Keepsake at THE Academy

review before. We booked with the Keepsake for our rehearsal dinner when Dana, the sales coordinator, was our contact and she was incredible. When the new owners took over, it became an absolute nightmare. We reached out to them with multiple emails and voicemails weeks before our event until finally receiving a phone call back. The same situation occurred days before the event when we were unable to reach them again. This made an already stressful time even worse. Then the day of our rehearsal dinner was an absolute disaster. They were in complete breach of our contract in every way and form. The groom had to set up the chairs himself upon arrival (or else it wouldn’t have been done), and other things we were assured would be ready (our video slideshow, a staff greeter, our playlist and more) were nowhere to be found. Only some items from our menu were served, while many were completely left out. We had hungry guests traveling from long distances and were left waiting for food that was served an hour after the agreed upon time. So many food items were wrong and missing that one of our guests had to run and get pizza so our vegetarians would have something to eat. This was especially shocking since our menu and timeline was clear and even created during a meeting with Damel and Dana. Jordan was not present at the event due to family emergency. But Damel, instead of being apologetic and attempting to fix the problems, was rude, aggressive and defensive. He accused the groom of yelling at the staff (he did not) and had the nerve to scold the crying bride to “calm down”. He then cursed at us saying “the f’ing appetizers are coming out” (they did not). As for the buffet, some food was cold, serving utensils were missing, and refill trays weren’t filled for 20 minutes. The night before our wedding, we were made to feel like the bad guys for simply wanting our agreed upon event and bride spent most of the evening crying. The only bright spot in the horrible night was Angel, the catering manager, who had only worked there a week. She was apologetic and kind and attempted to put out every fire she could. She even downloaded Spotify premium on her own dime to get our playlist playing. Thank you Angel! The rest of the staff were also working as hard as they could when being put in a terrible position by terrible management. The owners excuses were insufficient and their behavior was inexcusable. They were, unprepared, downright cruel, and completely mishandled our event. We cannot warn you enough to never book at the Keepsake, at least while Jordan and Damel are in charge.