The Barn at Stratford — Attraction in Delaware

My son recently was married here, the place appears to be nice inside and out but the day before the wedding we went to decorate and I had to dust cobwebs from the window seals, the willow tree where the ceremony was had dead limbs that were hanging, I had to hide dead limbs that were hanging in front of the archway, this is definitely something that could have easily been taken care of by the groundskeeper and should have been noticed by the wedding coordinator, Melissa who was extremely rude to my son and my husband. She approached my son (the groom) right before the ceremony started and told him that she had made his groomsmen mad because she had kicked them out of the little tiny room where they had to get dressed which she called her office! Of course that made my son furious and he was just getting ready to walk down the isle! HOW RUDE!!!! She was no help at all with anything that day, as a wedding coordinator she gave us no guidance on how, or when things were supposed to happen, She told my husband that the servers were upset because everyone wasn’t wearing their mask, my husband and son ask 2 of the servers about this and 1 of them said no we did not say that she said that Melissa the wedding coordinator was exaggerating and over reacted! Extremely unprofessional behavior the place was paid for until 10:00 but when last call was made we were rushed to start getting cleaned up and found that my sons bag with personal belongings in it had been thrown in the trash can and he had to dig stuff out of the trash, totally unprofessional behavior. We made this day beautiful but we should not have had to deal with all the unprofessionalism and rudeness! I really hope the city of Delaware reads these reviews and realizes that people pay a lot of money for this place and we have high expectations of what this day is supposed to be like, we definitely should not have ever had to deal with the rudeness and unprofessionalism of a so called wedding coordinator! We made this day perfect on our own, we did not need the Person who was called and paid to be the wedding coordinator! Think twice before booking...

My experience as a bridesmaid here was both awful and great. Positives: the place is very cute, the grounds are well kept, and it’s perfect for beautiful wedding pictures. I can’t remember the name of the couple of blonde women who work there but they were so sweet and so helpful. Negatives: the dark haired woman who, I believe, is the wedding coordinator. The bridal suite where we got ready was supposed to open at 10. A few of us bridesmaids got there at 10 but the bride had not arrived yet. She refused to let us into the bridal suite to get ready until the bride arrived. I’m assuming this is because the bride got gifts for everyone that were a surprise. Not a big deal. What was a big deal is that this woman didn’t tell us when the bride had arrived so we waited around for an hour until the bride herself called us and asked where we were. Thankfully we all had already done our hair because we only had 45 minutes to get ready before pictures and lost that time to get ready with the bride. It became something that was rushed instead of time to get excited. I also don’t know the exact specifics but the groomsmen were all complaining about this woman kicking them out of the room they were in getting ready. They said she was so rude and kicked them out because she needed the room as her office. I was told we had the venue until 10pm but they started calling last call for the bar at 8. There weren’t many people left and we probably wouldn’t have been there til 10 but it’s like they were trying to push us out early. We also saw the dark haired woman aggressively speaking to the groom’s father after last call was called. We were not a wild group and made no ridiculous requests. The bride and groom are very easy to get along with and nothing outrageous happened. We had a great time except for when we were dealing with her. It’s just sad that on a day you’re going to remember forever, they have to remember someone being so rude instead of going out of their way to make it a great day. Even if she’s having a bad day, that’s no excuse to take away from someone else’s moment that has already been stressful enough...

The venue is absolutely beautiful and we received compliments on how pretty it was. We had a few pain points though. One is that the flower baskets in the gazebo completely dried out and instead of replacing them, they just left the hooks empty so it wasn’t as pretty as what we were told it was going to be.

If you want anything extra at all besides the literal building, everything is an upcharge. It was $3 PER chair. And on top of that, you have to pay for set up and tear down. If you want alcohol, you have to purchase your own and also it has to be within their rules.

The day of the wedding, the staff didn’t want to do much so I’m not quite sure why they were there. All they did all day was hide in the back room and if we did anything at all that they didn’t like they’d pop out to “check in and see how we’re doing”. We paid over $200 for set up and tear down and besides putting up the chairs I’m not sure what they did besides emptying the trash at the end of the night??? They didn’t help carry anything in and if we asked if they can assist they’d just stare at each other like they couldn’t believe they’d have to help.

They spelled my husband’s name wrong on our contract which just feels unprofessional considering the amount of money we spent and the fact it was our wedding day. It was spelled wrong on the contract and all the invoices and was never caught.

Again, venue is beautiful, and it seems like a great price compared to other places. But the cost racked up for every little...