River City Casino & Hotel - St. Louis

p to and on the day of our wedding that left us disappointed. During our planning process, we went through 2 different coordinators with one leaving the week before our wedding. Though we were worried at first, we were assured it would be a seamless transition and that all details we discussed would be communicated to the new coordinator. On the day of the rehearsal, we met our coordinator, Katie, who was very nice, but did not provide us with any guidance on where we should stand or which door to walk through. She basically said, here is the space, you can rehearse as long as you want, which left us scrambling to figure out where we should line up and how I could be hidden before walking down. Luckily, my photographer was there to help guide us and was able to run the rehearsal. When it came to the day of, everything went smoothly in the morning as I had everything planned out in a binder that I gave to the coordinator and I had family members help with florals and cake pickup. The ceremony went fine, but we had asked our coordinator if she would be able to hold the door open for when we walk out to which she obliged. It ended up being the best man and his sister that held the doors open as we had no idea where our coordinator was. Cocktail hour was everything that I imagined it would be. However, while taking our couples portraits, we were told by security in the casino that we were not allowed to take pictures in there and that we had to sign some sort of waiver. This would have been fine, except we were not told this beforehand. There are many pictures advertised on their website that had couples on the casino floor. This was extremely disappointing to me as I had so many pictures planned for that specific location. Regardless, we scrambled to figure out where else we could go as security said that technically, we could not take pictures anywhere inside or outside the casino. That would have been fine, but I just wish that it had been communicated to us beforehand so that we could have planned ahead. When it came to the reception, we went straight from the grand entrance into our cake cutting and then into our first dance. The cake was set up beautifully, but when we attempted to transition to the first dance, the cake table was still in the middle of the floor. It was our photographer and my brother-in-law who had to move the table out of the way so that we had space. We were also supposed to have a dance floor set up in the middle, as the cobblestone was a bit uneven and we were worried about the safety of our guests, especially those in heels. The dance floor setup was stated in our contract, but when I asked about it, I was told that they don't do that. If there were changes in their policies, I just wish that I had been notified so that I could have rented one. Overall, I felt that communication was lacking during our entire day. I was told during the whole planning process that the coordinator would be handling vendors and making sure the timeline was in order, but we only saw Katie one time throughout the whole day. When the DJ started announcing things out of order, she was nowhere to be found. I was lucky to have an experienced photographer who was able to keep the day running somewhat smooth despite some of the issues that we had.