Porto Vista Hotel, San Diego

I noticed that past reviews were not the greatest but everyone I saw that night that worked at the hotel really went out of their way to make sure we were having a great time! I would totally get married here!

s fantastic. We had decided on a barbecue style menu and the food was delicious. Chris and his staff were great and very attentive. From the get go they made sure everything was done to our liking and covered all the details. Some of our friends are beer snobs and are still talking about how good our kegs were based on the suggestions of the hotel's beverage guys. We really liked how transparent they were with all of the costs associated with our event and there were no surprises

nted within our budget. She told us Porto Vista was a family owned company and were sooo flexible and willing to work with any vendor. So we put down our deposit, happy with ourselves that we finally found the perfect spot within our budget. Fast forward a couple of months, we e-mail Tala and the e-mail gets sent back. So I call the Porto Vista and surprise, surprise, Tala no longer works there and oops! they don't have my wedding on the books. But, lucky me!, the site is still open that night. After some searching around, they find my reservation and my deposit. Now I am working with the new event coordinator, Jana. We are told to come for a tasting to start planning our menu (after we had already explained to Tala what we wanted and were assured was in our price range). We go to this tasting with Jana at the Glass Door and then are given the bill to pay for what we ordered per Jana's suggestion (as apparently this was not the formal tasting). After deciding on a menu (which was pretty close to what we told Tala we wanted and she assured us was well within our budget), we got the estimated cost, which was almost double our initial budget! In addition, Tala misquoted us the cost of draping for the rooftop ceremony ($800 rather than over $2000). They also wanted to charge a ridiculous cake cutting fee and corkage fee. I was pretty distraught at this point but felt like there weren't a whole lot of other options. They worked with me to lower the cost some and I went without the draping and champagne toast, and opted for cupcakes. At this point, I would have given them 0 stars if possible. However, a couple months later, Jana informed us she was promoted. A new event coordinator, Chris, came in and took over. He seems to really be working to change how weddings are run at Porto Vista and was very responsive and willing to work with me. Also, between the time of my "practice tasting" and official tasting (which I thankfully did not have to pay for), a new chef was hired who was much better than the last! The food at our wedding turned out really good! After the whole budget debacle, I also felt like I had to closely watch everything as far as where my money went with them and honestly, didn't trust them at all. However, I was extremely pleasantly surprised after the wedding to find that Porto Vista had credited me back over $700 for money that went to the bar and wasn't spent! When all was said and done, we had an amazing night but getting there was definitely not the pleasant experience I had hoped for when planning my wedding. In short, Pros: Good food, nice site, Chris seems to be trying to turn things around Cons: Not as "flexible" as they said (ridiculous corkage and cupcake fee, would only work with insured vendors after stating they would work with anyone - don't plan on having your grandma make your cake unless she wants to buy $200 insurance), your guests (or you) have to pay $10 per car for parking, did nothing to make up to me that I was completely misquoted for the event after I already paid the deposit. Because it turned out to be a great night, I wouldn't say don't use Porto Vista. I would just say proceed with caution and make sure you have everything outlined in advance before paying your deposit!

ily and friends. We are very disappointed with the service that we got from the event coordinator. During the booking process and contract stage she messed up sending me the wrong party information (BEO) and date several times. The night started and there was a miscommunication with the coordinator and the bar staff. For half the event our guests we told they could not order certain drinks from the bar that we had paid for! This was very embarrassing to us knowing that our 60+ guests we're told they could only order bud and bud lt when we had specifically talked about offering all draft beer + bud and bud lt. Secondly we were told we would have our own bartender to take care of our group seeing as there were 60 people at the event. We only saw 2 bartenders behind the bar 3 times that night. Most of the time there was only 1 bartender for the whole bar and had several people mention how long it took to get a drink. Long story short it is a pretty venue but you do not want to host an event here. The service is absolutely horrible. Even after the event when I brought up the issues I figured they would help us out with a discount or gift card and all they offered us was a buy 1 get 1 free coupon to brunch!