Site is absolutely gorgeous and staff members are all incredibly friendly and professional. The wedding packages are a good deal as they include things like catering, honeymoon suite, etc. which is so important especially for a destination wedd...ing like ours. I do have some complaints however: 1. The site for the cocktail reception was supposed to be at the reception site. We went over this many times and it was included in all the forms I sent to them, yet somehow on the day of there was a bar set up at the ceremony site so that immediately after the wedding the ceremony site was crowded with guests and servers and very chaotic while we were trying to get photos done. This was exactly what I was trying to AVOID when I said I wanted cocktail reception at reception site, not at ceremony site. 2. When meals were served I had only taken 1 bite before being whisked off for photos. When I came back, hungry and excited for this meal that I had chosen, my place had been cleaned up! How does a server see that the bride's meal is almost completely-untouched and just throw it away? The bride is busy - everyone knows this! Why wouldn't they just box it up for me for later? I basically didn't get to eat anything the whole night because while everyone was eating appetizers, I was posing for photos, and while everyone was eating dinner, I was posing for more photos. Unable to eat cake on an empty stomach, or drink on an empty stomach, by the time I went to bed I was hungry and had only had one glass of wine to enjoy the night. 3. From early on I had been talking about decorating the reception area with string lighting and asked if that was something we could do. I was given the green light to decorate with string lighting. It wasn't until just a few weeks before the wedding when my coordinator suggested I double check their light policy that they told me all the restrictions on lighting, said we couldn't hang them ourselves, we couldn't use our own lights, and if we wanted them to do it we would have to pay an additional $1300. I was furious. This is not something you drop on the bride last minute. This is something you should tell the bride when she first asks if she can decorate with string lights! As we couldn't afford $1300 for them to do it, nor $800 for outside vendors to do it, or had any time to come up with alternatives, I had to just skip on the lighting and that was a real bummer. 4. Though parking is free for guests the day of, my maid of honor had to fight in order to make that actually happen. The valets didn't even know there was a wedding going on that day, and when my maid of honor insisted he call and get more info he said he didn't have a list of names or anything. My maid of honor had to go around telling every single guest to specifically insist on free parking because the valets weren't cooperating and validating tickets. I'm sure many of my guests paid for parking unnecessarily, and that is unacceptable.
Overall I don't think this venue actually does a lot of weddings, because they don't seem to understand a bride's need to eat and their communication skills are seriously lacking. It is a beautiful site, but if you want your dream wedding here, be prepared to either to spend extra on charges you weren't warned about or to just give up on certain elements of your dream wedding.
Good stuff: the food is the best I have ever had anywhere. The site is gorgeous. The wedding planning contact is very professional, kind, and sweet.