Rose Briar Place

Beautiful venue

Wow! Rose Briar Place was everything expected plus some. From the day we toured to the very end. My Husband and I are very go with the flow people. I had planned everything for the whole year prior. I think I actually over planned and over bought. There were some things I purchased & didn't realize the venue provided them. Little things that were not a big deal to return. We brought our own centerpieces, table runners & napkins. My family help set most of it up, but when getting ready came into play we kind of just left some things undone, but Kourtney would come check in with me to make sure it was set up how I envisioned it. We would have been completely lost without my day of coordinator Kourtney there directing us & making sure everyone was where they needed to be. Food was excellent & we received compliments about everything! How beautiful everything was, how organized things were & how everything flowed well. Grooms request is to have more "to-do" in the groom's suite & "snacks".

I got married here this past July. The venue was beautiful, especially outside at night. The food was great, we went with the comfort food buffet and everyone loved it. The cake was also delicious. We were also able to get a nice discount for booking before a certain date and during non-peak wedding months. As well as a teacher discount on our decor rentals. We were able to come in starting at noon to get everything set up and get ready for the ceremony at 6. The day of coordinator, Kourtney, helped everything run smoothly. Many of my guests were raving about the food and how beautiful the venue is. They offer both indoor and outdoor space for the ceremony and they do both year round. Overall, our wedding went well. However, there are a few things that did not go well and are still bothering me 2 months later. Rose Briar’s tagline, “You bring the dress, we do the rest”, is misleading at best. When we first toured in January, we were told that the venue covered everything and we would be responsible for the alcohol, photographer, and flowers. But as things moved forward and we got closer to the wedding date we found out that this was not the case. At our 30 day meeting we found out that the venue does not include a bartender, and we would have to hire one off their approved vendors list, an additional $350 (or more depending on the type of bar service you want). This could have been a misunderstanding on our part, but the coordinator told us that we weren’t the first ones to think that so… They also do not provide the officiant, but were able to set us up with one, Jeff Cooper. He was very nice and did a great job with our ceremony. He asked to do a “blessing” over our marriage and we agreed to that, but it ended up being a prayer which caught us by surprise since we asked for a secular ceremony. It wasn’t a big deal for us, and did not detract from our day. The venue payment system needs a little work. You can pay online via PayPal or Venmo, but you don’t receive a confirmation from the venue and you can’t see your remaining balance. The reception felt rushed, like we didn’t have enough time to do everything and talk to everyone even with only 50 guests. We were told it would end at 11 but the music stopped around 10:30. The Rose Tree Rentals had the perfect colored table runners for our color scheme. But their options seemed a little limited to us and they didn’t have any centerpieces that we loved. But we were able to find centerpieces elsewhere that fit us.The nice thing is they don’t force you to use their stuff, you can pick whatever fits you and your partner and bring in what you want. And they set up and tear down all of their decorations which is also nice and less work for you. My biggest complaint is about the DJ, Scott McLaughlin. Before the wedding, he sent us a prelude playlist and a dance playlist and told us we could add or take away songs to fit our music taste. My husband and I spent 2 weekends listening to hours of music to put together these 2 lists based on the two lists Scott sent us. Music is something that is very important to us not only as individuals but as a couple. Scott played the prelude list we sent, no problems. But when it came to the dance list, our choices were completely ignored. He did not play any songs that we added. I specifically asked for no country music but it was played anyway. It felt incredibly disrespectful of our time and effort. We also played the shoe game. I asked my maid of honor to look over the list of shoe game questions from the Scott to make sure there wasn’t anything that would make me or my husband uncomfortable, as well as add some personal questions to make it special to us. Scott totally disregarded the questions she cut and asked all of them. Most of them were fine, but one was “Who has the crazier family?”, which is a sensitive topic for my husband, but Scott asked it anyway even though it was cut from the list. One of the added questions was about pokemon and during the game Scott asked, “Is that the game where you run around outside? Sounds like a good way to get shot.” I was shocked and found that a highly inappropriate thing to say at a wedding. The cake was through Katie Cakes and as mentioned above, the cake tasted amazing. I don’t think I’ve ever had such good buttercream in my life. Unfortunately it did not look great, especially compared to some of the pictures on her website. I wanted stars on the top tier and flowers on the bottom tier, both turned out pretty meh. The gold stars were difficult to see on the white butter cream. She said she was going to use a stencil for the flowers but they looked like they were free handed. Like I said, the cake was delicious which is really the important part, it just didn’t look the way I had hoped/envisioned. Our wedding ended up being fairly small, about 50 guests, and the reception space was the perfect size for that many people. They claim they can accommodate over 100 in their reception space but I think it would get very crowded very quickly.