Gatsby on the Ocean

to Jones Beach and my fiancee is a Jones Beach lifeguard so we immediately felt right at home. Elyse shared our enthusiasm and helped us plan the perfect day. She was honest and patient with us throughout our 8 months of planning and helped us plan a safe, and beautiful day following COVID restrictions. We had 50 of our closest family members and friends on 10/10/20. It wasn't the day we originally planned, but it was perfect. We will be back next year for our one year anniversary party with our original guest list. I highly recommend this venue! I'm sure that people reading this review have attended hundreds of weddings all around Long Island. So many of my guests shared that our wedding was the first they ever attended at Gatsby and they were very impressed with both the ambiance and service! Our photos from the day look like they are right out of a fairy tale and we can't wait to go back next year!

ngs had improved somewhat in New York, coronavirus was still a huge concern. On my husband's side especially, his family was very worried and did not feel comfortable attending an indoor ceremony and reception. There was absolutely no way we could get married without his family there. So we decided we needed to act quickly if we were going to save our wedding and still get married this year. Not only did we need to find a new venue with outdoor options for both ceremony and reception, we needed to change the date to early October so it wouldn't be too cold. This all happened very fast during the last week of August. In a bit of a frenzy, we were contacting and touring venues, which was not something we were expecting to do six weeks before our wedding. We were so incredibly fortunate to find Gatsby on the Ocean and especially Elyse, the coordinator there. As you can imagine, when we first met with her, we were in complete distress about our wedding and what we were going to do in light of coronavirus. She was nothing short of amazing in having a vision of how we could still have a beautiful and safe wedding in spite of all the circumstances. To see it come to fruition was a dream come true, and as I said, it was an absolutely perfect day. Never would I have imagined I would have been able to get married on the beach and have my wedding reception overlooking the ocean. It was gorgeous! And we were blessed with amazing weather! We had a full cocktail hour, but for covid-related safety, the passed hors d'oeuvres were individually plated and served by the waitstaff. The cocktail stations were served buffet style with plexiglass between the servers and guests and each table being called up one at a time, which worked really well. All the food was so delicious! The setups for both the ceremony and reception were really thoughtfully done to keep households together and separated from each other, again due to coronavirus concerns. Our wedding party and all our guests were so complimentary of Gatsby and enjoyed themselves immensely. As indicated, Elyse is amazing and just super impressive. She is creative, organized, easy to communicate with (we texted often) and a problem-solver. She is really a top-notch professional. In addition, my bridal attendant, Christian, was awesome and went above and beyond on our wedding day, everyone had a million kind things to say about him. There was a golf cart attendant, who was so helpful and nice. We were there all day, from 8 AM to 9 PM, including getting ready there (super convenient), and the whole staff was lovely. I really cannot recommend Gatsby on the Ocean enough! We just love it there. It still amazes me, after all the ups and downs the last few months due to the pandemic, that we were able to have such a beautiful, incredible wedding - I feel like it turned out better than what we had initially planned pre-covid! It felt like a "real" wedding and that we didn't lose out on anything. And also, another special thing about Gatsby on the Ocean is that it's a restaurant, so we will be able to revisit often for special occasions, like anniversary dinners, birthdays, etc.