The Bear Mountain Inn and Spa

I got married there in 2022; I hope they've gotten better since. To start, Val is a lovely woman, and she was very kind in dealing with and accommodating my mother, who was in a wheelchair due to having stage four cancer. Val also opened up the carousel for us to use as an alternate photo location because there was a tropical storm on our wedding day (in November- what are the odds?) She clearly cares about the clients and loves love, but, that being said, there was a lack of organization and communication that caused a myriad of problems that could very easily have been avoided if the very specifically laid plans I had created had been followed. Val repeatedly misspelled both my first and last names, leading to emails constantly being missed and my husband having to forward them to me. She also never hit “reply all”, so when my name was spelled properly, my husband was left out of correspondence that he needed to be included in. Val did not book the brunch, and only told me the week before, even though we had discussed it multiple times since we had our tasting in June, so we had to book it at the last minute. It was also not held in Restaurant 1915 as planned, but in the ballroom, confusing guests. Val knew we were having the rehearsal dinner at Restaurant 1915 because it was on my very detailed itinerary, and we had spoken about it multiple times. She did not send me any booking information, so I had no idea it needed to be done separately, because it is not my job to know that. Val then asked me AFTER THE REHEARSAL, “So where are ya having ya dinner?” I said, “Down the hall.” She said, “Oh, ya booked it with Joe?” I said, “No, I booked it with you, in June.” She said, “Oh no… you were supposed to book it with Joe… okay, I’ll fix it.” It was very evident that the restaurant was not prepared to feed 25 people from a prix fixe menu, and so the food was late and cold. I do not blame the restaurant for this, and all of the staff was lovely. My brother, the officiant, walked into the ballroom to place something on the sweetheart table along with one of our family friends. A member of the staff snapped his fingers at both of them and said, “Ay ay my man! You can’t be in here!” My brother informed him that they were doing things for the bride. Val was supposed to come up to the bridal suite and bring us cocktail hour food. She never did. I had originally planned for my maid of honor to do this, and then told her not to worry about it, because Val had it handled. Val did not, in fact, have it handled. Val took about twenty minutes to line everyone up for reception entrances, making me lose time with my guests. I would have done it myself in about five, but Val, again, told me she had it handled, and she did not. This seems to have been because the bridal party was rushed and hassled into the ballroom prior to entrances in order to give their meal selections to the servers. I was personally asked four times by three different people for my meal choice. Most of the bridal party, and many, many of the guests, were asked their meal choices multiple times. This is especially frustrating given that I had a very specific spreadsheet, that Val had a copy of, that had each guests’ meal choice listed. I understand checking one time to ensure that people have not changed their minds, but to be asked repeatedly by different people who were clearly not communicating is absurd. Why did I spend extra time and money on RSVPs that included meal choices if people were going to be asked multiple times on the day? I could have just had them say yes or no. Val told me that people who aren’t staying have to pay for parking, and we would have to get tickets to people ahead of time, so we’d have to ask someone to stand outside and give the tickets to people- she emphasized that it could not be someone who work for Bear Mountain, and that I had to make arrangements, so I did- I arranged for my friend to do this, and I relayed this information to Val. On the wedding day, my friend spoke with Val about this, and she seemed confused, telling him, “Oh no, it’s a holiday, so parking is free.” The wedding has been booked for over a year, and we repeatedly discussed the fact that it was a holiday. Why did that information never click in her brain? Ruby, our wedding night coordinator, was not introduced to me until the middle of the reception. This policy makes no sense to me, as I am now expected to establish a rapport with someone I do not know on an already stressful evening. We had organized a private last dance and cleared out our guests before 10:30 to accommodate this. The staff turned the lights on and was cleaning up while we did this, ruining the moment entirely. My maid of honor booked a room and was told she could have early check in. She was not able to check in early. When she was finally given a room and a key, she went to her room AND FOUND SOMEONE ELSE ALREADY IN THERE. She had to go back down to the front desk and correct it, and the oher guest was VERY unhappy, understandably. They then charged the wrong card for her stay, and told her she did not pay, when in reality, they had charged an expired card. Gift bags for our wedding guests were left at reception. I spoke to Victoria and asked her how many guests were there as the final count, so that I could leave the appropriate number of bags there, and my friend could take the rest to the Holiday Inn, where we had other guests staying. Victoria was very focused on playing with her hair and not answering my questions, and she said, “Umm, uhh, you have 20 people.” I said I knew that could not possibly be correct, and I asked her to count the number of individual guests in each room. She seemed incapable of this and made no movement towards the computer, so I had to go BEHIND THE DESK to the computer screen MYSELF and count them. This is a huge breach of guest privacy, by the way. Ultimately, many guests were not even given the gift bags left at the reception desk, and some had to request them several times before they got them. My mother in law gathered up the many extras at the end, and there should not have been any. My husband called down to the front desk for some bottles of water after the reception and after party were over. Kevin, who was working at the time, came to the room and knocked on the door. He asked him to leave them outside the door. Kevin asked who was going to pay for them since there was no card on file. We stayed in the Bridal Suite, which was indeed comped for the wedding night, but a two second search would have told Kevin that I had a card on file from the night before when I had booked and paid for the same room, and he could have charged the water to that card .My husband said that to Kevin, and Kevin repeated that there was no card on file. This was our wedding night, and we had to interrupt our time together to deal with pure incompetence. Ultimately, Kevin left with the waters, and we did not get them. The day after the wedding, we could not find our Fete Phone Guest Book. I called up to Bear Mountain, and was greeted by Victoria, who told me everyone was busy and nobody could help. She then said she would try and contact Tracy and call me back. I waited an hour and heard nothing. I had to drive back up to Bear Mountain to try and look for it myself, as it had to be shipped back by Tuesday. This was the day after my wedding and the day before we were flying out to our Honeymoon early in the morning. I met with Tracy, who was very helpful and searched all the possible locations with me. She also asked how the wedding had gone, and I started crying out of sheer frustration with the dearth of errors throughout the process. I showed her my detailed itinerary and spreadsheets, and I expressed extreme disappointment with the lack of professionalism and follow through. We did not locate the Fete Phone at Bear Mountain- thankfully my sister in law had gathered it up herself. Unfortunately, our guests were not made aware that we had a phone book sign- in, and we had very few people record messages. It is the job of the coordinator to point guests to these kinds of things, and that was very clearly not done. My guests were none the wiser to the behind the scenes snafus, and everyone said how gorgeous the venue and the food were, and they’re right. However, the bride should not have been so stressed on her wedding day that she was unable to enjoy massive parts of the event she had meticulously planned for a year.

