*The venue itself is beautiful. It is spacious and well designed. No complaints there.
*Parking is semi inconvenient but it's okay. There's typically available parking around the area, but crossing the busy streets is a bit dangerous.
*The main reason I could not give this venue a 5 star rating was due to our experience with a staff/coordinator named Summer.
-This weekend, we had a tight schedule. Pictures, videography, cake, florists, the entire wedding party, and our immediate family had to wait outside of the locked venue long past the time the doors were supposed to be unlocked. It was very difficult to get in contact with Summer, she arrived late, and she arrived with an attitude. She opened the doors and immediately started yelling at the wedding party and other guests. We managed to get past these issues and get to the wedding ceremony on time. We had high hopes that things would simmer down by the time we got back to the venue for the reception. Wrong.
-When we came back for the cocktail hour, we had a hiccup with our party bus and the entire wedding party ended up walking two blocks back to the venue carrying drinks, coolers, etc. -not her fault. We arrived to the venue on foot and were welcomed by Summer immediately yelling at each of the guests trying to walk in with their hands full, feet hurting, needing to use the restroom, and overheating. Instead of being a good host -gracious and helpful with the situation- it felt like we were in boot camp. I understand the outside drink policy, but when a party bus breaks down and we all are walking on foot with unopened or empty drinks, and nowhere else to go, you'd expect there to be a bit more grace in the situation and we were instead met with immense hostility.
-As the evening progressed, Summer was still visibly on edge (ALL of the guests noticed). The bride & groom ended up pulling her aside and addressing this, in hopes that we could proceed with a peaceful end to the night. Unfortunately, she was not able to lighten up.
-During dinner, she had the assignment of dismissing tables to get their food. She watched every guest like a hawk. I can respect being locked in, but this was different. For example: two guests accidentally went to the wrong line to grab food. She watched them from afar, waited until they started filling their plates, pointed & yelled at them in front of everyone, stormed up behind them, patted them both on the shoulders while they're dishing food, pointed across the room to the other line, and stormed off.
-The bride & groom also had put in one specific, small, personal catering request (prior to the day of) and she totally blew it. When approached about this she immediately projected her frustrations at the drink situation from earlier (due to the party bus situation) instead of holding herself accountable.
-As the evening wrapped up and guests were helping tear down & gather their things, she then kept turning the lights on and off repeatedly, as if that was going to help us speed up the process.
I have enough respect for the venue itself and the other staff members to not give this place a 0 star rating, and we did not let any of this ruin our whole night, but I would strongly encourage that they reconsider or reinforce their customer service policies because this treatment was totally undeserved and unacceptable. I hope the bride and groom get a partial refund for the amount of stress and inconvenience from this one coordinator that we were all counting on who ended up being the #1 lowlight of the entire event. read more