Ashton Gardens | Corinth — Attraction in Corinth

Summary: Beautiful venue, not a beautiful experience. If you are looking at this location for your wedding let me say the venue is gorgeous, breathtaking really. We got married Nov.9 th at 11am. The sunlight coming through was defused just enough at this time. Lighting is a bit dark for pictures, so make sure you hire a photographer that uses flash well. Our photographer was amazing! The reception hall is just as breathtaking, especially at 12pm the lighting was perfect.

As perfect as this location venue was, the experience was not as magical. First what did I learn from this experience that will help you make a decision to time and dates when using this venue for your wedding? If you do want a morning wedding like us, be prepared to feel rushed by the staff. Ashton Gardens is a wedding factory. As gorgeous as this venue is, it is understandable that they would be as booked as they want. This simply means if you have a morning wedding, there will most likely be a wedding after yours and you will need to have the entire bridal suit cleaned and all your things out before your wedding starts at 11am. You are not allowed into the bridal suit until 9am, so yes, it does feel rushed. If I could do it all over again I would have just gotten ready at the hotel, which sucks because it’s your special day and you want to feel relaxed and have lovely time with your bridesmaids... but it’s just not enough time unless someone can clean up your things for you. We were not informed all of our things were meant to be out until 25 minutes before the wedding began. This leads me to the next point.

Hire someone to communicate with the staff at the venue the day of.

Communication was not a strong point with the staff for our wedding. I was a do it all kind of bride. I brought the cupcakes and cake to AG myself the morning of. I did my own centerpieces with help from a family member. I planned everything to the minute. There were a lot of small details that needed to be done I was unaware of until minutes before on the wedding day. Such as bridal suit being cleared out. Other miscommunications were my guest were never told the buffet line was closing. We paid for the food, our guest should have been told but they were not so our food was quietly taken and thrown away. Again communication was not great on many levels. I do not want to bash, just help you make informed decisions if you want to use this venue. So hire someone to get those details taken care of so you don’t feel stressed. Also, so you know, we had 3 different wedding coordinators in the course of 5 months. We described our vision for the day of 3 different times because the coordinators did not stick around. That much turnover is very concerning for me. Be prepared for this.

Do not let anyone talk you into paying more, and stand up for yourself. This was a breaking point for me. The last meeting with our 3rd coordinator the week before the wedding was a very emotional one for me. I was pressured to up our numbers for our reception. If you don’t know how this works, you are charged upfront for guests who will eat at your reception with no refund if you do not reach your number. If you go over your number you pay more per person. I left the meeting in tears. The staff member and I did not see eye to eye. I did email and express my concerns. She was professional about it and apologized, but we never really recovered. If they had more staff I would have recommended a coordinator change due to differences in personality, but they had no one else from my understanding. We didn’t feel special, just another wedding number to be pushed through. It was a very emotional stressful experience for me and my bridesmaids. Your experience can be different, just be prepared to stand up for yourself and don’t let anyone push you around. I have heard great things from other brides that have had their wedding at this location with other coordinators so this should by no means deter you from going with this venue, it was a beautiful...

The AG venue is absolutely beautiful! What drew us to AG was the reception room & chapel; the windows, the nature & greenery, the whole European vibe was exactly what we were looking for. The reception room was very spacious, while the chapel room gave the same feel as what a real church would feel like. B/c of all the windows, it was bright & gave a lot of natural lighting. I highly recommend Susanna & Hallie as your event coordinator. They were amazing w/ helping out w/ anything that you needed; responding to all your questions & concerns, & making sure you are happy & doing okay. They will make your day less stressful than it needs to be, you can count on them to be there for you! Everything was quite organized, they make sure that everything is moving along accordingly so that you don't fall behind, & everything that you want will happen the way you want it to.

The food was just ok, you really pay for the beauty & convenience of the venue. Since it was a package deal, you don't have to go through the trouble of finding your own catering, bakery...etc, so you can't expect everything to be perfect.

Our DJ Aiden was great, we love him as a person and everything! However, a lot of songs that we requested didn't get played, or it was a different version/remix of the song, & a lot of the songs we didn't know/requested got played. My husband sang a song to me after doing toasts, the song was suppose to be cut off & faded out towards the end, but he ended up singing the whole thing b/c it didn't end on time; it messed him up a little bit. Most importantly, our first dance was suppose to be the 3 min. version that we sent him, instead the full song got played, & it really threw us off. We thought we had forgotten the steps & messed up, so we requested to do it again for our last dance. However the full version got played again, & that's when we realized it. Therefore we just improvised & went with it, until it got to the part where we recognized the steps again. It was quite embarrassing & disappointing, since I put a lot of time & efforts into the playlist. We practiced so hard for our first dance for months, but didn't get to show it to our loved ones. Overall, we decided not to make it a big deal, & what's most important is that everyone enjoyed the music!

