Semiahmoo Resort, Golf, and Spa

While a stunning location for a wedding, the only negative experiences we had as a part of planning our wedding and on our wedding day were due to our venue, Semiahmoo Resort. To start, we experienced significant turnover in staff during the year and a half we were planning our wedding. Over this time, we were handed off to 3 separate points of contact on the Sales and Events team. This made for a very inconsistent experience where we were told different things by each of our contacts at the resort. We had numerous issues with our hotel block, in particular that the rate we were given for rooms in our block was significantly (at some times, over $100/night) higher than the room rates on the Semiahmoo website outside of our block. While we understood that room rates fluctuate, this was the case for the entire time from when our block became available for booking until it was full. While Semiahmoo did allow us to count rooms booked outside of our block to our guest room revenue minimum, this was a frustrating experience for us and for our guests who were trying to make hotel reservations. Two weeks before our wedding, we were told that Semiahmoo was changing reservation systems as they had become a Wyndham property. This resulted in numerous errors for our wedding block. We had multiple guests who appeared to incorrectly have multiple reservations. They decided to leave this up to the front desk to deal with when guests were checking in. While guests weren’t charged for these duplicate reservations, it was a strange experience as a guest checking in to a hotel that you had made reservations for months ago. We had also provided welcome bags to the resort to be distributed to hotel rooms before our guests arrived. Of course, reservation system errors led to some of our guests not receiving welcome bags. The day before our wedding, we had to ask the resort to pick up trash that was all over the lawn and in the bonfires where we would be having our welcome event. While this was resolved, the lack of care and attention to detail before an event was very frustrating. Our biggest disappointment with Semiahmoo was on our wedding day. We had specified on numerous occasions, in writing, and on our event order (signed by us and the Sales & Events Manager at the resort) that we would have 2 guests requiring Kosher meals. We spoke with the chef at our tasting as well as our primary contact about this dietary restriction. We were assured that a Kosher meal would be provided to these guests. We were told that Semiahmoo had provided Kosher meals before and that they had a supplier who would provide these meals. And yet, on the day of our wedding, our guests were served non Kosher meals. When asked to see the packing, our guests were given the box of a Private Selection frozen dinner that was NOT Kosher. We were truly astounded by the blatant disregard for our signed event order and disrespect for our guests’ dietary restrictions. While the resort provided snacks to our guests so that they would have something to eat, this certainly did not make up for this mistake. Unfortunately, the high turnover and lack of communication between the Sales and Events team, the front desk, and other management staff at the resort made for a frustrating planning experience. We do want to note that the staff working at our wedding and wedding events were wonderful. Our bartender, Kellie, was incredible. The waitstaff and servers were kind and helpful.