The Venue — Attraction in Asheville

Our wedding was the most amazing day of our lives and that was fully due to the expertise of The Ridge, The Venue, and The Planning's (RVP's) amazing team. We are SO thankful to have had the opportunity to work with Marta, Darian, Kay, Deandra, Amanda and Nicole throughout our planning process and extending into the actual event. I can’t speak highly enough about RVP – their professionalism was impeccable and kept me, as the bride, calm, confident, and organized while also being very efficient.

We made a full wedding weekend out of our event in August 2021. Starting on Friday we had a Chinese Tea Ceremony out on “The Knoll” which is THE most beautiful site. Following that we hosted our Welcome Party at “The Chateau” (which is also part of The Ridge). Our guests were blown away with the event orchestration and the simple elegance and undeniable beauty of The Ridge.

The following day we held our wedding and reception at The Venue. While getting ready my bridesmaids and I utilized “The Loft” – which was particularly charming with warm sunlight pouring in the windows. Throughout our weekend, our bridal party was chartered around by the RVP Sprinter van. This wound up being perfect and ensured everyone was where they needed to be at the right time. For our actual wedding we utilized the entire space available at "The Venue". We started out by having our ceremony on the Second Floor, guests were then led downstairs for a cocktail hour on the first floor "Market and Mezzanine level" and then finally into the the reception in the back. I loved the way this was done as each room was a bit different and served as a little surprise for everyone! Our reception was catered by The Venue and our guests were blown away with the quality of food and service... Chef prepared a delicious meal with very satisfactory serving sizes (I was extra critical of this as I've been left hungry and unimpressed with the meals at other weddings I've attended!). As a whole, everything was orchestrated with precision and I was beyond thrilled with my wedding both during the weekend and in retrospect!

As for the individuals involved: Nicole was the most amazing planner throughout the process – she tolerated my questions and any last minute changes like a champ! She was always warm, welcoming, and helped to make it the best day ever! Darian, Kay, Deandra, and Amanda were equally wonderful and were able to put together the wedding of my dreams while accommodating and helping me put together exactly what I was envisioning.

I recommend The Ridge, The Venue and The Planning with every ounce of my being! They were wonderful - my husband and I are so fortunate to have been able to experience our dream...

Venue does not work with you, owner is awful (will threaten lawyers and cancelling on you and call you repetitively and leave nasty voicemails), and poor responses to email. Chef did not take feedback on food and we also received complaints from guests that the food was cold. We actually liked the first chef, but found out last minute that the chef has changed and paid for a second tasting. There were a lot of situations like this last minute as we had postponed when the venue legally could not host our event due to headcount restrictions due to Covid. In fact, we wanted to cancel altogether, but after many calls from the owner pleading us to take pity on their business during the pandemics and postpone rather than cancel, we felt guilted into moving forward. Our kindness was not appreciated. The owner only grew nastier as she struggled honoring our original contract when she had risen her prices and legally could not charge us more for her services. Our main point of contact, thankfully, was not the owner but her daughter (which took us a while to figure out because that’s was not disclosed to us directly at any point). And while her responses were spotty they were detailed (sometimes misleading or inaccurate but still detailed). She appeared to have the damage control skills that one only acquires when regularly having to pacify some else’s irrational behaviors. It was an odd, uncomfortable, and unfortunate situation. The day of coordinator and her assistant were wonderful and actually made accommodations happen day of that we were told were not possible. All other hired staff hosting our event were great. All other vendors were great. We put on a great event despite management, but if I were to go back and do it again, I would have chosen any other venue. We learned after the fact (because we are local) that they are known to be the rudest and most difficult to deal with. We met with so many kind venues, but loved this space and booked it even though we had a bad feeling about the owner and it was a mistake. If you are reading reviews and you’re on the fence, I hope this...

Jameson and I got engaged last October and we weren’t really sure where we wanted to get married. We played with the mountain idea and talked about Tennessee and it didn’t feel right. Asheville has been apart of our story. While we dated long distance we visited Asheville twice and both times were beyond extraordinary and we knew that was the city we would celebrate the union of us. We were really hoping for October, because duh and in December we decided to set up some venue visits. We had our first visit at The Venue with three other locations scheduled. We walked in and instantly we both were like, “is this real life? It’s BEAUTIFUL.” We met with the owner, Marta who showed us the space but most importantly we loved how passionate she was about creating magical moments for her clients. We were already sold on the location, but Marta is the real reason we fell so in love with it. We ventured into our next appointment with a date of October 9th open and we weren’t nearly as impressed but we felt we had to do our due diligence. Marta called us and let us know she had another showing after us and they were interested in the same date, realistically it comes down to who is faster to pull the trigger. We never stumbled through credit cards so quickly. From our initial meet to the day of the wedding everything was so incredibly organized, thorough and the experience could not have been better if they tried. The food was AMAZING, the staff was incredible, friendly and I loved how much they loved their job, that is such a huge reflection of the organization as a whole. We worked closely with Nicole and Deandra and those two beautiful women are ROCKSTARS, you guys! I am thoroughly so incredibly happy and impressed with how smoothly this has been and how perfect the evening was. If you’re looking for a spot in Asheville, there really is no other place...