Fremont Foundry by Landmark Event Co.

TL;DR: The venue is gorgeous and the food was perfect, but communication issues, lack of transparency, and personality differences with our coordinator made our experience less than ideal. This review has been a difficult one to write -- there were so many things we loved about the Fremont Foundry. However, there were also some things about our experience working with Landmark Events and our specific coordinator that made our planning process, and our wedding day, more difficult than they needed to be. I’m providing specific details and names here not because I want to publicly call out or shame anyone, but because I genuinely believe that our experience was specific to the staff that we worked with, and experiences with other members of the Landmark team may not be the same. The Good First and foremost, we absolutely LOVED the venue itself! The Foundry is such an amazing space with multiple floors and several options for creating an event flow that utilizes the entire venue. We held our ceremony and cocktail on their beautiful rooftop that overlooks the Fremont Cut and Seattle skyline, and then moved downstairs into the main venue space for our reception and dancing. So many of our guests commented that they loved our venue and the setup of our event (we loved it, too)! The food and drinks were incredible. Herban Feast is the in-house caterer for Landmark Events and they provide an extensive menu with tons of great options that can accommodate basically any dietary preferences. We went with an entirely vegetarian meal at our wedding, and even some of our carnivorous guests said that it was the best wedding meal they’d ever had! I also want to take a moment to commend the bar and service staff, especially Felix who was the lead bartender for our event. They were great at making sure that we always had drinks in our hands and that our guests were consistently taken care of. The Bad Even though the food at our event ended up being great, and we absolutely loved the physical space, it was a bit of a process to get there. Landmark includes one tasting with your booking about two months before the event. It’s important to know that you are NOT able to choose the menu for your tasting, which meant that I (as a vegetarian) was unable to actually try most of the food at our tasting. We ended up booking a second/private tasting where we could choose the menu at an upcharge. There was also a bit of an issue with ADA accessibility. The venue has an elevator that goes up to the second floor, but it doesn’t go to the rooftop, and the staircases were a bit difficult for some of our guests with mobility issues to navigate. Speaking of upcharges, about two weeks before our wedding at our final meeting with the venue, we were told about several additional fees that we were previously unaware of. They didn’t listen to us when we told them we were bringing in our own desserts, and two weeks before our wedding told us we needed to have additional staff because of that. They also didn’t capture that we wanted an open bar (even though it was communicated in our first meeting). This led to our final payments being higher than we anticipated. Separately, the venue charges thousands of dollars in “service fees” as a percentage on top of line-item charges for food/drink/labor/rental costs, and our venue representatives were unable to explain where the additional service fees were going. All of this combined to make us feel as though we were being nickel-and-dimed when we were too close to our wedding to consider alternative actions. Part of the issue here is that our venue representative, Lauren L, was incredibly hard to communicate with. There were several instances of emails going unanswered for weeks, and when we did get a response we often did not get answers to all of our questions. We also never managed to get her phone number, or any contact number for the Foundry, which complicated communication even further. The Ugly One of the clearest instances of failed communication (bordering on deliberate negligence) was the lack of disclosure about Fremont Fridays, a summer concert series hosted by a nearby business in the parking lot adjacent to the venue. The main stage for Fremont Fridays is across an alley from the garage door of the Foundry’s dining room, so on concert days, there’s competing amplified sound starting around 5:00pm. Our event was always planned for a Friday, but we weren’t notified about Fremont Fridays until our first planning meeting AFTER signing the venue contract. During that meeting, our coordinator indicated that there had been discussions between Landmark and the business hosting Fremont Fridays since last year, which indicated that Landmark obviously knew about the potential disruption before we signed our contract. Landmark representatives told us how disruptive Fremont Fridays were, and that the deejays can try to mitigate but there’s not much they can do about the noise/disruption. Luckily, we were able to communicate with the neighboring business on our own to ensure that their concert would not interfere with our wedding, but this feels like something that Foundry representatives should be MUCH more transparent about before allowing contracts for Friday weddings to be signed. We also ran into some issues scheduling our rehearsal. In the contract, it is stated that couples are able to schedule a rehearsal 30 days prior to their event. When we reached out to our coordinator at 30 days, she was unable to provide us with any options for scheduling. Later, we were able to find a time but had to move it at the last minute because our coordinator scheduled a meeting with a different couple at the same time. Had there been more consistent communication leading up to our event, we might have been able to avoid some of these scheduling issues. Another time where lack of communication impacted our event was during day-of setup. In our final planning meeting, and in a series of emails, we sent our coordinator Lauren detailed plans related to décor. I had DIY-ed a TON of decorations for our wedding and was very excited about having all of them around our space. However, on the day of our wedding, Lauren did not set up most of the décor we brought. It was only after my mom asked about some missing items that we found over half of our prepared decorations in a back-room closet, at which point Lauren indicated she was not planning to use them. We ended up setting up a lot of them ourselves and with the generous assistance of our florist. At the end of the night, the venue staff also threw away a TON of the decorations that we hoped to keep. The second our music shut off, staff was going through the venue to tear down, despite us being told that we would have a few minutes to collect our items. The venue threw away candlesticks that belonged to our grandmother and mother, as well as a ton of other less-sentimental but still valuable pieces of our décor. The final note in the “ugly” category is related to our interactions with Lauren leading up to and on the day of our wedding. Despite being our day-of coordinator and therefore the person that we expected to quell chaos, she ended up being a source of frustration. In addition to the communication and décor issues I described above, there were several times throughout the day where she impacted the flow of our event. For example, she told me I didn’t have time use the restroom before our first look, and she told my mother and brother that they needed to move while they were watching my husband’s first dance with his mom (my family wasn’t blocking any safety/egress paths). These weren’t the only incidents but are representative of her general attitude. Perhaps I have an unrealistic expectation of the disposition of a day-of-coordinator, but I truly believe that someone would have a more positive experience at the Fremont Foundry if they were working with another member of their staff.

We got married at the Fremont Foundry early last month and it was beyond our wildest dreams. Leading up to our wedding our venue coordinator Ruby was absolutely incredible. And the combo of her and the day-of team was perfection -- everyone had such amazing energy, made transitions from ceremony to cocktail hour to reception seamless, and were true visionaries with set up and the details. The whole team made us feel so special on our wedding day and we were able to be 100% present while they did all of the behind the scenes work. The venue is obviously so stunning -- and it's a perfect choice for indoor + outdoor celebrations. We were lucky to be able to use the rooftop for our ceremony and cocktail hour, and we loved having the courtyard space for guests to take a breather from dancing and also enjoy the food truck we brought in! 100% we highly recommend Fremont Foundry!! We are still beaming from our perfect wedding day :)