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Review content:
Our experience with the Garden Room was god awful in a lot of ways, but when we decided to book the outside caterer, that’s when things really became terrible.
The Garden Room did everything they could to screw over our outside caterer. First, they charged us $150 for even having an outside caterer—then they charged our caterer $200 for using their kitchen. Even though our caterer could serve alcohol under their own license, the Garden Room insisted that no one could serve alcohol in their venue except for them—legally speaking, of course. However, my fiancé’s family is chock full of lawyers, & the Garden Room could never adequately explain why our caterer couldn’t serve alcohol. It was like talking to a petulant child, so eventually we just gave up.
Once we surrendered on that point, the Garden Room insisted that our caterers not use their own servers—which would be a complimentary part of their service for the wedding—but that we use the Garden Room servers, whom we would have to pay $20 an hour each while they were working, & $20 per hour for one hour before & after they quit working. When I got upset, Julie said that we could use our caterer’s servers, but that we would have to use the Garden Room’s bartender & dishwasher. I agreed, only to find out on the day of the wedding that we would be forced to pay for the Garden Room’s servers after all.
More importantly, on the day of my wedding, I came in from taking pictures to see that there were not any servers from the Garden Room—none—offering hors d’oeuvres to my guests! My mother told me that Julie had said that they had already served all the food our caterer had made. When I asked to speak to Julie, the servers—who I was paying $20 an hour, remember—were consistently rude & nonresponsive to me. They just rolled their eyes when I asked to speak to their boss, like annoyed teenagers.
I had to leave my own wedding to find Julie so we could discuss the situation. When I found her, she told me that the problem wasn’t that the caterer ran out of food; it was that the caterer hadn’t brought enough platters. When I pointed out that she said she would provide platters, since she provided the servers, she changed her story—again—to say that, really, the caterer wasn’t plating the food fast enough. After giving her an earful, I went back to my wedding, & within moments, there were three servers with full platters offering hors d’oeuvres to my guests. Coincidence?
I should not have had to leave my own wedding to listen to Julie’s lies. I think she was purposefully trying to make our caterer look bad—which is petty, inconsiderate, & unprofessional. After all, if any one of her stories were true, you’d think she’d stick to it—& you certainly wouldn’t think that giving her an earful would fix the problem if she really had no control over it!
Finally, when we got the bill, we discovered we had been charged all kinds of hidden fees that were not mentioned before. Even though we paid hundreds of dollars to rent the room for the whole day, we were charged $30 per hour for every hour we spent decorating before the event began, & we were even charged an “energy surcharge” for keeping flowers in their refrigerator, like they’d turned it on just for us! It just went on & on!
Dozens of hidden fees hike up the price of renting the Garden Room, & the first rate they quote you is deceptive. If you want anything special for your event—if you don’t just want to be cycled through their wedding factory—they will make it incredibly difficult for you. While your pictures will have a pretty backdrop, planning your event will be twice as hard as it should be, & there’s no guarantee—at all—that the Garden Room’s staff will even follow through on the day of the event—& be warned: the staff there is nonresponsive, unprofessional & inconsiderate; petty & childish. Just awful!
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