Hilton Garden Inn San Francisco/Oakland Bay Bridge

t be the perfect day you dreamed of. We had so many mishaps with our wedding reception there, but here's just a few: -Though we brought so much business to their hotel (had 30 rooms booked for 2 nights each under our party), front desk staff didn't communicate to our guests to sign up for our shuttle upon check-in. We provided the sign-up sheets, spoke with the front desk manager, and it was such a simple ask. That caused chaos transporting guests to the ceremony venue on the day of. -Gustavo, the banquet captain, didn't do his job making sure that service went off without a hitch. My poor mom (mother of the bride!) had to run and notify staff to replenish chafing dishes when she saw it was running out - that's Gustavo's job!!! It really seemed like Gustavo didn't have any experience managing floor staff and handling an event of this size. -Cake cutting was supposed to be one of the services, but that didn't happen. And at the end of the night, when our coordinator asked if they could box the cake up, Rosa responded with: "how am I going to do that?" Rosa brought our coordinator saran wrap, and it was our coordinator who packed the cake. Hilton staff.. boy, do they know how to be helpful. -The bar set up was so disorganized that when the Hilton team was bringing in water goblets from the kitchen to the ballroom, they were bumping into guests and blocking the doorway. Our coordinator had to ask the staff to pick up ice they dropped off the floor, and when she did, they looked at her with perplexity as they probably thought the ice would just melt anyway. Geez, just basic safety people! -The bar set up was in the wrong place, causing people to line up in front of the elevators and not flow in to the cocktail hour room. During set-up, staff there lied to my coordinator and told them it couldn't be moved down 4 steps. We know it was a lie because it was moved down the steps at the end of the evening. -When we reached our hosted bar limit, we agreed to extend it. Then shortly after that, they ran out of alcohol. Our event was supposed to go until 12am, but we decided to end it early because according to one bartender "there wasn't a bottle of whiskey left in the hotel." Our bar reserve of almost $5000 wasn't an exorbitant amount of liquor for the amount of guests, so not sure why this happened. So yeah, that's just some of it. My new husband and I were pretty aware of what was going on as it was happening, which had us worried and sober, and that sucked and we wish we weren't worrying about it because DUH, it was our wedding day!!! While planning, I always wondered why wedding vendors were so warm and fuzzy and over the top - it's because they really want you to not have any worries on your big day. I never got that warm/fuzzy feeling with Hilton Garden Inn and that should've been our red flag - they don't give a flying f*ck about weddings! Seems like they care more about their business clients. I know there aren't a lot of big reception venues in the Emeryville/Berkeley area and so your choices are limited, but I would strongly recommend you DO NOT even consider this one.