Barr Mansion, Ballroom, and Farmstead — Attraction in Manor

We can start with the Pros: -the venue is beautiful -Per my wedding planner, all of the Barr mansion staff was great to work with day off except for the kitchen -Barr was pretty good about working with us to allow for the vendors and installs we wanted but we still paid a pretty penny for it

We started to get nervous about the food when we attended the Winter Tasting. Barr only includes an “all couples getting married that season” tasting. There was widespread dissatisfaction after that tasting. It wasn’t good. Barr said it was a new chef and then fired that chef shortly after. We were given a makeup tasting over a month later but it still left some couples dissatisfied. Ultimately we chose our wedding menu after many stressful weeks. Barr prides themselves on being a “Farm to table” venue that sources local foods from Texas. This is something I loved about the venue when I chose it. They boasted during our tastings that they were extremely conscious of allergies/ different food lifestyles. Even saying they’ve hosted completely vegan weddings in the past. Barr was sent a list of guests' allergy restrictions and event timeline well in advance and we still had very prominent issues.

Fast forward to the wedding day, our ceremony was wonderful and cocktail hour ran smoothly. Our wedding layout was to have a family style meal in the iconic ballroom and transition to their “farmhouse” pavilion after dinner for the band/dancing.

This is where everything went wrong. Guests promptly sat down per the timeline. Dinner began with the salad/bread and everything was going okay. We were fed a sample plate of all the dishes we had chosen which was a nice touch. Dinner took longer than expected to come out and when it finally did everyone ate and seemed happy. Then we continued to sit and sit and still sit. The quartet we hired to play for the 2 hours of dinner finished playing, packed up and left and we still sat in the dinner space with no music. My planner finally came over and informed us that we could not transition out of dinner into the reception because the kitchen had not fed the band yet. The timeline clearly stated that the band had to be fed at 8:30. (The band was not fed until past 10pm) We sat for 1hr+ past our timeline transition waiting on the kitchen to feed the band. Our band attempted to make up lost time by skipping all scheduled breaks but we still missed out on time. Having multiple vendors sitting in that room with no guests for over an hour of time we paid for was infuriating. We had a photo booth, espresso martini/coffee full bar, & sketch artist, all waiting in the other room and couldn't get that time back.

It really bothered me that the kitchen wasn’t able to feed our band remotely on time for the event to run smoothly but what really bothered me was finding out at the end of the night that the kitchen NEVER fed our allergy guests their special meals. We had guests attend our wedding who weren’t fed at all. Our planner asked and reminded the kitchen multiple times and kept asking about all of the missing meals for not only the allergy guests but also the band. After the band was finally fed and it got closer to midnight and the special allergy meals still hadn’t been fed, the kitchen informed our planner that it was impossible for the kitchen to complete the meals even though they had the list of allergies for weeks and had all the time in the world to prepare.

It still makes me sick to my stomach to think of our guests who never were fed and went without food. So horrifying for a bride who planned for years to make the day absolutely perfect for everyone and the venue just didn’t feed people.

After sending a debrief the day after and after multiple email follow ups and reaching out to the venue for any kind of explanation they have chosen to completely ignore us and give no answers. I find it pretty horrifying that they could not feed guests at a wedding where they require us to use their kitchen and then ignore us when we...

We were married at Barr Mansion last weekend. It was the first of more than a dozen venues we looked at, and it was honestly love at first sight. The mansion, ballroom, and the property as a whole, is totally gorgeous. Hannah was the only person in our venue search that took the time to sit down with us after the site tour and go over options and pricing in great detail. She is the one who earned our business.

We chose the pecan tree for our ceremony. We found comfort in the fact that if the April weather didn’t cooperate, the rain plan was still very appealing. We planned everything from out-of-state, so it was awesome to have a venue that handled the day-of coordination, food, cakes, tables, chairs, linens and dinnerware in-house. We have fairly discerning tastes in beer and wine, so we enjoyed having the freedom to bring in our own alcohol.

