Bakers Ranch - Florida's Premier All Inclusive Venue

dors and always can put our couples in touch directly with the vendors! Thank you for the feedback and we will make sure to improve our process. I am so glad to hear you had am amazing experience at Bakers Ranch!

l as well. I have responded below based on what I found. Due to COVID and other family pressures, some staff members decided to either spend more time with their family or have reduced hours (we can't blame them for that and encurage it). We did have it before where the couple would only communicate with one planner but that caused a lot of issues that we noticed, especially when those planners had to go on extended leave, part-time, sick time, COVID, etc and we did not have a good system set up early last year to handle that quick of a transition of COVID related delays and issues. That is the reason why we now have several amazing planners/coordinators meet with our couples and they make sure that all the information is communicated between all office staff and we created a new system so no items are missed. We did have some growing pains and learning that came with it when changing an existing process but now our couples have a great experience communicating with all of our planners/coordinators and we keep getting great responses from this change. With COVID and some couples being on the books for over a year or two, we could not guarantee that the planner you were with at the beginning would actually be the one at your wedding (due to COVID or other issues or moving on to different carriers) and we felt that it would cause a lot of confusion, uncertainty, and stress, which is something that you spoke of in your review. We did hire more planners to make sure that our couples have the best service and they are all certified to provide the higher level of experience and service. We are getting feedback that having access to several planners/designers with different personalities/creative ideas is also refreshing. "The last few weeks before the wedding I contacted all of our vendors directly to ensure every detail was in order. They were all so very thankful to hear from me directly and mentioned communication from BR wasn’t always thorough enough. I’m glad I did and everything turned out (mostly) right." That is something we changed late last year where vendors could now reach out directly to the couples to discuss all the details. The previous office manager did not feel that it should have been done that way but now we are improving with new management. We received great feedback from our couples that it's better for vendors (experts in their feilds) that specialize in florals, cake, DJ, bartenders, etc to discuss what they have to offer/ideas and they can explain what they can do way better than our team can and something can always get lost in the translation if we play telephone/messenger between you and the vendors. With so many shortages and delays because of COVID, our vendors and we have to be very fluid with every wedding. As you mentioned, there were many changes very close to your wedding and the planner was in constant communication with our vendors and external vendors. That is one of the reasons why we highly suggest that all last changes are finalized 30 days prior to your wedding so that nothing is missed by vendors with last minute changes and entire process is stress free for our couples. "The venue is stunning outside and we chose a January wedding date for the temperature and lack of Florida bugs that time of year. Unfortunately, it was very rainy the weeks leading up to our day and the bugs were out in full force anyway. I was assured they would be spraying the day before and of to eliminate or at least control any swarms. I have several pictures of our ceremony with bugs on my forehead, and there were swarms of bugs everywhere. I wish they had used some kind of citronella or something else as an added measure. The bridesmaids also let me know they were bitten up by ants at the ceremony site. Again- we chose to stay outside for the majority of our day. The ceremony, cocktail hour and dinner were all outside and this was an important detail." I am so glad to hear that you felt our venue was so beautiful. We do take great care to make sure everything looks amazing for your wedding. I do agree with you that Florida weather is very unpredictable and we have to work with it. We discussed on several occassions that having an outdoor reception on the grass is not ideal and we suggested on many occations to move the reception inside the venue. I can assure you that our staff fumigated the property in the morning and right before your ceremony that day because of our experience with what happens after the rains and having your reception outside (we usually only fumigate once before the ceremony and it's enough). Our property does get treated by a company for ants and it is unfortunate that this happened to some of your guests. This is one of the reasons why we are highly against having receptions that are outside on the lawn and encourage our couples to only do it inside. We do our best to control the wildlife and do what we can but can't control the weather. Thank you for the feedback about citronella. We tried that at a couple of weddings and it did not work, unfortunately. "We moved inside for cutting the cake and our first dance. The logo we created and provided to BR was supposed to be displayed on the wall above our cake (which is why we made the floor plan the way it was inside). It was never displayed. They also forgot to drop the chandelier for our first dance….. I’m rather devastated about it to be honest. We had even taken dancing lessons to make it more of a fairy tale." I spoke to your planner and looked at the camera recordings for your wedding. Your planner was so sorry that he did not turn on the GOBO. We highly encourage our couples and guests to say something to our staff if they see something that should be different. We improved our process already at the beginning of the year by putting the GOBO directly on the timelinevto avoid this from happening to any other couple. We can only improve if we receive feedback so thank you. As for the chandelier drop, our staff took some pictures of your beautiful dance and I attached a picture to the email I sent you with the photo of you two dancing and the chandelier dropped over you. It was a very beautiful scene and I hope your photographer/videographer captured that moment. "Later I realized that our ceremony had been delayed over 20 minutes due to guests arriving late. Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal, but in January we only had 30-40 minutes of sunlight after our ceremony to capture those dusk photos in the green lush trees we fell in love with. Because our ceremony was pushed back (which was not approved by me or my now husband) we lost almost all the daylight for our family photos. I don’t know who allowed that to happen but it affected everything else in the timeline from there on out. Our photos needed to be lit and our photographers could only set up in only one area. I had expected the timeline to be followed and because it wasn’t we weren’t able to capture all the details in daylight." I spoke to your planner about this as well. They let me know that they would never intentionally delay the timeline without approval as it's not their wedding. All of our planners have this training and try to make sure that everything is followed to the best of their ability (I am sure you have some experience with this as well with your work history, the hardest part is controlling the photographers and speeches as sometimes it's a big unknown and can take longer than written on the timeline). The planner let me know that they were standing outside with your now husband by the entrance parking area waiting on the late guests to arrive. According to the planner, they were both waiting on guests and the planner was in communication with him. I did give the team feedback to also let the bride know in the future if there is a delay so both people know and can make the decision together. "The reasons for 3/5 are the communication with too many staff members, poor communication from them to the vendors, not adhering to the timeline which affected our photos, not dropping the chandelier, ants/bugs at the ceremony, and not displaying our name in the reception hall. We customized so many aspects that we paid extra for from outside vendors and the few all inclusive details we expected from Bakers Ranch were missed." I really hope that you can see that we take feedback very seriously and want to provide a stress-free experience for all of our couples. We had to adjust a lot as a business going through COVID and what was working before COVID did not work well during.