Gaylord National Resort

Beautiful venue but complete lack of professionalism. We really wanted to get married here and spent MONTHS trying to work with their director of catering sales, Rana, to create the wedding we envisioned. However, Rana was impossible to reach when needed, and lacked simple courtesy and professionalism. After months of unanswered calls, voicemails and emails, as well as multiple broken promises, we decided to move our wedding to another venue. It's a shame we wasted so much time here even when they didn't have the decency to respond to our questions/concerns. This place has the potential to be an extraordinary wedding venue, if they improve their staffing.

My wedding coordinator at the Gaylord, Katie, made my dream wedding a reality. The staff is extremely professional and accommodating. The food was excellent and everything was done to perfection. My guests were very impressed with the elegance of the venue and the services. Yes, they may be a little pricey, but no worries. You will get what you pay for. There were no issues at all. Highly recommend this venue.

I have to be honest, we had some problems with the Gaylord... problems I don't think I would have had with a more customer service oriented hotel chain (like the W or the Kimpton Hotels). The food was great and my guests ended up having a great time, but it wasn't without some serious headaches and major back and forth between us, Nicole (our event manager), and Gaylord's corporate offices. To be fair, they did put my husband and I in the very nice bridal suite for the night as well as served us breakfast on our terrace the next morning. That was wonderful to say the least, but the negatives were still plentiful. Our wedding planner can tell you the real behind the scenes problems with working with the Gaylord, I'm just lucky we had her as a buffer. The biggest problem I had was with the tasting. Most people I've spoken to about having their tasting have not had to fight to taste their cocktail hour items, but we had to fight the Gaylord for this. Their reasoning is that because their cocktail menu items are made in such large batches, they can't scale their recipes down for a 6 person tasting. After alot of back and forth and complaining, they ended up scheduling a second tasting for us that only included our cocktail items and signature drinks. I thought something like this would be standard, and it is... just not at the Gaylord. Other issues we had included the following: our initial meeting with them was terrible, the girl we met with basically recommended we go somewhere else for our reception. When we finally met with Nicole, the plates, chairs, and linens they have set up in their meeting room to discuss weddings are misleading. I thought these items were there on site, but they aren't. You've still got to go to an external vendor to rent these things. Also, they charge for EVERYTHING!!!! The most ridiculous charge was their fee to pass out welcome gift bags to guests staying at the hotel. How hard is it to hand over a bag? Apparently its very hard (and expensive) at the Gaylord.

Hey Ladies- bet you never thought of this one! When my MOH chose National Harbor as my bachelorette spot I'll admit I was a little skeptical. What's this new place? I thought. It turns out its only a fabulous place to have a hotel party, go out, meet Navy guys, ride bulls, etc. Tired of DC? Done with Bmore? Try National Harbor! And, they have a Peeps store!