Thomas C.
Yelp
Poorly managed wedding venue. We had our wedding in the summer this year, and as much as it was an amazing day, it was entirely due to the people we chose to share it with, and not the venue, which turned out to be a nightmare. I'm struggling to think of where to start.
I'll start with bullet points for those with little time, and explain in further detail below:
- Rude and very disorganised staff.
- Promised a lot ahead of time and many promises were not kept.
- Senior Sales Manager who was meant to be running the day, left at the beginning.
- Cold food/food different than our tasting months before. Also waiters came out and asked our guests what they had ordered. Even though we supplied this information on multiple occasions. They even tried to get my order during the best man speech.
- Incorrectly charged with our instalment plan on multiple occasions, much more than was agreed, and no genuine effort to rectify.
- Complete avoidance from the management after we had left, even though we were promised they'd make up for their shortcomings. Took months to resolve. This is including the financial issues and being overcharged, which only got resolved by us having to involve our credit card company.
Details:
We had gift bags to hand out, not uncommon for a wedding. We were told by the senior sales manager that reception would take care of it. On the day reception were clearly frustrated by this and we're openly rude to our guests. They even handed out gift bags from what seemed like a completely separate wedding to our guests. Simple organisation and communication between staff members would have prevented this happening.
We were told by the senior sales manager that the ceremony area would be arranged the night before, if not first thing in the morning, so our family members sorting flowers could set up. They started setting up at 1pm, so the flowers had to be rushed.
The senior sales manager told us she'd be around all day to run things, yet left instantly after the ceremony. Leaving the DJ to run things and inform us of set backs.
Food was a big issue. Even though we had already given all the information regarding food choices in advance, waiters still came out to ask what people had chosen. I was even disturbed during the best man speech to ask what I had chosen. We paid extra for lobster bisque, which ended up being cold so no one ate it. The rest of the food was below satisfactory. Also frustratingly the food didn't match our tasting - what's the point of a tasting if the food will be different on the day?
We admittedly noticed red flags early on when we were charged incorrectly with one of the instalments (much more than agreed). This happened again when we were charged again the wrong amount (much more than agreed) literally on the day of the wedding, without warning. This also in the end didn't get resolved so we had to defer to our credit card company to resolve.
Avoidance is a common theme with this venue. As soon as you're out of the door, they're very difficult to get hold of. We were promised our room would be comped as compensation the next day. We spoke to the customer service rep who seemed to listen, and was very apologetic. Yet it took over a month to get this money back. We were avoided by this rep, to the point where she literally answered the phone in one instance, put us on hold, then a reception staff took us off hold and told us she wasn't in that day. A shameless lie and they clearly didn't even care that we knew it.
These were the most important points I wanted to make, but there were countless other issues.
I would say the venue looks great as it's just on the lake, so if you were running things yourself you may be fine, but the venue is run so poorly I would personally avoid.