The Olana — Attraction in Hickory Creek

I wish to thank everyone who is employed at The Olana for their thoughtful consideration, efforts & hard work in making my daughter's special day magical. I own a bridal boutique in Central Texas & am in the bridal industry so it takes a LOT to impress us as we are surrounded by gorgeous venues, gifted & talented wedding vendors, professional caterers & organized planners. I am also a interior designer & have a passion for European architecture & design. My daughter, Kimberlyn, dreamt of getting married in the Colorado mountains but decided to stay in state. She researched & found The Olana & fell in love. She requested that I take a tour of the venue since I live only 35 minutes away. I toured the grand mansion on December 5, 2019. From the moment the property came into sight, my breath was taken away. The closer I neared the venue, the more I knew this was the one...the venue for my princess to marry her prince charming. As I said before, I am critcal & am extremely observant. The formal lawns & grounds were & are well kept and immaculate. The Walters Wedding Estates were very thoughtful in their planning espcially in placing the guests parking away from the property to not impede or take away from one capturing breathtaking photos of the property or a wedding. The birds were singing & my heart raced from excitement as I neared the grand front door. I was quickly greeted at the door by Andrew who was extremely polite, courteous & professional. He answered all my questions with confidence & eager enthusiasm & was very thorough with the contract terms & expectations. He was a splendid. It is evident that he is passionate about his career & in his loves his job. He displayed much care & consideration when I communicated my daughters desires for her wedding day. During my tour, I felt as if I was experiencing dejavu. It almost felt as if I had walked this grand mansion before. It was only till I arrived at the grand theater that I realized why I was experiencing it. I am a collector of antiquities & also have a wall of books from several of my favorite interior designers. I realized the rooms I had walked were several of the rooms I had tagged the pages on one of my favoriet designers, Betty Lou Phillips. I had dreamt of recreating parts of this grand mansion in my own home. This made this venue extra special. I immediately called my daughter and told her she & her fiance had to visit the venue & secure their date asap! My daughter & fiance wished to was so hard to keep the venue a secret till the invites were sent out! It was the hardest thing to do! A week later, they both toured it & were enraptured at the grandness of The Olana & said "Yes" to the venue. Kimberlyn & Jason picked their special day to be June 4, 2020. We of course, as so many others, did not plan for a world pandemic to arise. Covid & the mandated closures wreaked havoc in our daily lives as well as our business. Though, the venue was closed throughout the mandated closure time, the staff maintained timely correspondence with us. They were efficient and were calming during the whole process. They returned our calls, emails and texts in a timely manner. They assured us that we had options if we weren't able to have the wedding on June 4th due to Covid. The staff is amazing. Melissa, Carlos, Andrew & Alex made everything so easy from the planning stages, the contract entailments, the details of wedding and the execution in creating a seamless fairytale wedding day. They displayed care & attention to us throughout the entire process from the first tour to the wedding day. EVERYTHING WAS PERFECT, because the staff work together as a team & pride themselves in executing the smallest detail. The staff from groundskeepers, to maintenance, to housekeeping, to catering staff, to administration are all mutual in their desire to make The Olana perfect for fairtales to happen. The wedding was a success because these individuals care about their brides, grooms & guests & are passionate about maintaining this gorgeous property & reputation....

Update: Walters/The Olana offered me $6.3K to resolve the problems with my wedding and planning but required me to sign a non disparagement and non disclosure agreement that would’ve also required me to delete all of my negative reviews. The document also stated my issue as a disagreement on guest count, not ignoring my June wedding until March, my planning team not knowing what they’re doing, the Olana manager trying to charge me TWICE for special request tequila I had already paid for (plus many other shady invoicing issues — they never did provide that transparency into what I was being charged for), among many other issues. You don’t see many bad reviews for Walters because they make brides sign legal documents that keep them from being able to speak about what Walters really does. My wedding was over $100K btw and the experience was horrendous.

My wedding is in June, so we haven’t even gotten to the big day but so far, I wish we had chosen a different venue. If not a different venue, then at least brought in outside vendors. They pitch the Design Center (where I also booked my May bridal shower) as a one-stop shop for wedding planning, but the only vendor I’ve gotten to meet in person at the Design Center was DesignHaus. You do not get a private tasting of the food you essentially prepay for when booking your vendor package unless you pay $500+ ON TOP of the literal tens of thousands you’ve already committed to pay with the vendor package. I didn’t include the bridal dress or groom’s suit, so I can’t speak on them. If you want to taste the cake you prepaid for, you either have to buy samples separately or again, pay another $25 for a public showcase. I’ve literally had to change long standing travel plans to attend more showcases so that I can get more face time with the vendors I’ve already paid for, and try more of the bakery and food selections.

