Hilton Pasadena

ocation, and you get a big discount when you book a block of rooms, but we had a difficult time working with them which created a lot of unnecessary stress leading up to the wedding.

wedding at a hotel in Pasadena, their minimum spend requirement fit our budget better than my first choice (the Langham) & their ballroom is beautiful. Here is my story of why my experience was far less than satisfactory with all aspects of the hotel. Beware of this poorly run hotel. I worked with FIVE catering managers/directors during my experience. Yes FIVE! within a year. (Says something to me if the turnover is that high in such a short period of time!) Each time I was never notified that the person I had been dealing with left. Each time I had to go over everything again & explain the details of my reception. Nothing was passed down from the previous person I was working with and no one had a record of what I wanted or even a file on me. All they had was my contract. They even booked another event at the same time & place as I had reserved for my cocktail hour. Thankfully, the location & time of my cocktail hour were in my contract & they had to move the other event. That is just one example of how poor their communication and attention to detail is. They also bookended my reception & cocktail hour with events an hour before & after mine, giving my vendors less than required time to set up. Booking rooms for our guests were also a mess and a pain to deal with. We had many guests coming from out of state & needed to set up a block of rooms. Another bad experience due to lack of professionalism and laziness. We worked with the sales manager who was unresponsive and extremely hard to get ahold of. The block would fill up and the Hilton would not let us know. Instead we would have our guests call us and tell us they could not get a room. This happened multiple times and was something the hotel should have been able to remedy. Another incidence with the rooms was when my in-laws (in their 70s) and now husband arrived to stay at the Hilton after a long day of traveling from Indiana. They arrived at the hotel straight from the airport at 6pm and were told there were no rooms available, even though they had a reservation, and they wouldn't be ready until 8pm. After a full day of traveling 6pm California time is now 9pm Indy time and they needed to settle into their room and rest. Finally after some complaining my in-laws were able to get their room and my husband was told his rooms would not be ready for another 2 hours. The hotel's reason for not having rooms available for their customers that had reservations... too many late check-outs on a sold out night. My husband did not get into his room until 8:30pm - five and a half hours later than checkin. I'm pretty sure if you stayed in a room five and a half hours past checkout they would charge you for the extra day. The Hilton would not even comp the night. The reason the Hilton got a star at all was all because of my last catering manager I worked with. She came into the awful situation that is the Hilton THREE WEEKS before our wedding & truly made a difference. She completely surprised me & was able to make my event run smoothly that night. Although my night went smoothly, I would stay clear of this hotel & save yourself stress & worry. This was the only vendor of mine I can honestly say I had any problem with. All my other vendors were wonderful.