I am giving this 3 stars due to the facility itself being very elegant. Otherwise, the entire experience was one to forget. Our wedding event was on Sunday July 4th. We visited them several months prior to that to see the place and agreed to go with them.
I gave the General Manger Ross Wilner (the Only person i ever dealt with at this facility) a deposit and verbally agreed to rent their hall. As we got closer to the event date, i found our guest count was reduced as many of our out of state guests
dropped out due to not wanting to fly during COVID. We now had 170 guests, but he said we needed a minimum of 225 (which i later saw he had actually put on the contract). After some debate, he suggested to charge us for 190 guests (20 more that were actually there).
I agreed to pay for the extra 20 guests at this point as i did not want any complications with our wedding event.
When he gave us a floor plan, he had laid out only 17 tables (170 guests). When i called and said i had paid for 190 and wanted the guests to have some social distancing, only then did he agree to put out two more tables.
When i had argued with him about why we would pay for extra guests when guests dropping out due to COVID was not our fault, he said "It was in the contract". When i suggested we never received a mailed copy of the contract, h said that in that case he may decide to "not honor the date"
How tough and tormenting is it for a host to hear that your contract date may not be "honored" when you have almost 200 people showing up and a wedding at stake. This is the kind of person we were dealing with. This man is not concerned with making his customers happy, only
the money he can bring for his facility. At least that was how he treated us.
The bride had decided to get her makeup done at the bridal suite. She arrived there at 12 noon. While i was on my way to the facility to deliver some party favors, i get a call from Mr. Ross Wilner saying some lady had called him and was coming to the facility to do the bride's makeup.
Mr. Wilner told me in no uncertain terms that the facility could not be used as early as that. When i said what difference does it make as there is no other event happening and she is only using the bridal suite, he said that he had to go out and could not leave the facility unattended.
When the bride got irritated and said she would pay for the extra time, he said it would be $25 per hour. Suddenly and for $25 an hour he was able to take the risk and leave the facility unattended. Considering we paid thousands for this event, an amount of $25 sounded pretty ludicrous to me.
But hey, they need to make every penny they can make i guess.
The carpet runner leading to the stage had lint and threads on it and looking unsightly. When i asked him about that he said "Your people brought all dirty carpets". "Your people" meant the stage decorator. When you are paying him thousands of dollars you expect him to get a staff member to
vacuum the runner carpet on his own, not to point fingers at people. He did get the staff to vacuum it though, but again only after we intervened.
At the sparkler send off outside, my wife asked him to turn on the overhead lights which would have looked beautiful. He did not turn them on for whatever reason. Instead of something he should have done on his own, he did not do it
even when asked to do so.
The water fountain was not working according to him. He said that it was out of order. Why was it out of order? Do you not make enough money on the facility to keep everything in working order? The lights were not on and the water fountain was not on outside.
How cheap can you get when you have the facility and you refuse to use it for a special event.
If you go with this facility and deal with Mr. Ross Wilner, make sure you have everything written down on the contract and go over it several times. Otherwise, if something is not to your expectation, he will say "Its not my fault you didn't read the contract". That's what he reminded me
of several times during the course of the event.
Thankfully the event went well. Nothing majorly went wrong. To be totally fair to Mr. Ross Wilner, he did do a few good things. Examples are making the adjacent room available for appetizers and food, supplying us with the piano for a piano recital, putting up a sign i had made on the
landing and handling the goat leg carving station himself.
But in the end, his overall unfriendliness and at times belligerent attitude left a bad taste in the mouth. For any other event in the future, i will go elsewhere. read more