Finding our Venue, Part I

After we set the date, our next order of business was to find a venue for our reception.  We knew we wanted to get married at my church, but had no idea where we wanted to have our reception.


After looking into a few venues that were either out of our price range, or were booked for our wedding day, we made appointments with three different hotels in the area to meet with their event coordinators to see their ballrooms and talk about different packages and menus.


After visiting all three, we decided to go with the Hilton Garden Inn, which was the closest to our house, and where we felt we would get the most bang for our buck in regards to food.


We were happy with our choice, and we breathed a sigh of relief that one major thing was crossed off our list.  We had found our venue...or so we thought.


Before we booked with them I really wanted to have a food tasting.  They wouldn't let me taste the food before booking.  I went round and round with them for a couple of weeks before they finally said we could have a tasting.


After the tasting I definitely knew why they didn't want us to have a tasting.  With out going into details, we were definitely unhappy with the food.  One of the entrees was not what was listed on menu.  It was a very cheap cut of beef that they called by the name of a much more expensive cut of beef.


Part of the package that we were going to get was hor ‘oeuvres during our cocktail hour.  When I asked how many pieces there would be per guest, their event coordinators talked all around the question.  When I was persistent and asked multiple times until I got an answer I was appalled at the answer.  If I were to have 200 guests they would provide 100 pieces of shrimp (for shrimp cocktail) and 100 chicken skewers!  So my guests could have ONE shrimp OR ONE chicken skewer!  Of course guests would not know that and would rightfully think they could have several pieces and the later guest would be left with nothing.


So those two issues with the food, along with the issues of communication (I could never get answers from them, and had to play phone and email tag with them) caused us to part ways with the Hilton Garden Inn.


After spending about a month trying to work out issues with the Hilton Garden Inn, I was about 2 months into my 8 month engagement and found myself back at square one with no venue!


Next up, Finding our Venue, Part II it will have a much happier ending...stay tuned!