We will start off by saying that our wedding guests had great things to say about the venue and our Big Day was beautiful, went smoothly without issues and we very much enjoyed ourselves. With that being said, we think it’s important for people... to know the stressors we experienced from this venue leading up to our Big Day, while also recognizing that planning a wedding is just stressful in general. We felt that the venue owner was a bit of a micromanager and very set in her ways with how things should operate. This isn’t a flattering characteristic to have when you're giving the venue owners thousands of dollars to use their property.
We did not choose Stoney Creek’s in-house coordination package because we did not feel they would be calm, organized, and helpful in the process. The phone convos and emails we had in our decision-making process were chaotic, unorganized, and tended to go off topic (in fairness I will note that they were still dealing with the repercussions of the Caldor Fire at the time we were deciding on our planner). We chose another planning company who we felt was calm, organized, and direct. This decision seemed to upset the owner and cause a lot of unnecessary tension and snarky comments directed toward our planner, which was upsetting for us to see given how much we were spending. I will also note that if you hire an outside planner, the venue will likely find a way to take money from the deposit because of how particular they are on how things get done, it’s almost impossible to get it right if you’re not the owner/venue staff.
We also felt our initial signed contract led us astray. There were many things not included in the signed contract that later became policy we were asked to abide by. These new policies were handed out in pamphlets 4-6 months after we signed our contract. As you can imagine, this was very frustrating. For example, their “no lights out” policy sounds nice but don’t be fooled. They charge $75/hour after 12am for anyone that is still awake on the property. This was not information provided at our tour or in our contract. Additionally, you must give them a 6-month notice if you’re not doing on-site brunch the next day so they can plan another wedding for Sunday. This was not written anywhere in our signed contract, they did waive the fee as a “favor” to us but it actually wasn’t a favor.
All added fees on top of the venue cost were frustrating, no one wants to deal with this, just include it in the venue cost. I think one thing that made this so frustrating is that, on our tour, they said they pride themselves on being more budget friendly because of having to pay for all their kids’ weddings. This is not the case. Understand all fees before signing your contract, they were not able to give us a price sheet on our tour. It was later emailed to us and then we were told it was wrong and should never have been sent out. We will note that they did honor some prices, but this is unprofessional regardless.
It’s a beautiful property and a great place for a wedding, but we wished the venue could have conveyed all rules and policies upfront. We also wished the owner could have been nicer to our planner, more cooperative, withheld comments on her past negative wedding experiences and instead focused on the positives and made us feel excited instead of stressed out. We did appreciate her husband, the co-owner, who was always friendly and personable. We feel our four-star review is a very fair review.