Cha Bella

I wish I could say that our wedding at Cha Bella was perfect, however, we ran into several issues that have been hard for us to shake. All of which I have reached out to management (Candice) about and received no response or acknowledgment of our concerns. It’s been 2 months since our wedding. She sent a brief “I’ll reply to you today” type of response when I followed up in November, but she never did. Given the lack of concern for such an important and expensive day for us, I am giving 2 stars for their events/catering and hopefully giving insight for others planning their special day. Most of the food during the wedding tasted great! The Mac and cheese was not the same as the tasting, but it was still good. I also have to speak highly of Selina for knocking the decor out of the park and being patient with understanding my vision! The cons: 1. Our ceremony and reception were held on the patio and another large event was booked inside. There was no coordination between coordinators on how it would impact each other so we had to make a couple last minute changes. 2. They were extremely understaffed for our wedding dinner and struggled to get food out in acceptable timing. We chose family style for 63 guests because space was limited to have an easily accessible buffet. My main concern with family style is that people would feel like they couldn’t take as much food as they wanted because of portion size. I voiced this several times prior to the wedding. I was reassured there would be more than enough! Not enough chicken was brought to each table, leaving some guests awkwardly waiting while others at the table ate. The sides came out at awkward timing. My nephew’s kid’s plates were brought at the end of dinner. I felt so bad and was so stressed the entire dinner! I wish they would have told me they couldn’t handle family style for our menu choices and in hindsight maybe buffet would have been better. Our vendors also didn’t get their food until end of the night in a to go box. 3. We paid per person for a bacon bar during cocktail hour and it ran out before everyone that wanted some could have some. We came into cocktail hour about 25 minutes after it started and the bacon bar was completely gone. They brought us a small portion of bacon to share equal to about 2-3strips. We did not get any of the other items that were supposed to be part of the bacon bar like chocolate covered bacon, stuffed mushrooms, bacon wrapped asparagus, etc. 4. I requested a couple times to pay BEFORE the wedding. In the busyness of the day, the venue coordinator and I both forgot to take care of it. I provided the venue with our day of timeline so they knew what the events of the night were. They waited until we were getting ready to do our grand exit to bring the check to us IN FRONT OF ALL OUR GUESTS instead of pulling us aside. Neither of us remembered to bring our cards to pay because obviously it’s a very busy day and we were supposed to pay earlier that day, so I hadn’t packed it in my venue bag. We ended up frantically figuring out how to get the card, had guests offering to pay (how embarrassing!), and never got a grand exit. They were also unwilling to waive the $100 late fee if we paid the next day. We went back to get the card, causing us to miss an hour of our after party where some people left before we got there. Overall, a very bad ending to our night with no flexibility or understanding from Cha Bella Management.