LaBelle Winery-Amherst

We had the most wonderful wedding at LaBelle!!! From the start of wedding planning, my husband and I knew we wanted to do something unconventional - have a small wedding followed by an intimate dinner and then have a big reception the following day. This was our solution to having the small wedding I wanted and the big wedding he wanted. When reaching out to venues, a lot of them ignored this and just tried to convince us to have our larger reception with them. LaBelle, however, heard what we were saying and wrote back with an idea of how they could make both events work for us. When we went to tour the venue, we both loved the space and thought the staff were so kind and we were absolutely sold! There were some hiccups in the planning process, with some slow email response times, but they did have some turnover and I suspect that lead to some overworked staff, so we understand why that happened. I also expect it's getting better now that things have settled a bit. And I will say that despite some frustrations at the speed of communication when we were about 6 months out, once we were 1.5 months out, we were getting immediate responses and questions answered very quickly and it totally makes sense to put more time into the couples whose weddings are coming up sooner rather than later! Everything was absolutely perfect on our two days at LaBelle. We worked with Arie (sorry if I spelled that wrong) as our event manager, who was totally on top of everything and made the day run so smoothly and Maggie the bridal attendant, who was so sweet and made sure we wanted for nothing! Our Thursday ceremony was outdoors on a crisp November evening and they made sure to keep everyone inside until the last possible minute and kept everything running smoothly and quickly so no one got too cold. The vineyard overlook is beautiful and we had a dreamy sunset ceremony. Afterwards, we returned to the bridal suite for a quick toast and they brought us a plate of appetizers, since we were missing part of cocktail hour. They also went to get my veil which I had left outside. They had asked us ahead of time what our favorite drinks were and every time I went to the bar, they were ready with my favorite wine! They were actually running low on that wine and gave me 2 free samples to try in case they ran out and I'm pretty sure at one point, they were only pouring that wine for me and were giving everyone else the substitute which I thought was so kind. The food was incredible and we had the intimate wine cellar dinner of our dreams. The next day, we had a more typical reception. We took all of our posed photos on the beautiful grounds and were able to enjoy our cocktail hour. The appetizers were amazing and they did a great job on our signature cocktails! The reception was beautifully decorated and they did a great job of coordinating the timing and adapting to things taking longer than expected. We loved the food stations menu! We also had fireworks, which my husband really wanted. We got the 4 minute package and it was 10 minutes long! Some people told us it was better than the 4th of July! Then we danced the night away and got to have a private last dance in the wine cellar. They really did a great job of helping us to create our perfect day, even if it didn't fit into a typical wedding mold. Everyone was kind and on their game and I could not recommend LaBelle more highly!