Lyon Paperie did amazing w/ our stationaries! Miranda was especially helpful, I wish everyone could respond as quickly as her. She is patient & will accommodate to all your requests, & answer all your questions, day or night!

Design Haus did good w/ florals. I love the faux florals that was used for the center piece, but personally I feel that the real florals were not vibrant & fresh as I hoped, especially the ones on the cake, but I don't blame them since we had our wedding at the end of November. They were good enough, we do think that they are quite pricey. Even w/ the credits given, w/ everything we wanted, it went way over. We had to greatly reduce it by taking out some things, & diy-ing a few things ourselves.

Jenny Lane Bakery did an amazing job w/ the cake & desserts! We chose the lemon berry as our wedding cake, & it has become my favorite cake of all time! We also chose 5 desserts, which were all really great as well!

We love our photographer Demi! She had to leave early due to an emergency, so Courtney took her place, & she is good as well. I have to say that it takes a long time to get all the photos, but understandable since they have other weddings, & there's a lot of photos that needs to be processed, fixed/edited.

Overall, the experience was good, everything went smoothly, everyone enjoyed their time, & we are happy to have been married at such a beautiful venue, w/ great people who worked w/ us to make everything perfect. Thank you AG Team for all your time & efforts into making our day special...

The venue is gorgeous and I can't speak on anything else other than the service. Their prices aren't cheap and their customer service isn't on par with what they charge.

As most of you may know we are in a global pandemic. When I booked my wedding that was not something I imagined happening. Well everything was going well and I was talking to Katie and she knew I was planning from out of state and my family would also be traveling from out of state. 6 weeks ago I asked if I could reschedule because my family made it clear they didn't feel safe traveling and quite honestly with them coming from the East Coast them traveling was not a good idea. She said that as long as the state of Texas allowed them to host a wedding that they would host us even in diminished capacity. So I would be expected to pay tens of thousands of dollars, fulfill my contract when I would not get what I envisioned. I know I sound like a bridezilla but still... Also the tasting was changed and again it would not be safe for me to travel to Dallas in June from Colorado but again I'm expected to pay thousands for food I can't taste. I made it clear I was uncomfortable making anymore payments because they have a "no refund policy" seriously you are out of luck with them. The lawyer I showed my contract to scolded me for signing it and said any business that would not leave any lienancy in their contract would not be one he would work with. No matter how "cute" the venue was. But they would not give me any reassurance that they would let me even reschedule based on how things look in my home state. They wouldn't give me any reassurance at all. Instead they just held to their guns. At that point I realized that I could not trust them and just accepted the thousands I had spent on the wedding so far was lost and cut my losses.

So yes, the food may be great (I wouldn't know), the venue is pretty (it is), it might be everything you have dreamed of. But. If for some reason anything goes wrong they will keep your money, refuse to offer you any help or support, and act like you are being unreasonable. I will probably have a website up soon and post all our back and forth emails. Also I will put up a breakdown of the original quote we had for the wedding and how that changed when I actually did do the math. It did go up by $7,000 and honestly I thought I was just the one that didn't understand how things worked. I didn't even mention it to them. But now after looking at this whole experience I'm starting to realize that dishonesty is probably just their jam. And hey if you figure it out later on and aren't able to afford the difference in price they have that iron clad contract and will keep your deposit.

Also another quick note all this happened 3-4 months before my would be wedding date. I still hadn't talked to the "wedding planner" they had. If I knew then what i know now I would have skipped it. There is another venue that has a similar chapel and would have changed my date in this situation for free and if it wasn't for the pandemic would have charged me a 10% fee (which I would have happily paid ashton garden so I wouldn't have had to worry or look for a new venue.

• this is in response to Ashton Gardens*

After I went through all my emails I can't find one where they offered to let me go with reduced numbers and please forward it to me if I missed it. Also I would have to come to Texas from a state that isn't doing well with it's numbers to have this wedding. At the end of the day it is still your choice to go with them I just wish someone had written this review so I could have read it and made a...