My husband and I were married at Montague Retreat Center on 7/7/18. We rented the accommodations beginning Tuesday 7/3 as many of our friends and family were traveling for the event. We have so many fond memories of our time at MRC. It was a se...riously dreamy week, however; it came with a few surprises that I will share here in case you are considering the space as your venue.
The Good: From the time we booked the venue, Beth and Bill were very flexible and allowed us to visit multiple times over the winter. They provided lots of information via e-mail that greatly helped us plan our day. As for the wedding week, the place is remarkably beautiful. It felt like we were on another planet all week. The space itself is serene and minimalist which really highlights the natural beauty of the surrounding hills. Because of this, lots of decorations are not a necessity (though if you want more decor last minute, they have a decorations storeroom with just about everything). Beth, Bill, John and Kate kept the place clean and were super professional on the wedding day. They were reasonably flexible about anything we needed during the week.
The Less Than Good: As I mentioned, my family rented the rooms at MRC beginning Tuesday 7/3. MRC became our family's "hub" as people got into town leading up to the wedding. During the week, we were really surprised with how poorly we were treated. During our time, multiple tours were given of the property and our private accommodations with no notice. Our napping guests were pretty weirded out when they woke up to a group of strangers being paraded through their bedroom. I understand that this is a business, but a simple call or text to let us know there would be a tour would have gone a long way. Additionally, there is a summer camp that uses the woods surrounding MRC (which we were told with plenty of time) but what we were not told was if the summer camp gets rained on, they will take over the stone patio and basement area. If it rains all day, they will be there all day. It was really a shame we were not told this for a couple reasons. One, we were storing all our decorations in the basement (per instructions) and some of them became games for the kids. Two, it rained all day on Friday, and we had a DIY rehearsal lunch planned for the stone patio. When we brought this up to the camp counselors, we were told they would not be able to leave. When we brought it up to Beth and Bill, they told us that they really needed to put the possibility that this would happen in the contract (I truly hope they do!). Luckily, we were able to work around the kids, but it was a stressful time.
All in all, MRC provided us with a beautiful wedding. At this point, I could not recommend staying there all week unless you have a pretty tame group that only wants to use the sleeping quarters as a makeshift hotel. On the other hand, I can 100% recommend MRC for your wedding day. It is a beautiful blank slate and the MRC crew really knows what they are doing when it comes to the day-of. Everything went off as we envisioned and we could not have been happier. I simply hope they can figure out the week-of accommodations because the place really is something special.