Part 1; I had my wedding here in October 2021. I loved my wedding and I loved their building. Unfortunately a lot of things did not go the way I thought they would or as they were promised. Before the actual wedding day there was a lot of misinformation. For example; things they said they would do or help with, they didn't actually follow through with on the wedding day. I felt like they were very quick to please us before we put a non refundable deposit down. Then immediately after we gave them our deposit, it was hard to get an actual answer to any of our questions and things would change from what we were initially told. For the day of the wedding we were told we'd have a couple of their employees there to help us set up and help us with whatever else we needed. Then on the wedding day when we got there, it was very difficult to get any kind of help or find anyone who worked there. First my husband asked for help with the tv upstairs in the middle room, because it wasn't turning on and we had planned on having it available for our son and the other kids attending to be able to watch and be entertained during a very long and important day. This was one of the things I had talked to them about before the wedding and we knew what we wanted to use it for. Unfortunately the tv never got turned on and I don't believe we ever got an employee to even attempt to fix it. Second the tv downstairs during the reception stopped showing the slide show photos of me and my husband. It was working for a bit while we set up, then It got stuck on one photo and that's the only photo anyone saw. Unfortunately that didn't get fixed either as the night went on. Third, they asked us before the wedding if we would like to use the fire place for the wedding/reception and we said yes and told them a time we would like it to be on. Luckily I had kinda forgot about that on the wedding day but my mother had noticed and talked to one of the girls about it, during the reception, and that never got turned on or figured out either.
They make you use Sheps food catering and Bacchus bar service, and since you can only use them for catering at this venue I do feel like issues with these vendors are worth mentioning in this review. Shep's is owned and ran by the owner of the wedding venue. She did a very good job selling us on having to use them for the wedding. We were given pictures of great looking food and descriptions of food that was going to be more then good enough for our standards. We weren't too concerned about having to use Sheps for the food at the wedding because they informed us that we would have an opportunity to do a free taste test prior to the wedding. We had narrowed down our choices to either pasta or tacos for lunch and had decided on donuts for the reception. We had told them this before the food tasting because they contacted us to find out and informed us that we need to schedule our tasting. So my mother, father, husband and I went to the food tasting expecting to try at least one of the items that we were debating, and instead we got a bunch of other random foods, like a cookie and a chicken skewer. Which we asked about at the tasting and we were told that they gave us whatever they were inspired to make for us and that if we wanted to try the items that we wanted on the wedding day that we have to pay an extra $100 and set up a separate meeting with very limited times and dates to choose from. Which if we had known previously to booking the venue, I really don't think we would have gotten married there. This meeting felt like a way for them to tell us that we are going to pay a bunch of money for the food at the reception but here's some food to hopefully distract you from that. The tasting ended up being primarily about the cost of the food for our wedding. This also was disappointing because we asked several times at our first meeting, before putting a deposit down, about the total cost of food. We were having a full lunch for the family and having the treats for the reception. We wanted to get an idea on how much it was going to cost us having to use their vendors versus other venues where we have the freedom to choose what we want to do and saving quite a bit of money. This was a big part of us initially picking which venue to go with, after we compared the cost of each venue in total. Like many other things we were told how much, and that total ended being a lot more after papers were signed and a deposit was put down. We had asked how much we should expect to pay for everything for feeding everyone and the price they gave us would be for each guest. We later find out that, even though we had brought up these concerns before and were told what we wanted to hear, that there would be lots of additional charges including; charges for any napkins, plates, cups, dinnerware, anyone to serve the food, etc. read more