Gorgeous venue & the food from JAM Catering was delicious. Everything else? A disaster. I cannot stress this enough you need to hire your own planning team. They are not organized ...enough to plan your day. We should have known we were in for issues when Anthia (JAM rep) was 1 hr. late to our 1st venue appt b/c she took a walk-in off the street 5 min before our appt. We were, however, sold on the gorgeous venue, the ability to have cocktail hour in the castle itself, & get married with the castle in the background. I also have been MOH in 3 JAM-catered weddings (different venues) & they were seamless so we thought we were in good hands. They did not contact us after payment, at all, until we would reach out to them for the next year & a half. They never were on time with anything including invoices.
Like other reviewers said, they changed the tent 3 separate times without telling us. We would visit the venue from time to time & find that the tent had add-ons that weren't there at signing. We would learn a week before our wedding that we were no longer able to use the 1st floor of the castle for a cocktail hour even though that is what is specified in our written contract & sold to us in March 2021. Our wedding coordinator tried her best but we were so close to the wedding day we had to fold on their new stipulations, which again, they didn't notify us of this change until a week before the wedding.
We were supposed to have a planning meeting with JAM to discuss final details but they never reached out to us. Just like they never reached out to us to pick our menu (beware, menu pricing is completely different than their base packages, we we paid $20 over package cost & when we asked about it? Anthia would just send us an email with prices typed out, no actual JAM official document), we had to request a meeting ourselves because it was July 2022 & we hadn't heard a word about it. When our wedding coor. reached out to JAM 2 wks prior to the wedding we discovered they had absolutely not kept a record of anything we requested, chosen, or scheduled. Anything from us being in their Social media program (which they accused us of not doing correctly even though we followed their instructions) to the silverware we chose to things as serious as our ceremony start time and us buying out the tours at Fonthill to get access to the castle earlier. We had to fight them to go back to a plan that we thought was settled 6 mnths prior. I was in tears the week leading up w/ all of the drama they caused us due to their own disorganization, these are only a few examples--Forgetting to charge us for things & not remembering their own emailed communications. I am so thankful for our coordinator b/c without her it would have been an absolute mess. Wedding day, Fonthill continued to host tours during the hours we bought out ($400+ wasted). They ended our reception 15 min early, started our ceremony late & promised us they would give us that time to only end us early. They wouldn't let our vendors in to decorate when they told us what time they should come. We don't know why we paid $4k to Fonthill for no usage of the actual buildings except the bridal suite. These are only a few examples. Our other vendors saved our wedding day and I just could not in good conscience allow another bride to experience what we did. And what is a shame is that it is totally the planning staff at Fonthill, other JAM venues were lovely for my friends.