The bottom line - the venue itself is very nice, the food is very good, the waitstaff was great and the pricing was very competitive. If you choose this venue, ensure you have everything written down in the contract. Ensure you have someone as your designated "representative" the day of the wedding (e.g., wedding planner, maid of honor, mother, best man, etc.) and make it clear to the staff they are speaking for you that way you do not have your day disrupted with any concerns or issues. The wedding went well and, due the efforts of our wedding planner, we had no idea there were any issues whatsoever and neither did our guests.
We had our wedding at the Crowne Plaza late last month and had mixed results. The Atrium room where we held the reception was very nice, bright and open. The ceremony was held outside on the patio and worked out fine though the traffic noise could be a challenge. Like most wedding venues, they try to nickel and dime you to death and the cost of somethings is as crazy as at any other venue. But relatively speaking, their prices were very competitive. The wedding representative, Kristy, was difficult to work with, talked down to our wedding planner and tried to keep her out of our communications. Due to this we made sure everything was in the contract.
The walk through the day before went well, everything was confirmed. The day of the wedding the staff argued with our wedding planner about the location of the photo booth due to the tables (turns out the hotel put the tables there without anyone's knowledge or request) being used were too close to an exit. The ceremony went well, the appetizers were great as was the rest of the food and the reception in general was great. The service folks were attentive, friendly and helpful.
Thankfully, we had a wedding planner who (we found out later) took care of a few issues. They initially refused to light the fire tables saying it was not in the contract. Our wedding planner had a copy of the contract and had to show them. They still had to find their copy and then had to call an "engineer" to light the tables. We had a cash limit on the open bar and asked them to let us know when we came within $500 of it so we could determine if we wanted to extend it. They did not tell us and started charging people for drinks. We had the room until 11, they turned the lights on at 10:30 and started pushing people out the door saying they had to get ready for another event (there was no other event scheduled). The temperature was frigid and when asked about it by multiple guests and our wedding planner they did nothing to address it.
A couple of days after the wedding, the hotel's wedding person (Kristy) sent an email saying they forgot to charge us for something and we owed them more money. I had already been preparing a complaint to her about the issues and this added to it. She denied everything and blamed some of it on our wedding planner. The issue eventually got escalated and their director of Catering Sales (Nicole) stepped in and determined everything we brought up had occurred and she did everything possible to make amends which we greatly appreciated. read more