Natalie M.
Yelp
So I was part of a wedding (bridesmaid) that took place at Lucien's last Saturday. I have to admit, my first impression wasn't all that great. When the bride told me about Lucien's, I kind of figured that with the name "Lucien's Manor" it was a historic building that had been artfully upgraded into a reception hall. That is definitely not the case. Lucien's was built for weddings, pure and simple. Now, I have to admit, I'm a little anti-big-white-weddings, so the fact that the building is covered with columns, there is a huge gaudy greek style statue near the parking lot, and the inside room really just screams "WEDDING!" was a little much for me to take.
I have to admit, though, that our experience there was really pretty close to excellent. We arrived at 1 to start getting ready for the 330 wedding. If I have any real complaints, it would be that we were basically left to our own devices for the first two hours we were there. I was a little puzzled why Melanie, the woman who had been the bride's contact at Lucien's since the beginning (and who had walked us through the rehearsal) was pretty much MIA and selling the Manor to new customers. However, that really is my only complaint, since at around 3 pm, Ricardo, our head server, introduced himself to us and proceeded to spend the rest of the evening waiting on us hand in foot.
The wedding ceremony room was downstairs and a little bit too much like a basement for my taste, but had been decorated really nicely. After the wedding ceremony, we had a million pictures taken of us while all the guests gorged themselves on the ridiculous cocktail our. Imagine our surprise when we got back up to the bridal suite to find that Ricardo had filled the room with food from the cocktail hour, a bottle of champagne, and proceeded to bring us drink after drink until we joined the rest of the wedding in the reception hall.
Anyway, back to the reception. Lucien's offers 5 full hours of full open bar with good quality alcohol. The cocktail hour had enough food that no one really needed dinner, and yet a full dinner was served; excellent soup, salad, and the choice of prime rib, chicken something or other, or shrimp stuffed with crab meat. AND they came around with seconds, which most of unfortunately had no room for. Then there was dessert. And seriously, i've never seen so much dessert in one place. An ice cream sundae table, a spiked coffee/shots of alcohol in little chocolate glasses table, the wedding cake table, the table of random other cakes, PLUS a huge display of assorted other pastries like backlava, creme brulee, tarts, etc. It was seriously ridiculous.
All in all, I have to say that they do a really nice job with weddings, although keep in mind that it's still a huge business. We were one of 3 weddings in the Manor that night, and while they are spaced such that you don't intermingle, it was a little odd to head out of the reception to the bathroom and find another bride getting her photos taken in the front hall.