted our deposit back he used every excuse in the world as to why he wouldn’t give a refund: a) that he had no way of knowing we’d be using his ceremony & I even provided proof with the new program, b) that he worked so many hours on it when he uses a standard one with everyone & I was the one who edited it to meet our needs, c) that he couldn’t schedule another wedding to replace ours so he’d lose money, d) sorry we made you uncomfortable but it’s okay that I shared the abuse because it was during a marriage counseling session, & e) even accused me of wanting to use my godfather the whole time. I’ve never encountered anything like this in my life & I would not refer him to anyone.