We got married at Alder Manor this past fall. Overall it was an amazing place to get married and we highly recommend it. The garden is romantic and wild, and there are a variety of outdoor spaces that can be used for cocktails. The hall is huge and beautiful with many rooms that you are free to use - perfect for designing your event in whatever way you like. There are great dining spaces, dancing spaces, and lounge spaces with vaulted ceilings, marble, and hard wood with many lighting options.
They are just getting going as a major event space and some things can be improved. Here are some specifics of our experience that might be helpful both to them and to you if you are planning an event there:
On the Caterer - Sergio, owner of Chefs at Work is the exclusive caterer for the event space. He is an outstanding chef, will work long and hard with you to ensure that the food is exactly what you want, and it will be delicious and beautifully presented. That's the very good news. The less good news is that he is not a good manager. He went through several event managers while we were working with him and just when we would get to know one and actually get our phone calls returned, she would disappear and we would have to start over. Hopefully this was just growing pains and he will find someone permanent who will take over that side of the operation. Be a little careful there though if you are the kind of person who gets frustrated with not having phone calls returned. Make sure he has someone who is planning to be around for a while (or even better by the time you read this, has actually already been around for a while) and can take on the event-planning side of things.
On the Florist - Susan, the house florist (not required) is not to be recommended. We started with her as a default because she knows the event space. Her quote came out a factor of two higher than another local florist for the same set of flowers so we were thinking of hiring the other florist. We talked it over with Susan and she said that she could bring the price down to something reasonable by using in-season flowers, etc. We agreed on a specific set of flowers that we love, wrote specifics into the contract, and signed on with her. Unfortunately, the flowers that showed up were not the flowers that we agreed on and the larger arrangements in particular were really not very nice. We were very disappointed. To make matters worse, part of the contract specified that she was to bring baby bush roses to be used to the cake. She didn't do this at all and we ended up having to scramble with some full-sized roses brought for something else. Find someone else. read more