As an unhappy bride, I waited for a resolution before expressing my views on our experience with Chancey's event Center. To date there has been no attempt to fully resolve the following issues. And thus in follow-up to a post written by my mother Sandie Mangold, here is my overall review of Chancey's Event Center: For the most important day of my life thus far, we selected Chancey's Event Center as the place for our wedding, a beautiful property and venue. Unfortunately, in our situation, staff lacked professionalism, common courtesy and behavior that calls their business ethics in to question (admittedly removing items from guests bags without their knowledge or consent during the wedding ceremony when all guests were outside; sewer issues resulting in the bride and groom not staying on site as provided under the contract and having to get a hotel room the afternoon of the wedding; having limited areas within the property to take pictures do to the smell; missing items from the bridal room with management admitting to staff/a volunteer entering the bridal room and removing items from closed bags of guests, not having all tables / gazebo decorated at 5:30 p.m. at the start of the wedding and finishing while guests were arriving; lack of return calls and proper follow-up, telling children at the wedding they are being watched on camera for running on property/lawn, failure to resolve issues fully, having family go through the buffet line and cake line at the reception; poor lighting in the parking lot - parking lot was dark making it difficult for guests to get to their car and for the family removing garbage from the reception at the end of the evening). Chancey's contract notes staff and "security" can go through the buffet line once all guests are served; I find it hard to believe that family members are considered "staff and security".
Chancey's only call in follow-up to our complaints was placed after I reached out to them in regards to the deposit and after several bad reviews and postings on Facebook and other resources by family and guests. In this call they stated they discussed the complaints with partners, got the partners to agree to return the deposit and that they believe that confiscation of alcohol and removing items from guest's bags without their knowledge is "not right and not the way they conduct business." They claim a volunteer went in the room of her own accord and that no one representing Chancey's would ever do this. Management claimed they would have the volunteer call and apologize; to date this has never happened. But, given the fact that trust is now broken it would be hard to believe or trust in anything that management would have to say. Return of the deposit was followed by a clarifying statement that the partners are now calling management about the bad reviews being placed; to date we have not been refunded our deposit as Chancey's claimed they would nor have they made a good faith effort to make whole on services promised. If they are not going to refund a deposit, they should provide a letter of explanation or discuss it with the contracting party. It is disappointing that the customer has to have their obligations paid in full and make good on their end of the contract, but Chancey's does not need to abide by the same principal. We will take their failure to refund the deposit 10 weeks post wedding to mean that they are recanting based on bad reviews and are keeping the deposit. Not sure this is the best business practice.
To future brides, I would be selective and not let the beauty of the property/venue sweep you away. There are too many stresses that day, problems with the venue should not be on the mind of the bride. It has been difficult to not let this overshadow the memories of our wedding day. My hope is that above all, the Billings community becomes aware of the issues and that maybe Chancey's has learned a valuable lesson in customer service and ethical business practices. I understand not all who have selected Chancey's as their venue for a wedding have suffered the same fate, which is good because this is not a great outcome to a very special day - I hope they can provide good customer service to all not just some.
I want to personally thank all our family and friends who made our day special - thank God they let us be the bride and groom. The sun shined bright and the pictures we do have are gorgeous as no doubt the venue / property is beautiful (although a bit smelly in our case). Not all is lost. However, I stand behind my personal experience and continue to believe that, aside from the efforts of our family and friends, our day was poorly managed by Chancey's Event Center. read more