Irish people do not like to complain. We do not like to complain in restaurants and will tell the waiter everything is wonderful. We do not like to complain when our coffee is cold. Maybe the barista was having a bad day. It is just not something we are comfortable doing. We are better at handing out praise.

How does this tie in with reading reviews when researching your venue or hairdresser? Maybe you have already noticed, but everyone you have been researching has an excellent star rating on Google. How can I choose between my florists when they all have brilliant reviews? The photographer with two hundred reviews has a 4.9. The photographer with eleven reviews also has a 4.9. This is not because every supplier in the country is uniformly excellent. The work, then, is digging into the reviews properly. You need to know what to look for and what to ignore.

What to look for in a Google review

Signals that count:

Reviews arriving in the last twelve months. Recency matters more than volume.
Reviews that mention the supplier by name and describe a specific moment from the day. These are genuine reviews.
The same kind of specific praise turning up across several recent reviews.
Does the business owner take the time to answer reviews and thank the couple. You will learn about their character here, and how they treat their paying customers.
On the rare negative review, a calm and specific supplier response that addresses what the reviewer raised.

Signals to discount:

The overall star rating, while important, should not be the overriding factor.
A two-star rating with no comment. Whoever left it is making a point you cannot read.
Vague, angry negative reviews. These usually say more about the reviewer than the supplier.
A pile of warm reviews that stopped arriving two years ago.

What the rating is hiding

I have spent the last twenty-plus years inside Irish weddings, and I have heard couples say privately, weeks afterwards, that they should never have booked a particular supplier. Very few will write a review that says so.

Consider the photographer who was difficult to reach after the wedding, the band who took 90 minutes to set up, the florist whose centrepieces did not look like the proposal. These things happen, and most of them are never reviewed at all. And so the rating sits where almost every other rating sits. At 4.9.

When you do see a negative review

Negative reviews are worth a careful read. Someone has chosen to do the unusual thing. But not every negative review is fair, and the work is in telling the difference.

If a supplier has a hundred reviews and one or two of them are negative, do not panic. Outliers exist, and people can be difficult. Look at what the negative review actually says, and at how the supplier responded to it.

A two-star rating with no comment is worthless. Discard it. Whoever left it is either making a point you cannot read or making no point at all, and you have no way to tell which.

A negative review with substance is different. Did the reviewer give a clear, reasonable account of what went wrong? Are they describing something specific, or are they vague and angry? In this instance you are learning more about the reviewer than the supplier.

Then look at the supplier’s response. Did they respond at all? A supplier who does not respond to negative reviews is telling you something about how they handle problems. A supplier who responds defensively is telling you something else again. The best response is calm, specific, and addresses the points raised. That kind of response is rare, and when you see it, it counts.

If a review still concerns you, click into the reviewer’s profile. Google and Facebook both let you do this. Have they reviewed other businesses? Are their other reviews reasonable, or have they left one-star reviews everywhere they have ever been? Some reviewers are working out grievances that have nothing to do with the supplier. Use your judgement here.

Recency matters more than volume

Are reviews still coming in regularly, or did they stop two years ago? A supplier whose last reviews were written this year is showing you their current standard. A supplier whose last review is from 2022 is telling you something else. Either they have stopped asking, or couples have stopped writing, or both. From inside the industry, I can tell you it is rarely both for good reasons.

A supplier with two hundred reviews from 2018 to 2021 and silence since is not the same as a supplier with forty reviews from the last twelve months. The smaller, fresher pool is the better signal. Suppliers change. Teams change. Standards change. A photographer who was excellent in 2019 may be excellent now, or may have quietly slipped. Recent reviews are how you tell.

What to actually read for

Read the most recent ten reviews carefully. Skim the rest.

What you are looking for is not the rating. It is the specifics. Did the couple sit down to write a thoughtful review? Did they mention the supplier by name? Did they describe a moment from the day? Did they name an action the supplier took that mattered, something that was not in the contract?

The best suppliers always do something extra, whether in the run-up to the wedding, during it, or afterwards. The couples they work for always remember the specific thing. The photographer who waited in the rain for ten minutes to get the light right. The band who played the bride’s grandmother’s song without being asked twice. The florist who drove back to the venue with a replacement boutonniere when the original was crushed. The event planner who went above and beyond to make sure the day ran perfectly. These are the people you want working with you on your wedding day.

Specific praise, repeated across recent reviews, tells you almost everything you need to know about how a supplier actually behaves on a wedding day.

A 4.9 rating is the same whether the review says “would highly recommend” or “the saxophonist surprised my dad with a Frank Sinatra song during dinner because he overheard us at the rehearsal.” Both reviews are five stars. They are not telling you the same thing.

Reviews are a signal, not the answer

Reviews can show you the floor of what a supplier is capable of. They can flag the rare red. They can hint at whether someone is still doing the work they used to do.

What they cannot show you is whether a supplier is right for your specific wedding. The photographer with thirty recent five-star reviews from couples with sixty-person elopements may not be the right photographer for a one-hundred-and-eighty-person wedding with American guests who will all want family group shots after the ceremony. Reviews do not tell you that.

Read reviews carefully. Read them with the right filter. Then bring what you have learned to the next decision, knowing that the rating itself is decoration. The specifics are the signal.

Why Every Irish Wedding Supplier Has a 4.9 Rating