PLEASE READ FULL REVIEW ON GOOGLE
I want to emphasis that this is a review on the wedding side of the camp and not the children's side.
I recently got engaged a month ago. Because of my professional background in event coordination the first thing I did was start planning! I was so excited to find the perfect venue for my special day. I had planned so many others that it was finally my time to shine! I wanted an outdoorsy but not lodge resort type feeling. My fiance and I are laid back people and we wanted that to be the feeling of our day. That's when I got the idea to search for camps. I had always loved going to church camp every year, but unfortunately my old church camp, Camp Onamia, was too small of a venue. That's when I found Camp Miller.
The ceremony site was soul melting. The cross standing proud with Lake Superior in the background. The pictures of a past bride and groom shooting arrows with their wedding party sang to my heart! I had to call them, I had to talk to someone right away! This was it! I could feel it!
I called instantly and left a voice mail. No big deal, they were probably busy, they are probably transitioning from camp season to wedding season, I get it. But then a week went by and no call. So, I called again... and left another voice mail. I was starting to worry it wasn't the right number, when finally someone got back to me two weeks after my initial call.
The girl/woman (she sounded young) sounded completely annoyed. She called me, and yet seemed like I did something to her that made her want to puke. I shrugged it off. I was in customer service, I get how people can have a bad day, again, no big deal. After a painful 10 minutes of trying to find an appropriate time for my fiance and I to drive two and a half hours to see the camp, we settled on a date and I was able to end the horrible conversation with Ms. Crabby Pants.
I tried telling myself to ignore all the signs that this was not a professional place of business, I wanted to believe that this truly was just a bad circumstance because I had already fallen in love with the camp and could see myself becoming a Mrs. at their establishment.
Well, those little doubts were confirmed in a matter of a couple weeks unfortunately. A Sunday magically opened up for my fiance and I weeks earlier then our tour date and I wanted to see if we could move up our date. I again called, and again left a voice mail It took five phone calls, five voice mail messages, an email, and again two weeks before anyone got back to me.
I answered the call and was introduced to a woman named Damita. She seemed a lot more friendly than the initial woman I had spoken with and apologized for the lack of response of her and her staff. In my head I was sighing with relief. This was the interaction I was waiting for, this was the person who I had always been to my brides, a nice, caring, customer focused woman. That is until we started talking about moving the date.
Damita was having trouble finding the date that I had scheduled with the crabby girl prior. That is because she scheduled the wrong day. I would have driven 2 1/2 hours to have to turn around if I would have kept our initial tour date. Then I found out she didn't even have my name right. She called me Lisa. I thought this was a good opportunity to give some feedback to Damita about the interaction I had with the lady previously, because if this was my business, I would want to know someone was being unkind to potential clients. WRONG. When I gently told her that the woman made me feel like an inconvenience and sounded annoyed throughout the entire interaction, Damita snapped at me and told me we need to move on, not even addressing or apologizing for her coworkers behavior. That's when I wanted to hang up. That's when I realized that this woman doesn't care about the health of the camp or the business, she is just collecting a paycheck and is miserable. But again, my heart was already invested, so I allowed myself to feel like a piece of crap in the hopes that this could be my special day venue. MY ONE AND ONLY DAY VENUE!
I changed the subject and starting asking questions about how many guests the site can accommodate for ceremony and reception, menu options, flexibility in menu, etc... which brought us to the alcohol conversation. I asked if they supplied alcohol and they didn't, she did tell me that we would be able to provide our own as long as we got a permit or some sort of licensing for distribution. Great! My fiance and I are very picky about our alcohol, and my favorite beer is one that is not distributed in MN, so I wanted to personally buy it and bring it on sit read more
