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| - My sister was married at Rainbow Gardens and I was her planner.
Throughout the process, I had some difficulties. The venue has one e-mail address where multiple people can answer back to you. It gets very confusing because some people don't read through the e-mail thread. I had to ask a few questions multiple times to get an exact answer.
I felt that we were very thorough when we finalized all the details during our final meeting. Our biggest concern was having glasses rented as the venue only uses plastic. (Glass is used for the water). At our finalizing meeting, we even increased the count of the glasses so that we could make sure they lasted as long as possible.
A couple of weeks prior to the ceremony, I sent in the DJ information to the venue directly and not everything was sent to the DJ. I had a rough timeline of how we wanted the process to go and they didn't get that information. (The DJ themselves, were great and fun by the way. Although a couple of dedicated songs fell through the cracks which was partially our fault.)
At our rehearsal, I noticed our set up was wrong. I asked for rounds of 10 and found rounds of 8. It ended up working nicely as people weren't squished, but I didn't have enough centerpieces. Fortunately, the florist we used (A Garden Florist) is amazing and she came up with something. Doug was very helpful in this circumstance as well, and he tried to accommodate us the best he could. He even helped move our photo booth himself as we wanted to put it in a different location.
Upon arriving to the venue, just before the ceremony, my parents noticed the wrong names on the sign out front! We made them change that. While we were taking pictures and getting everything set up, I felt like the coordinators (Stephanie and Taylor) were no where to be found. I had to keep knocking on the doors or searching around the different rooms for them.
The ceremony went well. Pastor Bill did a very nice job.
We had the ceremony in the outdoor space, the cocktail hour in the formal room and the dinner in the garden room.
We decided to add a chocolate fountain and photo booth a couple weeks before the wedding. (Both of which I highly recommend for any wedding!) We were told numerous times that the chocolate fountain would be available during cocktail hour as well as the full reception. They said that they would move the fountain into the reception after cocktail hour was over. There was no chocolate fountain during cocktail hour.
We requested that we borrow their card box for the wedding, there was no card box. I had to ask them to place one out.
As I mentioned previously, we wanted glasses - there were NO glasses!
Upon entering the reception area, the candle centerpieces were not lit. I had already come in earlier that day to set everything up, that was the only thing that needed to be done. The coordinators were trying to light the candles as our guests were already sitting. The whole point is to have a big wow entrance when guests enter the dining room!
The DJ started to wind down our party at 4 hours. We really wanted to go out with a bang for this reception and we shelled out some extra money to reserve the whole venue, add an extra hour to the reception and an extra hour of open bar. The DJs had NO clue about this. They had to run to try and find our coordinators and check with them. The bar also thought we were closing down and wound up charging 3 of our guests as they thought it switched to a cash bar. So embarrassing! We then had to wait for the bartenders to receive word that they were ok to continue serving an open bar. I have to give a shout out to Louanne (one of the bartenders) who really stepped it up and tried to accommodate us during the whole commotion. She was very nice and very pleasant to our guests!
Throughout the evening, we needed to get in and out of the bridal dressing room which we kept locked because of valuables. Numerous times, we could not find our coordinators to unlock the door and they wouldn't give us the key. At one point, we had to have someone from the kitchen staff help us open the door.
Overall, our guests had a wonderful time because no one noticed the hiccups. However, I'd like to make note that I am a wedding planner and there is no way that any of this is acceptable. Their saving grace is that they have a beautiful venue. Be careful with the coordinators when booking here.
I will let you know how photography turns out! I hope this helps you in your planning!!
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