For a venue/brand that holds itself out as a luxury experience, 95% of your communication with vendors is via email.. unless you pay to attend a public showcase which only occur once a month. I’ve been told multiple times that management would reach out to me regarding my concerns, but that still hasn’t happened.

And once you book a vendor package, which they get you to do while booking the venue, YOU CAN’T REMOVE ANYTHING. Whether you’re happy with them or not, they get their money.

I wouldn’t recommend the Collective. You are truly just a cog in the machine as they try to crank out as many high ticket weddings as possible without regard to how client experience may suffer. I am literally beginning to dread my wedding day because I have no idea how it’s going to go. This was supposed to be a beautiful experience but so far it’s been $90,319 worth of stress and unknowns. It’s even more frustrating because this figure will go up with my final guest count. I was ready and excited to pay $100K or more for an AMAZING experience, and my ultimate dream wedding, but now I just feel like I’m getting robbed.

My pros so far are that DesignHaus is absolutely AMAZING. I met with Kayla and she was able to create the most amazing renderings of my vision for my proposal/contract. The Olana Chef, CJ, was also super sweet. He listened to my complaints about the tastings at the March showcase and literally scheduled my tasting on the spot, on a day they don’t usually do tastings, because my husband wouldn’t be able to attend any of the scheduled showcases with me between that time and our wedding day (still have to pay for it, but the accommodation was a lovely change of pace).

I’ll update this review after my bridal shower in May and again after my...

If I could give 5 stars to Derek (our day of wedding coordinator) I would. He was the BEST! He treated our wedding day with so much patience and care. We loved his hustle.

Summary: Communication can be better.

As everyone states in previous subpar reviews. We went through 3 different wedding concierges throughout our year of wedding planning until finally Kayla was our final person that handled our wedding. Having to repeat our visions and loss of communication throughout the process definitely left a bitter taste. Nobody told us our wedding concierge left the business until having to repeatedly call the main line.

The best mode of communication is email, trust me. We learned the hard way. Do not call them.

Vendor Packages: The Olana selling point is having an All-in-One package to ease the stress of wedding planning. It’s a plus if you like less stress, but it doesn’t give you any freedom to do your own things. For example, bringing outside food for lunch time, bringing outside alcohol, etc. Anything you change from the original set times will incur a cost. Keep that in mind when booking with The Olana or any Walter Wedding Estates venue.

Food: it’s hard to believe that you only get one "free" food tasting for the amount of money we paid for our wedding. It was not private, but with other bride(s)/groom(s) and potential people wanting to inquire about the venue. The food we tasted that night did not include what was on the exceptional package main entree. They basically are saying pick your food choice and hope for the best.

We were promised some things that were going to happen for our wedding – (ie. Or floral vendor can repurpose the flowers from the ceremony into the reception – this was NOT TRUE and we were left walking down the aisle with no florals. It did not look good. Another thing Kayla said most couples do not get to eat their wedding dinner and we like to send them home with 2 plates when they ride off in their vehicle – this was not true.)

I get it that The Olana is basically a sales team trying to sell their venue to potential bride(s)/groom(s), but please do not promise things that do not happen. I highly suggest The Olana to reevaluate and meet up again with your vendors to communicate what are the guidelines and what is to be discussed with the bride(s)/groom(s) to prevent disappointment when the expectations are not met.

Kids meals: Another hot topic. We paid for a little over 10 kids meals, but they handed out adult meals to them. SCORE – you would think…. I was not very happy about this when I heard it after the fact when our wedding was over. Some kids especially less than 8 years old cannot eat hearty meals as steak and salmon. We expected them to be served the chicken tenders and mac n’ cheese as was discussed. I clearly laid out the kids’ meals floor plan and gave # of kids at each table to Kayla.

Deposit – You do not get your whole deposit back if you pay with credit card, they will deduct credit card fees. That came as a surprise for us. It maybe was stated in our contract, I guess we missed that.

Overall, the The Olana is such a beauty when you first look at it. That’s why I chose it as my wedding venue. It turned out okay in the end and nothing caught on fire. LOL Just make sure to ask lots of questions, write EVERYTHING down during your in-person meetings and read the...