Choosing Sylvan Dale Guest Ranch for our wedding venue was, hands down, the single largest factor in creating the magical, “campy,” comfortable, wonderful, hospitable wedding exper...ience we were looking for. ZERO REGRETS. We, along with our families, stayed on the ranch from Friday to Monday of our wedding weekend. Much of our experience will likely apply to couples planning their wedding on the ranch for just one day, but the weekend experience was what really made our wedding amazing. We hosted our rehearsal dinner and wedding onsite. Our families had never met, but by the end of the weekend, the cousins were playing together on the carousel, the parents had shared breakfast together, our bridal party was chilling on the couches on the porch, and our friends were catching up near the river. We shared many campfires together.
Originally we worked with Melissa (she’s great) but mid-way through our process were reassigned to Suzanne who had just joined as an additional wedding coordinator. Suzanne played a huge role in making our event run smoothly and is great with details (and we had quite a few of them). I am so grateful for Suzanne’s advice and expertise around planning a weekend-long event and the ranch was so accommodating. She was honest and up-front about what we could do (including but not limited to light sparklers, have campfires, bring in s’mores, design our own mixed-and-matched table layouts, send the chef our favorite pancake recipe for breakfast, use their heat lamps for the porch) and what we couldn’t do (this was mostly around food regulations and storage; we asked a lot of questions) and the whole communication process was efficient and helpful. Suzanne, we are grateful for you!
More highlights:
The food is really good. We didn’t really have a tasting so it was a bit of a gamble but the food is great. Chef Marcus is crushing it. We had a few vegans and the staff made special meals for them which was great. The kitchen crew greeted our guests as they moved through the buffet and that was a nice touch. It was on time and delicious. The main lodge is decorated beautifully with twinkle lights and seasonal decorations. We added zero decorations. Easy.
The staff was extremely nice. Hospitable, but never in our way or overbearing, and quite accommodating throughout the process. Susan, the owner, could be seen at breakfast refilling coffee and chatting with our guests. Truly a classy family-owned space where we felt at home. One growth edge we found was that they can be a bit disorganized. It occasionally felt like the right hand was not talking to the left around room reservations, for example; ultimately, and especially after we started working with Suzanne, things went really smoothly.
Lastly, we found them to be appropriately and fairly priced. Hosting a wedding shouldn’t be 10x more expensive than any other event of that size and scale but so many vendors in the wedding space are crazy expensive. We never felt price-gouged by the ranch and felt they deserved every penny because our weekend was so magical.
So, thank you, SDR, for sharing your space with us for our wedding. We will be reminiscing about our weekend for many decades to come. Ten stars.