Marriott Saddle Brook

I booked a block of hotel rooms at the Marriott Saddle Brook for my June 2021 wedding. The initial booking process was great, but I would not recommend this hotel to other brides due to the multitude of issues they gave me in the days before my wedding, as well as during our stay. I will start off by saying Shay Ahmed, the booking coordinator, was excellent to work with, and this review is in no way a reflection of her and her work. She was in touch with me from when we initially booked, to the day we checked out, and it is unfortunate that she had to be the middleman and give me all of the bad news in regards to our stay. She did everything within her power to make everything work for us, but unfortunately, Marriott’s corporate greed and lack of concern for their customers was completely beyond her control (Thank you Shay, for all the ways you tried to help! When we signed our contract, we were told that the bar would stay open until 2am with a wedding block booked (a bartender fee was never mentioned), and that we would be able to host a brunch in the bar area of the hotel, and pay the bill for our guests when we check out. There was no room-setup fee with this option, as we were going to use the bar area. The week of my wedding, when everything should have been finalized already, I received a phone call from Shay informing me of the following; 1- The kitchen for the hotel would not be open, and if we wanted to have a brunch, we would have to pay an additional $200 fee to set up a conference room, and have food catered from an outside company. I did not have the time one week before my wedding to find and book a caterer, so we went with the company they recommended , Bagel Run in Saddle Brook - absolutely terrible. 2- The hotel would not keep the bar open past 10pm, thus not allowing us to have an after-party. They tried to blame Covid, but this was obviously a money-grabbing scam, because the restrictions and curfews had already been lifted at this point, and when I tried to argue, they said that they will keep the bar open, but that we would have to guarantee a $500 bar tab, or pay the difference, in addition to paying a $150 bartender fee. (We stayed at the hotel the night before our wedding, and the bar stayed open with their regular bartender until 2am, and there was no wedding party there.) So it is now 1 week before my wedding, and I had to come up with all of this extra money to pay for things that were not part of my original contract. This was not the added stress I needed when everything should have been finalized at that point. The shuttle company we booked through them (Platinum CLS) was also an absolute disaster. We had to start my ceremony 40 minutes late because our officiant was on the shuttle, and the driver refused to leave until the shuttle was full, even though they were contracted to do continuous loops for 90 minutes. The front desk staff did not do a great job distributing the hotel welcome bags we worked so hard on. Several guests had to go back to the desk and request the bags because the staff forgot about them. Also, when we checked our final bill, the $150 “bartender fee” suddenly became $195, with additional fees that were never discussed. The hotel itself was decent enough, but they tried to scam us out of so much money, and created so much unnecessary stress just days before my wedding, that I would never wish on another bride. Do yourself a favor and look elsewhere for your hotel block.