My first venue sucked. By now most of you have heard at least the bare bones story of J’s and my wedding drama…in short, we moved our wedding to a new location about five weeks ago, 12 weeks before the actual wedding.
I was having issues with the venue from the beginning. I really felt unsettled whenever I’d email them to ask questions, but I tried to ignore it. To clarify, I really only had a problem with one of the people at the venue. There are two event coordinators, Zach and Rhonda. Zach was fine, I never had any problems with him, and he always was more than helpful when he answered my questions. But, apparently Rhonda was assigned to my event. Since they only had one email address, I couldn’t email just one. Anyway, Rhonda mostly answered my emails, and the more questions I asked, the less happy I was with the venue.
I think it started when I tried to verify whether the venue was wheelchair accessible. I emailed and asked if our venue was, and named the venue in my email. Rhonda responded that yes, they had a ramp, and a wheelchair accessible bathroom, so that wouldn’t be a problem. Ok, I thought. No reason to question her, right? I mean, she works there! I wouldn’t have any reason to wonder whether she was in fact telling the truth! Well, obviously, the place is not wheelchair accessible, or I wouldn’t have had a problem with her answer. I was prepared to go ahead and still use the venue, though. There were other issues that came up that ultimately made me decide to change places.
The big blowup happened when I emailed to pin down times we could come to the venue to set up and stuff. This was where I found out that I had exactly ½ hour for the ceremony, and four hours for the reception. This was never clearly delineated on my “contract,” which was really the “event order.” When I would add details to my wedding, they would update the “event order.” This to me was not a contract, but whatever…they called it the contract. When I objected regarding the amount of time I was allowed, they told me it was always in my “contract.” This was not entirely true…they wrote start and end times for everything, like setup, ceremony, and reception, but they never told me that was ALL the time I was allotted. When I got the event order, the start and end times weren’t even accurate! Not only did I not know how much I was allowed, I was never told that extra time would cost me $350/hour, or $3/person, whichever was higher.
When I objected again to this revelation, and asked to see the rest of the terms of the contract, I was told that my “event order” was the entire contract and that they were sorry if I didn’t know that, but basically it wasn’t their fault, it was mine. I read my “event order” a million times trying to find ANY of that language in it. Big surprise, none of it was in there! Despite all of this, I didn’t think I would be able to find another venue, so I was prepared to suck it up and deal with it. I did, however, want them to know that I did not like the way I was being treated and that they couldn’t continue this way. I sent Rhonda another email, which essentially said that the information was NOT in the contract, and as an attorney, I would know how to read contracts, but that I hoped we could work it out and still have a great event. I also mentioned how unhappy I was that I was told the venue was wheelchair accessible when it wasn’t in fact the case.
I didn’t hear a peep from the venue for three days. When I did hear back, it was not exactly a nice response. Instead of Rhonda, I got Eric, her husband. (Apparently Rhonda and Eric own the ballroom and another ballroom together.) Eric basically told me that he was sorry I had such interpretations, but that the accessibility of the ballroom was self-evident and that he was confident I was aware of this. Additionally, he was confident I was aware of the terms of the contract, the ones he said were always in the “event order” but I still couldn’t find. He said that if I felt mislead, he was offering my deposit back, minus $500 for “sales staff time.”
Naturally, I freaked out. I was a bride, getting married in three months! What bride isn’t stressed out at that point, and completely caught up with the details of the wedding? Clearly, a venue switch would be the worst thing to happen to me, stress-wise. Still…I wasn’t willing to work with them anymore. Instead of apologizing, they had basically blamed me and said they did nothing wrong. If they had apologized, and were nice about it, I probably would have still held my event there.
I wanted my money back, so I tried to contact them to accept their offer to get my money back. They refused to return any phone calls, so after four or five from J, I sent them an email unequivocally accepting their offer. I still didn’t hear from them. I ended up going to find Eric, the owner of the ballroom, on a Friday afternoon, exactly 3 months before the wedding. Eric was…less than pleasant. He told me It was my loss, and when I informed him I wanted my money back, he sneered that he had 30 days to get it to me. I’m not sure this is entirely accurate, but I said whatever. Luckily, my coworker was with me and clarified that he meant he would PAY me in 30 days, right? He said he would get me my money. I then tried to show him the email where his WIFE wrote that the ballroom was wheelchair accessible. He looked at it, LAUGHED AT ME, and told me that it meant nothing. I could only look at him in disbelief. I turned around and walked out, because what else could I do? But not before Eric told me to “come back and try the new restaurant, it’s going to be great.” They were in the process of opening a new restaurant on the ground floor of the ballroom. There is NO WAY IN HELL I will ever patronize that restaurant.
Eric finally paid me, 33 days after he said he would. I ended up finding a new venue, and although I had to have my invitations reprinted, it was worth it. I have never been treated so poorly by a company that depends on customers and called a liar repeatedly. I have never been talked to so condescendingly. I would totally have still held my event at the ballroom if they were nice about it, which they chose not to be. In a way, I am glad it ended this way, because these are not the kind of people I want helping me put on one of the most important days of my life. I will always warn people away from the Arista Ballroom and the people who own it, who clearly do not care about what people think about them, or doing business the right way, or even having a good reputation for their business. They disgust me.
I am SO excited!