The Williamsburg Hotel

onesty.  My fiance and I started planning our wedding at the hotel about a year ago. We had read poor reviews online but decided to move forward with the venue anyway because of the great price and the exquisite ballroom - which I fell in love with the minute I saw.  After our first deposit was put down we started noticing some red flags. Our main point of contact started contradicting many of the things she had promised us - bathrooms dedicated to our guests, a sectioned-off space for our cocktail hour, first look photos in the water tower, rentals we had been promised. As each item came out, we made sure to reference our contract and email threads where we had negotiated this all.  Soon after this, we were introduced to a new point of contact at the hotel and a new general manager.  We spent many phone calls explaining what we were promised and she agreed to accommodate us while also investing further in space - with new items such a glassware, tables, chairs, & lighting. While we appreciated the new staff's attention to our wedding, there was still concern about how ill-equipped they seemed to be at handling events. They had trouble getting us simple things like a list of bar packages with pricing, preferred vendors, even getting a room block or a bridal suite took a lot of back and forth.  Then the pandemic hit. We checked in with the hotel in March and they reassured us that they would still be able to hold our wedding. We checked in again in May and were introduced to a new general manager of the hotel. We were told that they still intended to host our wedding on June 27th. We had many questions, as you can imagine, with our wedding date almost a month away mid-pandemic. Almost all of our emails went unanswered for two weeks at a time. We inquired about seating charts, food tastings, next steps, safety measures, and backup plans, just to name a few items.  It is now less than two weeks until our wedding and we have no plan in place, do not feel safe working with this venue, and are still waiting for the next steps - or just a response. I understand that the pandemic has created challenging times for many businesses, but this level of unresponsiveness has left me feeling very hopeless and helpless.

en advantage of. We signed a contract with the hotel knowing that we were taking a bit of a risk given that the ballroom and roof were not complete, however, we were assured there would be no issues. Everything was outlined in the contract exactly to our liking and a deposit was paid. Then the trouble started. 3 main contacts and countless broken promises later, we were told that the hotel could no longer “sign off on what we were originally offered”. This is of course ILLEGAL, given that we had a contract and they had already accepted our deposit. They wanted to charge us significantly more for less space and less service. We have no intention of starting a legal battle but we can at least let other future brides and grooms know not to make the same mistake we did. The hotel’s unethical business practices and lack of professionalism explain the high employee turnover and we now understand why there is a major lawsuit and lots of other PR drama surrounding the entity – just Google it! Our planner told us that even though they owed us everything promised, we needed to get out of there FAST so we switched our venue (which of course is a nightmare less than a year away in NYC). If you are considering hosting your event here, don’t. They are great salespeople but as soon as you put down the money they start going back on their promises. Each time we asked, construction completion dates got pushed farther and farther out. Likely all of the construction will be severely delayed, just like the opening of their restaurant which was delayed almost a full year. Learn from our mistake and don’t sink a single penny into this establishment. THEY ARE CROOKS!