My daughter got married at Chapel Dulcinea 2 weeks ago, and it was absolutely magical. The chapel…read morestaff were excellent to work with and I was very pleased.
HOWEVER, for convenience, we also chose to have her reception on site at the Veranda Room, since it was to be a small gathering (45-50 people). Indigo and Joe, the couple in charge of renting and maintaining the Veranda Room, left a LOT to be desired. Indigo was our first point of contact. She seemed extremely uninterested in showing us the venue and was very difficult to get ahold of from day 1. When we were finally able to plan to meet her with the wedding coordinator, she showed 15 minutes late and skulked in the back of the room, not approaching or interacting with us in the least, until I approached her and asked if she was Indigo. During this meeting, we laid out the entire reception plan. As is standard, our coordinator outlined a specific table setup inside, which included dancing on the patio. Indigo was present for this meeting, yet we were not told any of what we outlined (with her) during that meeting was an issue until the day before the wedding. Admittedly, this was ultimately a shortfall on the part of the planner (she misunderstood the number of tables available), but it also tells me that Indigo was not in any way engaged in the lengthy conversation we all had with her that day and didn't actually look at the plan until the day before the event, which was then followed by several frantic phone calls to me for a resolution.
Fast forward to the day of...they don't give you much time to set up the entire reception, as the reception reservation was from 5-10 pm (the ONLY availability without having to reserve it all day, we were told), and the ceremony time that came with it was 5:30-6:30, with no wiggle room whatsoever. We knew this and planned accordingly, but would never have been able to pull off such a tight schedule without a LOT of help.
According to Indigo, Joe was 'in charge' of sound. However, he was always 'unavailble' and never showed to go over their sound system until 10 minutes before the couple walked in, and then announced that we were not allowed to have music on the patio, where we had planned weeks before, WITH INDIGO, to have the dancing. Thank heavens our planner was able to pivot on a moment's notice, or things would have taken a nosedive. It did cause me to miss a lot of the photo time between the ceremony and reception because I had to pair up with the day of coordinator to become the conflict resolution specialist, for which, as the mother of the bride, I'm still pretty salty.
To add insult to injury, my daughter (the bride) reported that, during the reception, Joe approached her and announced loudly in front of her group of friends that they are running the place at a loss and made a big deal about how he and his wife "have to come back to clean up whenever there is a wedding." It warrants noting here that we paid full asking price for this venue, so if they need more to run the place at a profit, they should include it in their price point instead of trying to guilt the bride at the reception! Also, if it is a problem to work at night to close up a wedding venue after a reception for which the client is packed up and gone by the contracted time of departure, they SHOULD NOT RUN A WEDDING VENUE!
Despite the absolute unprofessional behavior of this couple, the other people in charge of making this wedding reception happen were able to work around them and make it beautiful, which is the reason for my 3 star rating. If the experience would have relied solely upon Joe and Indigo, my rating would have been lower.
In short, I absolutely recommend that you either retain a wedding planner who is adept at working with inconsistent and misinformation or get married in the chapel and have your reception off-site. The Alchemy bar staff was superb, the chapel staff were great at helping us work around Joe and Indigo, and it turned out beautifully, despite our difficult interactions with them.