Black Butte Ranch

This venue was easy to work with, very professional and helped create a magical wedding day. I definitely recommend this venue to brides!

When we booked BBR for our wedding last summer, I had the highest of hopes in working with the Ranch. Their sales team uses terms like how their wedding package is "designed to be accessible" and "fully customizable" but we had a very different experience. Let's start with the good news--they were easily able to accommodate guest food allergies, made great cocktails, and had great bartenders and waitstaff the day of. Unless our guests had heard from me about the disaster that was the preceding 346 days and 7 hours, they wouldn't have any idea that there was an issue with the Ranch. Here's the bad news--Kendra, Shaina, and Reid were an absolute disaster to work with and made it VERY clear that their #1 priority was siphoning as much as they could from our savings account while providing the lowest possible level of service. Our story begins with the tasting lunch--the Ranch has a tasting lunch for its couples to come and taste the food buffet-style. We planned to do a plated dinner (HIGHLY recommend, by the way) and so most of the options served were not to our liking nor a priority for our tasting. In addition, my husband is gluten free and they had NO gluten free dessert options available. We contacted Kendra after the lunch to schedule a tasting of the items that we were actually interested in trying for the wedding. Come to find out that its an extra $100, you choose a total of two items, and they expect you to come in and do that tasting midweek (for some reason they always suggested Tuesday at 2 pm for literally everything throughout our wedding planning like we don't have actual jobs to pay for this wedding??). They also won't let you taste and pick side dishes for your plated dinner, insisting that "most couples want to go with the chef's choice." I don't buy that for a second. Let's move onto drinks. We went through what my friends and family not-so-lovingly refer to as The Great Wine War of 2024 with the Ranch leading up to the wedding. We had a wine themed wedding and even got married on National Wine Day (May 25th), and so I insisted on having nice wines at the wedding. The Ranch's standard red wine is a $7.99 bottle of Bogle Cabernet (that they charge you $36 for, by the way) and they refused to let us taste any of the nicer wines on their menu. They told us "most couples purchase those wine bottles to taste them"--well, that's plain stupid for a single taste. As a wino, I am a member of a GREAT local winery called Evoke and so I wanted them to supply the wines. As a member, I receive a 20% discount and anticipated a steeper discount from volume purchases. Kendra and Reid reached out to Evoke and told me that my price per bottle would be full retail, so I reach out to Evoke to find out what's going on and turns out that Evoke offered them a 40% discount that they were going to withhold from me and pocket (about $2k!). I fought this long and hard with Reid, their food and bev director, and he literally laughed at me when I suggested we split the discount 20%/20%. I was and continue to be disgusted with this team over how they handled this situation. In the end, Evoke gave them a 50% discount in order to get me a 20% discount--even the people who work at Evoke were disgusted with Reid's behavior and phone presence. Another thing to know here--they will legitimately serve your guests coors light as the beer unless you buy a keg of microbrews for $700/ea. There were other things, as well. The Ranch's pastry chef left a month before our wedding and they wanted us to wait to do a tasting with their preferred wedding cake vendor 2 weeks before our wedding (um, no we need more time than that especially since the cake had to be gluten free). The morning of our wedding we also realized it would be 50 degrees outside with 50 mph winds and wanted to move the ceremony inside (literally at like 5:30 am) and was told they couldn't even though that options was in our contract. At one point they also tried to charge us 25 cents per napkin. If you want to get ready on-site you have to pay for a room. These people and their so-called policies are nonsensical and designed to extra every dime (or, rather $100 bill) from you. I'm so glad the wedding is over! Apart from being married to my husband, never having to interact with anyone from BBR ever again is the next best thing. If I could do it all over again, I would have definitely selected a different venue.

Like so many other couples trying to plan a wedding during a pandemic, my son and his fiancé had several "pivots" from their original 8/8/20 wedding date. Ultimately they settled on an intimate ceremony of 18 guests on 5/2/21. Just when we thought we had cleared all the hurdles, our Governor, threw us a curve ball and with 24 hrs notice we were prohibited from any indoor dining which meant our rehearsal dinner was held on a very cool and windy side deck of the lodge... Brrrr! While this was a huge inconvenience and disappointment, Alicia, Bri and the entire serving staff could not have been more accommodating. They were not only understanding but did everything they could to keep everyone's spirits positive and upbeat. Despite the conditions, the food was amazing! The wedding the following day was perfect ! Black Butte's scenery never disappoints !!

My husband and I absolutely loved this location, the staff, and the main wedding coordinator. They did little things to make us feel special and communicated well with our family if there were any questions on the big day. During the pandemic and leading up to the wedding, they were extremely flexible and patient with us when it came to making decisions about numbers. The staff was respectful and compliant with COVID-19 regulations when it came to food and the reception. The food was delicious. I also asked for a Mulled Wine Cocktail for my drink special which they were able to do and that was also delicious. Finally, I planned this wedding out of state. It was wonderful to have the wedding coordinator and other wedding essentials included in this Winter Wedding Package - making it much easier to plan.