The gardens are beautiful and the house was a perfect backdrop for all of our photos. Our wedding day was absolutely perfect here, with one exception: the house manager Kathy was a... nightmare. She was great in the months leading up to the wedding, although she did try to control a lot such as the colors we chose and how we wanted our seating chart. But on the actual day of the wedding she was a nightmare.
Not only did several of our guests and my mother complain about how rude she was to them, but she even snapped at several of my family members when I asked them to help me begin packing things up a the end of the night, and my photographers had horrible experiences with her as well. One photographer called her ahead of time to make sure their timelines for the day matched up and Kathy actually hung up on her! And when the photographers arrived about 15 minutes early to scope out photo locations Kathy refused to allow them inside, even though it was only 15 minutes. She did the same thing to us as well, we arrived about 10 minutes before expected and found the house locked so we rang the bell. Kathy left us standing there for five minutes and though she did then allow us inside, she docked time from the event (you get a set amount of time for the venue) which meant my guests had to leave earlier than planned at the end of the night.
Rather than just watching from the sidelines as I've seen done at weddings at other locations, Kathy hovered around my guests the entire wedding. She even ended up in every single photo of me walking down the aisle because she was standing directly at the entrance of the aisle. She also ended up in every photo of my husband and I signing our marriage license. My photographers tried to work around this, but it was inevitably unavoidable.
As the wedding wound down she took it upon herself to take all of our things from the house and DUMP THEM ON THE PORCH. Since I knew we only had about a half hour left I was walking to the front of the house to begin gathering our things and saw everything just sitting on the porch. Kathy and another woman were just shoving it all out there. My makeup, jewelry box, guest book, all of our belongings were essentially just thrown out of the house which myself and the remaining guests found to be horribly rude.
The venue itself is absolutely stunning and we did have a great time, but if you are not the kind of bride that is willing to have a strong hand with Kathy and tell her to back off, I'd suggest finding another venue.