Westin Book Cadillac Detroit

We booked the Westin for our daughter’s rehearsal dinner and Sunday morning breakfast. The catering manager was very easy to work with, helpful and responsive. We had about 50 guests at each event. We used the Italian Garden, Crystal Ballroom and the Esquire Room. Of the three, the Esquire Room is the most “conference” like, but it was fine for breakfast. Menu options are fairly extensive and the buffet we chose for dinner had soup, salad, sides, three entree options snd desserts. The food was good. We also offered passed hors d’ouvres and the tapas bar before dinner. In hindsight, we didn’t need the tapas bar. This venue was very convenient for our out of town guests, the majority of whom stayed at the hotel. We were very pleased with our choice.

Our wedding reception in the Venetian ballroom was gorgeous and I couldn’t have asked for a more picturesque day. Truly was so delighted. Things that went really well… 1. The valet service is excellent. 2. The cocktail hour and and food was top notch. 3. Many of our vendors were already familiar with this venue which made wedding planning easier. 4. The hotel rooms were excellent (aside from the unplugged issue, see below). 5. The Venetian ballroom is beyond words beautiful. I can’t imagine a more beautiful venue exists. A few things went pretty wrong though and even though I would probably pick the Westin book Cadillac if I did it all over again, I was really disappointed in these few things… 1. Working with the Westin coordinator Shanina Meeks was really terrible. She was disorganized and uncommunicative. She made things harder than they needed to be and 9/10 times working with her was more complicated than just doing the task myself or with other staff. Once I even expressed to her my concern that she didn’t know really basic elements of our day (which I had told her several times already) and she raised her voice at me and started calling me ma’am/or using my first name in a patronizing way. Completely shocking! Even though the Westin tells you a coordinator comes with the purchase of the venue, Shanina recommended we get a day of coordinator and honestly I wouldn’t have trusted her to do it for us anyway. 2. There were things unplugged in the room and the night before my wedding a cordless phone was low battery and wouldn’t stop beeping. I figured it out eventually but it caused me to wake up at 3:30 AM and made me tired for my big day. 3. The bar at our reception confused champagne, Chardonnay, and ice wine (which we didn’t even ask for at our bar). So a lot of folks got ice wine when they asked for Chardonnay or champagne. The bartenders really should be able to tell the difference. 4. Even though I mentioned it multiple times, they lost my rented cake stand (which the bakery would’ve charged $200 for). It took several weeks but finally Shanina “found” it after we told her we expected her to fit the bill for the cake stand loss. 5. The Westin Book Cadillac went bankrupt when we were mid wedding planning and no one told us. We had to find this information out through a random news article we saw. When we contacted them to inquired about it they answered all of our questions and assured us it was being transferred to new owners smoothly. But it would’ve been nice to be informed with everything else going on. 6. We reserved 40 rooms for wedding guests when we booked the venue. They started selling them to other folks though 1 month before the wedding. A lot of our guests wanted to book within that month and were told it was too late. So those guests stayed at Shinola, or some other hotel. Despite the Westin turning our guests away, they still expected us to pay an attrition fee for not booking a certain percentage of the contracted rooms in time for the 1 months cut off.

Amazing venue! We held our daughters wedding reception in the Venetion Room in October. The staff were very professional, friendly and attentive. Food and drink were excellent! Accommodations for overnight guests were great. Although the weather did not cooperate, our party was able to utilize the Italian Garden. providing a beautiful setting for pictures. Thank you to all the people at the Westin Book Cadillac for a wonderful evening,!