We had our wedding reception at the Francis Marion, and to be honest, my experience with them is not easy to articulate in a review. We had many ups and downs. Although we were working with caring and kind people, we still came across several f...rustrations, which would eventually be made right. Overall, I was extremely pleased with how the event turned out – we loved our wedding, we love the vintage hotel, and it’s location in the center of Charleston, SC.
There are many benefits to choosing a venue like The Francis Marion: Room set up and clean-up is included in the cost. The price of silverware, plates, glasses, white/black napkins and linens, and cake cutting is all included in the cost. They allow you to bring in your own alcohol (at a fee per person) which helped us get better bang for the buck on the alcohol we were serving. The catering is done by the Francis Marion – another decision to cross off the long wedding list – and the food was awesome. I was somewhat concerned with how the food was going to taste, because we’ve had less than stellar meals at the Swamp Fox, but both our tasting for the wedding and the actual wedding food was amazing. People have been raving about it - particularly the Crab Cake Station, Pasta Station, and passed hor devours!
Our frustrations stemmed mostly from us asking for some (what we believed were reasonable) changes to their ordinary set-up. I was surprised how hard it was to get them to agree on some of these requests, especially with how much we were paying to the Francis Marion alone. Almost every change we made came at a price. However, let me reinforce, that in the end, it all turned out beautifully, but I can’t discount the frustrations we felt while getting to the final event. All the people we spoke with were more than caring and kind, but they didn’t necessarily have the power to make the decisions. Caroline was instrumental in helping us achieve our wedding day vision, she definitely had more say/empowerment than others we spoke with at the Francis Marion.