Hakone

Hakone Gardens gave us the perfect wedding! When we first started planning our wedding, we got the idea of having cherry blossoms and so the search for the perfect venue started. The first time we visited the garden was in late November, but despite the gardens not being in bloom, we pretty much knew immediately that this was the venue for us. Also, the little town of Saratoga is very cute and has a wonderful NON-city, clean air, quiet vibe to it that was a huge plus. We booked the venue approximately a year in advance. We initially were in contact with Candyce for all our planning, but I believe she is not working at Hakone at this time. Because our wedding date was literally two days after the end of off-season, she gave us the off-season rate anyway, which really helped us out being on a tight budget. We met with her at the venue in June 2014 and pretty much got an idea of how everything would be set-up and what parts of the gardens would be available for our use. She even helped us contact catering companies when we were having issues with one of the companies failing to respond to us. Generally Hakone Gardens requires that you use one of their preferred caterers or else be charged an additional fee. We were having a hard time getting responses from some of the caterers on their list and couldn't afford the others. So Candyce graciously said she'd waive that additional fee if we needed to find an outside caterer (but fortunately we didn't have to do that and it all worked out). Approximately two months before the wedding, we visited the venue again with our caterer and photographer. Candyce was no longer working at that time, but we met with Nancy instead, who was equally helpful. Being as they host a lot of weddings and events, it was easy to rely on the staff of Hakone to just tell us what to do and where to do things. Then for the actual wedding, we were put in touch with Tony, who ended up being our contact person for the day of. He ran the rehearsal for us and was extremely helpful and had great positive energy. He was there with us all day for the wedding and reception, and did all those day-of coordinator type things. We should mention, Hakone doesn't provide an actual day-of coordinator for weddings. We decided not to hire one, and were a little concerned that that may have been a bad decision. But with the wonderful help of Tony, everything worked out smoothly. The only slight kink we had in working with Hakone was that during the month leading up to the wedding, I had inquired several times via phone and email regarding renting a projector and screen for our reception, which I knew they offered according to some of the paperwork. And for some unknown reason, no one ever responded to that inquiry. They'd respond to anything else I asked, but never that one question. Fortunately, it didn't matter because they ended up letting us use this large HD-TV with a blu-ray player, which ended up working out better anyway, and there was no additional rental charge for that! We got EXTREMELY lucky and the cherry blossoms where in bloom for our wedding day, which was mid-March 2015. In addition, the weather was perfect. I suppose Hakone Gardens can't technically take credit for the weather, but we truly found the perfect venue for our wedding and would recommend it to anyone looking for a Japanese garden setting.

I gave this venue a 4 star out of 5 exclusively because of the site, which is simply gorgeous. We had our wedding ceremony and reception here (both outside) in early Sept and the weather was perfect (no need for a covering). The minus 1 star is because you basically get no help with this venue. The venue is very strict on its many rules and their staff only helps to set up items you rent directly from them. Also, you have to share the site with whomever also rents it out. The day before our wedding, we had to coordinate with Hakone for a time to have the rehearsal and when to set up the decorations because another group had rented out the site the same day. The frustrating part was that Hakone failed to coordinate or tell the other group that we were allowed time to rehearse our wedding and set up our decorations. We had a confrontation with the other group because they didn't want us to set up the decorations (even though Hakone said we could). This is definitely something you don't want to deal with the day before your wedding.

The gardens are gorgeous. Plenty of great spaces for pictures even a bamboo forest.;The main contact for events is a little intense. She was very knowledgeable but if anything goes wrong or you try to do something you didn't know was not allowed she freaks out and ends up making the situation more stressful that it has to be. Not comforting on your wedding day. Plus she had to leave the country during our planning process but didn't let clients know or have an out-of-office notice on e-mail so I was e-mailing with questions and trying to pay our next deposit and didn't hear anything for weeks.