Good:
Beautiful outdoor location. There was a pond with lily pads and a small water fountain, a vineyard was the backdrop to our head table, the grass was green and very well maintained.
There are cute statue/figurine type things that make great photo opportunities. Overall it was just a beautiful, peaceful place with lots of room to play with setup ideas.
They had shade screens that helped shade the spacious cement patio / dance floor in the late afternoon/evening. They also allowed us to bring in our own shade structures, and had plenty of outlets around the location for lights and sound equipment.
They lent us a golf cart to help carry larger items from the truck to setup.
They put up signs to direct traffic in from freeways, so we didn't have to. They had parking attendants available to direct cars into their orchard where there was plenty of room for parking and a golf cart shuttle service so our guests would not have to walk in the dirt.
The restroom / changing area was air conditioned, spacious, and comfortable. It was nicely decorated. There were even wine / bottle openers in the dressing room, which we thought was fantastic.
Bad:
The lady in charge of the coordinating was very unprofessional. She was talking bad about us behind our backs on several occasions, once even to my own mother.
The end time kept changing, with our contract stating one thing and the coordinator saying something else, several times. We were under the impression that we could dance until 11, then be all packed up and gone by 12, but she cut off our DJ at 9:45 and wanted us out by 11.
The golf cart that we were able to use during setup was not available for use at the end of our event due to not having headlights, and with our lights packed up in boxes it was very difficult to see at night and made tear down a bit more difficult than it had to be.
We were in charge of hosting our bar, which was fine, but when the coordinator saw that our caterer also brought tea and lemonade, she hired another bar tender to come and help, without consulting us and this was not even necessary.
The parking attendants that did a fantastic job earlier were told by the coordinator (without our knowledge) to come serve themselves at our buffet, but we did not know that we would be needing to include them in a head count. This would not have been a problem if we would have known about them ahead of time. Luckily our caterer came prepared with extra food.
The coordinator's husband offered to bring my truck over to help at the end of the night, but then made a comment to my mom about how "what kind of man doesn't take care of his truck?" and pointed out that the gas tank was on empty, when really the gauge has been broken for awhile now and there is plenty of gas in the truck. That was none of his business.
Then about a week after our event, we went to a local business for breakfast and found out that our coordinator had been talking bad about us to other people in town, too.
All in all:
We do recommend this location. It really is beautiful, and is perfect for an outdoor venue. The owners were more than happy to meet with us after our event. They apologized profusely for the things that went wrong due to the unprofessionalism of their coordinator. They had no idea that some of these things were happening and were quite embarrassed. It does get hot in the summer, so plan accordingly, and use a different coordinator than the one that we had. read more
