I have waited months to write this review and now that my wedding has passed, I wanted to post this for any couple who might be considering Ivanhoe Club as their venue. It's fairly long so there's a TLDR at the bottom.
The venue is pretty, and had a lot of the features that I wanted in a venue: large windows, high ceilings, decent photo spots. I had signed my contract fairly early as my fiance and I got engaged early during covid and at the time didn't know when things would open up. Keith is the event coordinator there and there were some red flags from the beginning that nagged at me, but ultimately chose to ignore. I should not have.
There were MULTIPLE instances where I would be verbally or by email quoted a price, that when push comes to shove Keith would change or at least try to when it came down to paying.
He quoted us one price for chiavari chairs and put that price in the email, but when we went in to sign the contract and pay the deposit, he increased the price last minute.
Since we had signed our contract early, we had locked in a price for meals, but they increased the price anyways and told us during our tasting. Keith had shared that they would meet in the middle for the price that was quoted when we signed the contract and the current prices.
We went back and forth in email (which he would either respond very slowly or not at all) to make some changes. A couple months later when we went to pay half of the estimated costs, not only did he not make any of the changes we talked about over email, he also increased the price of the meals per person on our invoice and DID NOT mention it to us. I noticed it when I was reviewing the numbers later and it didn't match up with our previous invoice. I couldn't do anything about it because cost of food was subject to change up to 30 days before the wedding.
When we received the estimates for the horsdoeuvres we chose, we found out that one of the ones we had picked that was not supposed to have an upcharge did in fact now suddenly have one.
When we went to pay the remaining balance 2 weeks prior to the wedding, he then tells us that the cost of the chiavari chairs might have to go up because of their vendor increasing prices. We had anticipated this possibility which is why we had it written into our contract for an exact amount. When I reminded him that it was in our contract, he pretty much just said unfortunately they can't eat the cost. When I reiterated that I am standing my ground and sticking to our contract on this when he brought it up again THREE days out from our wedding, he tried making me feel bad for not agreeing to pay an extra almost 6 dollars a chair by repeatedly saying "I thought you would be understanding". Thankfully we at least got the chairs for our contracted price, but not without a lot of attitude and snark. I wasn't even sure if we were getting the chairs until the day before.
There were additional charges for the rehearsal dinner that were NOT discussed with us at all prior, that thankfully were removed by a different event manager after we voiced our frustration.
Day of our wedding, Keith's attitude was horrific. Things that we had discussed prior were not done, the most important one being that we needed a space for my husband's father to rest and have privacy for medical reasons, which he said that he would make the space available and when we asked about it the day of he acted like he was so incredibly inconvenienced and came into the dressing room after the room was readied pretty much rolling his eyes and saying they cleared out just enough of it but he doesn't know why we'd want to use it because it's not that clean, but at least it's there. All of my bridesmaids and even my hair artist commented on how incredibly rude and unprofessional he was. And throughout the reception, his presence was not subtle. I had a couple guests ask me about who he was because he was making them uncomfortable. I get that he has to oversee, but staring down my guests and making them feel uncomfortable is not it.
TLDR: Venue coordinator Keith is either deceptive or conveniently forgetful about prices, little hidden costs will just appear and add up, and overall just a lot of promises made that ultimately were not kept or only done because we had to repeatedly push for it even after we were told it would happen. Very poor communication throughout the process and honestly would not wish for any couple to go through the headaches we went through trying to work with him. read more