Devon M.
Yelp
This review is exclusively for weddings at Casa Cody. The venue itself is absolutely gorgeous. Perfect wedding venue, with three distinct lawns, one for ceremony, one for cocktail hour, and one for reception. The landscaping is gorgeous. Rooms are cute, and plenty of rooms to stay in. We had our wedding in October and the weather couldn't have been better.
So why a two star review for an amazing venue? The service was AWFUL- particularly our experience with Ashley, the hotel manger. I could write a novel about the hell they put us through, but I'll just hit the highlights.
- Two of the rooms that we were contracted for WERE NOT READY on the weekend of our wedding. These were rooms that we had guests booked in with email confirmations. Now I understand that construction is difficult (they remodeled over covid) and situations change. I am not an unreasonable person. Had anyone from the venue reached out to us and told us that these rooms would not be ready, we would have made other arrangements, annoying, but not world ending. But the kicker was NO ONE TOLD US. Two weeks before our wedding, we specifically asked about one of the guest rooms that they were using as a temporary lobby. We were told that the room would not be done in time. When we asked what the venue planned to do about the fact that they had confirmed a guest staying in a room that wasn't available, they scrambled and provided no useful solutions. We ended up having to make some adjustments on our end to make it work. We emailed Casa Cody a document of where each guest would be staying. Then they IGNORED our email and didn't make any of the changes, which caused guests to be confused upon checkin. But wait- you said there were two rooms unavailable and have only talked about one. You're right! Because we found out the second room wasn't available THE DAY BEFORE OUR WEDDING. That's right, imagine it's the day before your wedding, about to head out to breakfast with your family, when you realize that one of the rooms (again a room that a guest had a confirmation email for) is all taped up and looked uninhabitable. When we asked the front desk girl (who was lovely) she said that room was still under construction. We had guests coming in 6 hours to check into a room that was under construction and NO ONE TOLD US. You'd think that maybe two weeks earlier, when we EMAILED THEM A DOCUMENT WITH ASSIGNMENTS FOR EVERY ROOM, they would have thought to mention that another room wasn't available. Nope! When we asked what their plan was for the people staying in the room, and they said that they'd call around and see if another hotel would take them. Luckily- we had another guest drop out last minute and were able to use their room, but there was no solution given by Casa Cody or their management.
-So where was Ashley during all of this? You'd think a hotel manger would be on site for these sort of issue during a wedding. NOPE! A week before our wedding Ashley told us that her sister's bachelorette was taking place in Temecula (90 minute drive from PS) and she'd be "in and out" of the hotel all weekend. I guess the emphasis was on the "out" b/c we literally never saw her. So I'm dealing with all these issues with the poor front desk girl who isn't authorized to do anything more than check people in/out.
-I have a feeling that the reason Ashley didn't spend any time with us before the wedding was b/c she was mad at us that we had ratted out her HORRIBLE communication skills to their event manger. We ended up emailing their event manger (a consultant who lives in Montana and doesn't seem to know anything about the day to day of the property) b/c we were so desperate for SOMEONE to return our calls since Ashley refused to. We literally didn't have a point of contact for our own wedding venue. We would call her again and again with no response. Then she'd text saying that she could talk at X time, and then never call us back. She basically stopped returning our calls a week before the wedding.
-One more thing - we were incredibly disappointed by their lack of empathy for how Covid effected us as the bride/groom. Our dance floor vendor had told us a month before the wedding that they might have issues picking up the dance floor b/c of the labor shortage, and they might have to pick it up a day late. Luckily, many of our friends work in events and we figured that if we could get the dance floor up and off the grass, we could store it in a remote corner (there are plenty on the property) until the next day. When we approached Ashley about this solution she was very unhelpful and refused to come to a solution with us. Meanwhile, she was using covid as an excuse for all their problems.
At the end of the day, our wedding was gorgeous, and we were able to have a great time b/c there was basically no staff at the hotel telling us what we could/couldn't do. If you're the kind of bride that stresses about lack of communication- maybe this isn't the venue for you