Beautiful place, responsive and wonderful staff and food was fantastic!!

Alyssa Quick and staff at the Overlook Lodge at Bear Mountain did a perfect job with our wedding from the planning process to the very end of the reception. From our first consultation, we were so impressed with Alyssa’s professionalism, personalized attention, and enthusiasm for our special day. Alyssa helped prepare every part of our wedding from our initial vision, wedding floor plan, timeline, and hiring excellent vendors. If we had any questions, Alyssa got back to us with helpful answers immediately. She kept us on schedule so that planning was stress-free. Alyssa helped us with our personal touches such as setting up our centerpieces, décor, and canopy the day before the wedding. She helped us plan a delicious plated meal for our guests, arranged for us to cut the cake with Patrick’s (groom’s) heirloom cutlass, (sword), coordinated mother and sons’ dances, toasts, and more. She stayed with us the day of the wedding to ensure that all events on our timeline from arrival to the end of the reception went off perfectly. The staff at Bear Mountain all were calm, professional, and friendly, making for a perfect day. Our friends and family all said that our wedding was terrific and the venue, ceremony, food, music, and dancing were just amazing. We left our wedding topper at the Overlook Lodge and they saved it for us until we returned to pick it up. We highly recommend Alyssa and the Overlook Lodge at Bear Mountain!