Overall, I have an okay impression of Meson Sabika despite some problems the day of the wedding. Throughout the planning process, the event coordinator was so helpful and flexible. For example, I had an alcohol-free wedding, and she gladly shav...ed $10 off per plate because of it (I know some venues that wouldn't do that). As another example, they had another rule that there had to be 10 people per table, but they gladly changed it to 9 because I had a smaller wedding and wanted the room to be filled up more nicely. In general, they really allow you to personalize the wedding to make it fit your budget and needs.
Now, the day of the wedding started off disastrously. I was doing all my own centerpieces and so the agreement LISTED ON OUR CONTRACT was that I would show up at 11am for set up. I showed up at 11am to find that the people from the previous night's wedding had not picked up their stuff, and that the event coordinator of the day (NOT the one I'd been working with the whole past year, by the way) had not even called the family! I would have expected that if the family had said they would be there at 10am to pick up their belongings and by 10:30 they hadn't showed up, the event coordinator would call them up and let them know the next party would be there in 30 mins to set up their stuff! There were over 40 huge vases filled with flowers, about 100 wedding favors, and five tables FILLED with stuff (the wedding before was a 300 person affair). They left huge boxes filled with decorations (it was military wedding, so lots of large posters about guns/military), the carpet was filthy, there were wrappers from the candy bar (which was still set up) all over the place. The bathroom was disgusting and the event coordinator was cold and unhelpful. So, even though I had VERY limited time to set up the centerpieces with my bridal party (11-1 so that I could go home and get ready), I spent over an hour cleaning up the previous wedding! This was NOT how I wanted my wedding day to start out. They had 1 employee helping us carry everything, but that's IT. The coordinator had completely disappeared and was barely available for questions or concerns (and did not help with picking up the wedding either). In response to the extreme dirtiness of the place, they assured me that they would clean the venue at 2pm so that it was "fresh" for the reception and I said fine. But, when I showed up at 4:30 for pictures, the bridal suite was STILL dirty (including poop stains on the toilet which I had specifically requested they clean when I came in earlier). As guests arrived, the event captain was still rushing around trying to light the candles. It was truly an awful start, but to be fair, the rest of the event went by flawlessly. Our event captain was extremely helpful, the guys at the drink bar were hilarious and so helpful. Best of all, the food was incredible and all of my guests were completely satisfied with their meal. Despite the disaster start, by the way, they did not take anything off of our bill which was disappointing.
In the future, I hope that Meson Sabika will work on increasing communication among their event coordinators to ensure that these communication failures do not happen again. It definitely put a damper on the day to have it start off in crisis-intervention mode.