We knew for awhile that we wanted to get married here. The aesthetic was exactly what we were looking for! There were many pros and cons that I wanted to touch on that may be helpf...ul for future brides.
Planning:
During the planning process, I started to regret my decision a bit. First, there was a lot of turnover initially, which led to some miscommunication. They are very hands off with planning and you don’t get to meet with a coordinator until about 60 days before the wedding. The turnaround time for email responses often took a week or so, which was frustrating.
Tasting:
We were limited to a small number of things to try. It ended up being a bit dysfunctional. We had emailed our choices but some of them came out completely wrong. Thankfully Nicole took care of that and they ended up making us everything on our list. I was a bit nervous about how the food was going to be at the wedding, considering the poor quality of things at the tasting, but it ended up being okay. We chose chicken parm and crab cakes as our entrees.
Day of:
Be prepared to have someone set up your decor. For our Saturday wedding, we could only get in at 10 AM on the day of. Folino will not set anything up, or clean up the decor, but they did light all of my candles closer to the ceremony which was helpful. My photographer acted more like my day of coordinator than the coordinator assigned to my wedding did. The ceremony site was beautiful. The pictures from my day are amazing because of the scenery. Tables/chair placement was set up exactly as planned in our prior meeting. My parents and my husband/me were assigned a waitress who checked on us throughout the night-Mary was absolutely amazing! We were all so impressed. She was so kind and attentive to us, made sure our food came out hot if we were busy mingling, and always made sure we had a drink! Mary had a plate of our cocktail hour apps and pizza waiting at our table when we sat down for dinner. That’s the only way I was able to try those things since I was so busy!
Bridal suite:
This was pretty much useless, other than giving me a place to hide before the ceremony as guests were arriving. You can’t use it until 1 PM, so you can’t get ready in it. The door doesn’t lock including the bathroom door which is a door to the hallway. They did provide a small charcuterie board and a bottle of wine to have right before the ceremony which was a nice treat!
Bartenders:
They were phenomenal! Unfortunately I didn’t catch their names, but my guests still are talking about how good (and strong!) the drinks were. They killed it with my signature drinks!
Extra perks:
My guests really enjoyed having the patio. This was great for those who don’t really like to be on the dance floor. They had comfy patio furniture outside and then we also supplied a cigar bar for our guests.
They also enjoyed the pre-ceremony wine tasting. I did not personally see it, but from what I was told, it was very easy for them to try several different wines in that short amount of time.
Nothing compares to their margarita, pizza, so everyone, including myself, really loved the pizza station during cocktail hour.
If you asked me before the wedding, if I would recommend Folino to future brides, I honestly would have said no. However, after the wedding, I can now say that I would definitely recommend (if you have a planner or if you’re type A / can stay on top of your planning)! We would do anything to relive our wedding day one more time!