Mill on the River

Pros: Beautiful setting, amazing food, plentiful choices for each course. Cons: On the pricier side. And! Make sure you only give your food choices *only* to the person you’re working with. We gave our appetizer choices to someone else when our contact person was out sick, and they got lost. We had to scramble, over the phone, to re-make our decisions when Mill said they didn’t have them.

Food was amazing! Ambience was perfect! Well priced.

This is not the place to hold a bridal shower. As a small bridal shower of 21 people, we were treated as though they had forgotten we even booked an event and didn’t care if we were there or not. If they didn’t want to deal with a group that small, they should have just said so during the booking and I would have found somewhere else. When we arrived to set up, we found that our space for the bridal shower wasn’t really a space at all. It was 3 tables in the back side of the room away from the windows, the view, or any natural light, but for some reason, in the direct path of the kitchen. Also, there was another party being set up directly behind ours. To get to the party behind us, those party goers had to walk through our party. Not around us-either past our gift table or through two tables. This was also the way the wait staff had to get from the kitchen to the rest of the restaurant. We tried to tell the staff that this wouldn’t work, seeing as how every waiter would have to walk through our tables to get to and from the kitchen, and the group behind us would have to walk through to use the restroom for the duration of the party. As if to illustrate my point of how obnoxious and disruptive it would be to have people coming through, I was bumped by a woman from the other party trying to get her present through our tables. This happened as I was trying to explain the situation to the manager who still didn’t see this as a problem. I should have been told upfront that we would not get a private area or even semi-private area to hold our party and would have simply looked elsewhere. I don’t know if it is on me or not for assuming that when booking a bridal shower at a venue we would get our own area without strangers coming through. After us presenting ideas on how to fix the issue and being told no, we sucked it up, but all of my guests noticed the strangers and wait staff walking between our tables over and over again. I also had my guests come up to me saying how sorry they felt for us because of how we were treated. I was very embarrassed for this party that I had put a lot of effort into. I had booked this back in April for mid-June, and it looked as though I called that morning and said, hey can I get some tables? We picked this location because it was a mid-way point for guests coming from New Jersey and Maine. I was mortified that they had driven all this way to have this bizarre experience. The party itself went fine, apart from the constant foot traffic through lunch and waiters cutting through the bride as she opened her gifts, until about a half hour before we were scheduled to be done. The waitstaff started to completely clear our area, removing all the drinks, including the water glasses and coffee. We still had a half hour left and our guests were all mingling, but it felt like they were trying to get us out of there as fast as they could, even though our allotted time was 3 hours plus setup and takedown. I know that at 21 people we were a small group, but if they had told me what the setup would be, I wouldn’t have bothered booking there and we all could have saved ourselves the hassle. If they didn’t want to deal with a group that small, they should have been upfront about it. I could have just found somewhere else. The management and banquet manager just didn’t care that we were there at all. I keep saying “they” because no one actually ever introduced themselves. Don’t bother booking a shower here.

The best place for a wedding. The food was amazing. The staff was great. I highly recommend the Mill on the River to anyone.