My wife and I had our wedding reception here on New Years Eve of 2010 and while most of the night was great (thanks to great guests and good music ) we were told after the wedding that our guests were paying for wine during our open bar beer/wine cocktail hour.. It would have been one thing if it was an isolated incident but after researching and emailing a few guests we learned that is was far from that. My best mans wife paid for wine during the entire hour while my sister who does not drink was charged for a fountain sodas. Talk about pinching pennies. One of the bartenders was a relative of an employee at Butternut and had never tended bar before. They must have been shorthanded that night. I wonder if he knew it was open bar beer/ wine. After the honeymoon my wife and I emailed the wedding coordinator at Butternut who denied all allegations and basically said that everything was run according to plan. We had already asked many of our guests if they paid for wine and they did so we knew that this was an outright lie on Butternut's end. We emailed Butternut again with a more aggressive approach and this time they responded by saying that there may have been a few guests that paid for wine during the cocktail hour and that they apologize for their mistake. An apology would have been nice had it been a small mistake like using the wrong color table mats but with something as important as a cocktail hour which we spent thousands of dollars on we felt it was a little lackluster. I then proceeded to call Cole Page one of the owners to ask for some of my money back from cocktail hour that we prepaid for. Just over a week later he responded to my voicemail ( nice to have such an urgent response after dropping just under 17000 dollars on the reception) He argued that they had given us a check for 300 dollars at the end of the night for what was remaining on the money we had allocated for open bar. While he did admit that there may have been guests that paid for wine he couldn't justify refunding any more money because there are typically not many guests that drink wine at weddings anyways. I couldn't help but laugh at that comment. but then I I about lost my cool. I ended the conversation by telling him I wanted half my money back for the cocktail hour because the wine was 50% of what was to be served for free. He then countered my offer with free golf passes to the Butternut Golf course. Nice huh? I refused and he said he would talk it over with other management and let me know what they would do. A few days later I received a voicemail telling me that they would not do anything else for us. We had contemplated going to small claims court for what we felt we were owed back but in the end we feel that speaking the truth about this facility on sites like this might save a few people from making the same mistake we did in the future. The people at Butternut are the friendliest people in the world up until they cash your check and then you are nobody to them. If you read this I recommend you go elsewhere for your wedding reception. I know that Butternut Farm will not receive another cent out of my pocket for golf or otherwise as long I live. I apologize for taking so long to write this review and I hope that it will come in handy for any future couples looking to tie the knot. If you have any questions post a comment on this and I can send you some of the rude email correspondence we had with the staff after the wedding. We saved most if not all of the emails.
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