Fort Magruder Hotel & Conference Center

This is a beautiful place to have a wedding and also has some great history. However trying to get thing set up can be a little bit of a problem. The coordinator that I worked with forgot about me a couple of times and was not organized at all. For example I called her before we sent out my invites to make sure that we were good with the depostits and the room block, a week later I hadn't heard from her so we sent them out and when my aunt called they told her that their wasn't a wedding that weekend. For our rehearsal she gave this big speech on how much everyone should drink and how we should be thankful, i know she was trying to be nice but it really came out nasty becuase she liked to talk down to everybody. On my wedding day she left afte the food was served leaving some else in charge how then misplaced (threw away) my guest book, pen, tissues, extra program, and the basket that i had them in. They also broke my cake topper beucase they pulled it from the top than in the middle. It was great but you have to have someone watching everything they do. By the way don't use Charlie Little for the cake he is had to get in touch with as well and doesn't even want to talk about you cake until 2 weeks before your wedding date.

We used the Crowne Plaza for our ceremony and reception. For the reception, they have a wedding package that includes a hotel room for us, champagne & chocolate covered strawberries, for a toast, fruit & cheese at the cocktail hour, and some basic decorations. The ceremony wasn't included in that package, but we really liked their courtyard gazebo & decided to simplify things for us & our guests and have it there. Our experience with them was overall good. Communication in the beginning was a little rocky. There were some issues with our guest room rate being correct & how to make reservations, and a few other things. We later found out that may (or may not) have been due to some family/personal issues our planner was having--she left midway through and passed our wedding on to someone else. That transition went fine. The day of almost everything went really well. We were happy with the way the reception hall was decorated, the food, and how the hotel staff worked with our other vendors. The only 2 things that went wrong the day of were 1) they didn't serve our satellite cake and 2) we ran out of wine at the end of the cocktail hour. I'm not sure what happened with the cake-it was in our "banquet event order" but somehow they forgot it. It seemed like we still had enough, but we had leftover cake at home for a long time. As for the wine, I'm not sure if that was because they underestimated how much we needed or if our guests just drank a lot of it, but it was a little upsetting to show up at the reception and immediately hear that it was gone. We had budgeted things pretty tightly, but some really sweet groomsmen and bridesmaids pitched in and secretly paid for the extra when they found out. We put a lot of trust in the hotel for our wedding, and overall we were happy with them.