Johnston Woods

In short, working with J Woods was like being on a roller coaster-- high highs yet low lows. Pros: -As advertised, the venue and property are just beautiful! With nature, the wood walls, and the huge windows, it made for a perfect backdrop for a daytime ceremony without much decoration needed. -The venue has lots of space to work with! We used the downstairs for a "refreshment hour," the upstairs for bridal pictures and holding room, plus there's a nice sized foyer. They estimated we could fit 150 for a ceremony but we fit 180 comfortably in rows. Even with that many people the venue made it feel intimate like we were gathered around my living room fireplace. Being a retreat center they also have lodges on the property with twin beds. We rented two rooms with twin beds for our wedding helpers to stay in & it worked out great. -Berta, the point person in the office for Johnston Woods, was easy to get ahold of, and if she didn't know the answer to questions she was prompt to find out the answers and reply to me. -The younger guy they just hired (forgot his name) was helpful on the Friday before the wedding. He offered his phone number if we needed him during the weekend. When we saw that some things were not as we had requested, he promptly fixed it with a good attitude. Cons: -The biggest challenge for us working with J. Woods was the way we were treated by some of the staff. The property manager expressed impatience about doing weddings in addition to his other responsibilities at the property. That was hard for us to feel like our wedding was an inconvenience to them when they were the ones advertising as a wedding venue. In addition, their catering department did not deal honestly or fairly with us. They agreed to do our rehearsal dinner at the price of $10/ person but then as the date approached the catering manager would hardly answer emails and refused to talk on the phone. We requested a few small changes to the menu, and a month before the event she finally answered an email saying she would charge $70/ head, which was in no way proportional to the changes we made! This caused us a huge inconvenience to have to find another rehearsal dinner caterer in such a short time. -My biggest advice to J. Woods is to add someone to their staff who has a real passion and vision for weddings. This person could also be on site during the event to help with any venue issues like the ones we had (lighting, AC, sound system, serving line). He or she could also answer questions about room setup and decoration that J Woods staff wasn't able to chime in on at the time. This would greatly minimize the stress of feeling we were going to mess something up (it's already a stressful enough day). -One reason we picked J Woods is the low price compared to other venues. However, that price did not include services that come with the majority of wedding venues like setup of tables & chairs as well as a staff member onsite during your event. Thankfully we had a great team of helpers who put in the hard work of setup. They do provide tables but the chairs they have are mismatched, so if you care about that you will need to rent chairs & factor that into your venue budget. I think the venue would be making a valuable investment to purchase a couple hundred folding chairs.