My husband and I, overall, had the absolute perfect day. The venue was beautiful, the food was delicious, and everything went without major drama. However I wanted to give an honest an in-depth overview for any brides and grooms who are probabl...y more detail oriented than we were.
- I highly recommend hiring an outside wedding planner or coordinator to work with you and coordinate with the venue. The venues in house event coordinator is supposed to act as your day of coordinator if you don’t have one, however her performance was lacking. Her communication leading up to the event (both with myself and other vendors) was poor; multiple emails over several months went ignored, 45 min late for scheduled call the week of the wedding, miscommunicated a COVID policy to multiple vendors, was absent for hours on the day of, and left before our event was over. It was clear she was stretched thin trying to work our event + others. So it would save you a lot of stress and a headache to hire somebody else.
- City Winery booked two other (decent sized) events in the venue that lasted from morning to early afternoon. Both events plus at least two wine tasting groups were loud to the point where we couldn’t hear during pictures, or they wandered through where we were getting ready/setting up/taking photos. One event was set up in our ceremony area and went until an hour and a half before our guests were set to arrive. This meant that they didn’t start setting up the ceremony room until after that event had to be cleaned up. This was also clearly not communicated to my photographer or my florist beforehand, who were working really hard to adjust their timelines on the fly to make our day work the way we wanted. This also caused our first look (between bride and groom) to be moved outside into 95 degree heat, because of poor lighting and inability to hear each other over the other events. We also weren’t told that there would be that many events simultaneously going with ours until the rehearsal, the day before. The event coordinator (who acted as our day of coordinator) was nowhere to be found to prevent or help with these friction points as they occurred.
- The chef did an absolutely phenomenal job with the food. I would say this was a HUGE plus for us. Everyone loved it, nobody has said there wasn’t enough (and we’ve asked). The desserts and our cake were also a huge hit. The bar had tons of beer and wines options available as well. So these are all a huge thumbs up for us.
- The decor I brought with me was set up perfectly. I did hand the event coordinator a diagram of the floor plan with notes of where I wanted everything but they really did a fantastic job setting it up. It all looked so beautiful and we couldn’t have been happier.
- Ensure you made concrete decisions and have them in writing. Originally we discussed and agreed to having a mobile bar outside. We didn’t get it in writing but had discussed it repeatedly. Day of the event coordinator told my bridesmaids we hadn’t “really” agreed to it and it was too hot outside. Bridesmaid was thankfully there for the first discussion of it, and insisted it get set up. We had a TON of guests use it, and sit outside, so don’t be afraid to insist of something.
- Event coordinator did ensure that post-ceremony we got private time (about 30-45) minutes to eat privately before being introduced. This gave us time to walk around and say hi while people ate.
Overall we loved our day!