We recently had our wedding at The Bay View Restaurant in May 2014. To say the least, it was an interesting experience. First, we worked with a woman who seemed to know her "stuff," but wasn't very customer services orientated. We were then passed onto another woman who was very friendly, but not reliable and consistent. We were then passed on to the head manager, Ralph Alessandro.
To start with, the venue is beautiful and the price is right. The ceremony location is right on the water and is perfect. Planes do fly over occasionally, but it's not that big of a hassle. The scenery is worth the mild disturbance. The ballroom is fantastic. It is very rich in décor and adds a lot of character to the reception which can only be enhanced and added to with special linens, chairs, flowers, and candles.
Now to get to the point - our ceremony was scheduled for 5pm. The Bay View irresponsibly scheduled another wedding at 4:30pm that was right next to us. Like you could literally throw a pebble and hit them. Really? Come on. To top that off, the other wedding was running 30+ minutes late which obviously made us late! Due to us being pushed back because the lack of organization and consideration of this other wedding, not only were we running over 30 minutes late, but we were unable to take ANY family pictures at The Bay View after the ceremony due to our timeline. I'm angry to say the least. Another thing that happened due to us running late is that our outside bar ran out of beer and Ralph didn't want to stock anymore beer in the outside bar! Unacceptable. The guest is always right and if they want beer, they will get a beer. My Mother had to hunt him down and tell him to restock the beer. Also, since we were running late, our food sat around longer waiting to be served. We had the steak kabobs and due to them sitting around longer, the meat stuck to the stick. You literally could not get the meat off the stick and you had to cut it off the stick. We had some guests say they couldn't even eat the food because it was soo bad.
During our ceremony, we hired a steel drum band that also played during cocktail hour. The Bay View was supposed to relay this to the other wedding that was taking place that day when they were considering on booking The Bay View for their wedding, but evidently they did not. The other wedding was upset so they hired a band. It was the competition of the bands! Ridiculous. The other wedding also asked if our band could stop playing during their ceremony. We really had no choice so we had to agree. In this case, we lost money because we paid for an allotted time with our band and had to stop for the other wedding. Not okay. The inside bar also ran out of clean glasses. That's crazy. They knew how many people were coming and what to plan for and they ran out of glasses. Now, the bartenders were FANTASTIC and extremely nice. But, this all goes back to poor planning by the management.
During the latter part of the reception, it was like a furnace in the ballroom. I was running around trying to open the doors to let air in, but they were all locked. I had to hunt down someone to crank down the air. We were literally all sweating. And how about this for a topper - my Aunt fell and broke her wrist on the dance floor. We were lucky enough to get it on video and are in the process of contacting MCRD regarding legalities and fault. She even had to have surgery. It's funny too - you would think that we would have had to complete paperwork for liability reasons and after an occurrence such as this. We did not fill out anything. Strange, but in our benefit in this case.
After we left on our honeymoon, my Mom went to talk to Ralph at The Bay View. Evidently he was out to lunch. Convenient. She talked with the man under him and asked him to have Ralph call her. He never called. Instead she got a phone call from the other man.
The one thing that saved us is that we hired an excellent wedding planner and had amazing vendors. All in all, The Bay View Restaurant is an ideal place to have a wedding and is financially doable. But, the organization and management is lacking here which turns the whole place into chaos.
*The only reason I even gave two stars is because the venue is beautiful and the bartenders were awesome. read more