Norlyn Manor hosted our wedding reception in December 2007. It was a fabulous experience!
The place is owned by a family and the sons seem to handle most of the interaction with clients - this was our experience anyway in 2007.
When you call, you'll setup an appointment to visit the location. Someone will go over the package options with you at your visit and you'll have the option to sign a contract at that time. We signed the contract at the time of the tour because I was pretty certain that was where I wanted the reception to be.
At the time, you could also use Norlyn Manor as your ceremony site; they have a gazebo you can rent. We didn't do that since we were getting married in December.
We ended up renting the Verona room and, later, tacked on the Venetian room when our guest list ballooned up. We also had use of the Vienna room for our dinner buffet.... so, we rented out pretty much every room except for one.
We chose the Verona room as our main room because I thought the color scheme was perfect with our wedding colors and the layout of the room was flexible - the only thing set in stone was the location of the bar. We ended up having the head table setup to the left of the bar (and the bar is immediately to your right when you enter), the dance floor in front of that, and the guest tables surrounding. The guest tables went into the Venetian room, which also contained our gift table, an ice sculpture (part of the package) and a photobooth. We had a candy buffet and the cake table to the left upon entrance to the Verona room. The rooms were not crowded or stuffy - it was a perfect layout.
Another attraction to the Verona room was the option to use the Juliet Balcony for the bouquet toss. This was a balcony you accessed from the main staircase and it let you toss your bouquet from pretty high up onto the people gathered on the dance floor. It made a great photo op!
The food was *delicious*!! And I'm not just saying that because it was my wedding. It was some of the best wedding food I'd had. We did have a tasting in the earl fall before picking our final menu - that was a fun event because we met other couples using the facility around the same time as our wedding date. Ultimately, we did a dinner buffet with a chicken and a pasta dish and several sides. They even allowed us to custom order a plate of tater tots as a joke for my dad, which was pretty sweet!
When we chose our package, we actually ended up putting together a custom package because we did not want alcohol at our wedding for personal reasons. This was actually the only venue we checked out that didn't scoff at our choice to not have alcohol, and ended up putting together a custom package for us. It was really nice to just be accommodated and not made to feel like a freak for having personal preferences.
The day before our wedding, we were allowed to come in and setup the rooms. We used Norlyn's in-house tablecloth and chair cover service so that required no setup on our part, but we did bring in pine garland, centerpieces and other table decorations. It was really easy to setup and the staff was very helpful. After the wedding, the staff actually pulled all the decorations off for us and nicely packaged them up for my parent's to pick up the next day.
Last thing - here's a quick tip: There is a storage room on-site and, among the items there, are things brides/grooms have left behind. If they're left for X amount of time (can't remember the exact amount of time now) they become property of Norlyn Manor...but you can actually ask to see what's there to use, for free, for your own event. From that storage room we got 24 mirrors for tables and a couple other decorative items. Score!
Overall, I am so happy we went with Norlyn. The facility is *beautiful*, the staff was so professional and we had a fabulous reception. read more