Tiffany B.
Yelp
My husband and I had our wedding at Lowndes Grove in March of last year, and it was a truly wonderful, perfect day for us. There were some things that could be improved (aren't there always?) but overall we were happy with everything.
We signed our contract about a year ahead of time and never had any issues with double-booking. Getting married at Lowndes Grove is not cheap -- they don't pretend that it is, either -- but it's worth it. Since we got married during a non-peak month, we were able to forego the expensive food and beverage minimum, which was a huge part of why we finally agreed to sign the contract.
On the "This is why I loved getting married at Lowndes Grove" front, the house is truly stunning. There is nothing else this beautiful, in my opinion, in Charleston. It's just a stunning backdrop to a really beautiful moment in your life. The food, all of which is required to go through their catering company (Fish), is absolutely out of this world. We did four passed apps (ham and gouda biscuits, almond and brie filo, bacon-wrapped scallops, crab cakes) before our three-course plated dinner (cheese plate, shecrab soup, then a choice of filet or salmon) and everything was delicious. People are still talking about how tasty everything was over a 18 months later.
One thing to note: with Lowndes Grove, you have to bring EVERYTHING in -- from tent to chairs to knives. They're upfront about it and are great about working with your coordinator to make sure you have enough of everything, but it can be overwhelming. (This is one of about 1,000 reasons I'm glad we used Katherine Miller events for coordination; I never got stressed about rentals.)
In the "this is where they could improve" file ...
1. We worked with Amber initially and then later with Shannon, who served as our event manager. They were both really nice, but neither were terribly quick to reply to emails or phone calls. Amber took about 24 hours and Shannon usually took a bit longer, unless she was requesting a payment. I know everyone wants to get paid, but our last payment was due the Friday before our wedding. No big deal ... except that I was at an off-site event for a client that was really, really critical to my agency keeping the client long-term. I couldn't get to the phone or respond to emails promptly because I was working from about 6 a.m. until 7 p.m. that day. Instead of saying, "Oh, can you just call or email us later/tomorrow to approve the payment," I was told that they were running the card that day no matter what. So my coordinator had to get my husband, who was in business meetings at the time, to stop what he was doing to manage the payment process. It was very poorly handled and when you're spending that kind of money, a little flexibility goes a long, long way.
2. Our dinner service went out more slowly than we anticipated/wanted. When you only have a venue for five hours and they require your guests to be leaving by 10:30 p.m., running late on our dinner service isn't all that ideal. The other thing that happened during our dinner service, which was minor but an annoyance, was that we'd discussed them serving the soup course Russian style, where they pour it table side. Somehow, that note wasn't observed so everything came out already poured. It was a slight disappointment to know that they'd forgotten, but there was nothing we could do about it at the time.
My husband and I wouldn't have done a single thing differently about having our wedding at Lowndes Grove. It was 100% perfect for us. Really, if those two things were the biggest complaints we have from our wedding day (which they are), then we got out really, really well.