We did, however, run into several behind-the-scenes issues. After Hannah’s departure from her job at Barr, Rick informed us that he would be our new coordinator. Then, we were promptly reassigned to work with to Elyse instead, “since our wedding was on a Sunday.”

After the Elyse hand off, I e-mailed her and Rick to confirm the time of our rehearsal. Rick said our rehearsal would be held on Saturday, the day before our wedding (as it should be). Elyse e-mailed us the next day informing us that the rehearsal would have to be on Friday, since Saturday was booked all day with events. Since 85% of our guests were coming to Austin from out of town, moving the rehearsal to Friday would have caused major problems. We decided to call Rick (why wouldn’t he call us?). After our chat, the rehearsal was on for Saturday, and we were assured everything would be fine despite all the transition.

One week later, we were informed that our day-of coordinator would be Nicole instead. Now working with a fourth person, all the small details we talked about with Hannah on day one had been completely lost. We feel we were handed off because we were having a smaller Sunday wedding – small potatoes. The best news is that Miss Nicole totally saved the day.

She was in touch with us immediately and put two in-person planning meetings on the calendar when she knew we would be in town visiting. She did an awesome job of making sure all the small details were perfect. She even helped us get a custom cake flavor that was not on the tasting menu. (Even though Rick told us he would research it when we saw him at the harvest tasting, where we saw him drinking alcohol.)

We submitted our guest count two days before our contracted deadline, and when I asked to add our vendor meals the day before the final count was due, Rick wrote us saying that it was too late to add them. He suggested we call Jason’s Deli to deliver food for them. We honestly thought he was kidding – he wasn’t. Luckily, the chef was able to add to our food order to accommodate the extra meals.

All things said and done, our day was amazing. We are still getting compliments on the gorgeous venue and the food. Nicole seriously worked her butt off to make sure everything was perfect. She kept the evening running smoothly, and made sure we were comfortable from the second we arrived until right before the send off. THANK YOU, NICOLE!!!

If you book an event at Barr, be extremely proactive about communication. Ensure that your deposits and payments are made on time. Double check the costs and payment due dates on your paperwork before you sign anything (our original contract said the final payment was due in April 2012 – they meant to put 2013). Also, one of the restrooms was out of order on our day, so if you're ordering flowers for the bathrooms, confirm they are all working before you splurge! Based on our experience, you will likely be the one to confirm details, receipt of paperwork, deposits...

I wish I felt like we could give Barr a better review, but there were some issues that happened during our experience with them that made us feel neglected, even being their only August wedding, and with a bad taste in our mouth from a planning service standpoint. There were pros in the shuffle of the cons with our experience with Barr and since finishing our contract with them, the new General Manager did reach out and apologize for the poor experience we had. We do feel we need to share what we went through so others aren't feeling shocked at the very small food tasting and can ensure they receive more organized and on point care with their account than we did.

Pros: Hollie was our first initial contact with Barr and she was friendly, constantly on top of communication with us and answered our questions in a timely manner. When she did our tour, she was very informative and gave us some awesome ideas to help visualize what our wedding at Barr could look like. Hollie helped us navigate the contract and let us know that our next line of communication going forward was the event manager. Hollie was a delight!

Another plus for our experience was the day of execution. Paired with our wedding planners, things went along smoothly, food tasted great and the cake was very yummy. (PS we did not get to try any of the food or cake flavors we selected until the day of). The venue itself is stunning and fit the vibe we were going for with our big day.

Cons: A staffing change with the event manager during our contract was a huge issue. We didn't find out the original event manager left until a week after she was no longer with Barr. Any information we had shared with her seems like it was never saved to a file for the venue nor did anything get communicated because we had to go over everything again. At our meeting with the new event manager and our wedding planner, all information we resent seemed to have not been saved as we had to confirm and share that information all over again. This trend continued during communications past that point and I even told the new event manager how frustrating that was for us on top of other wedding stresses. The lack of organization was unacceptable and caused a very stressful experience for us. I had been in the wedding industry before and so this became extra frustrating for me. There were also some comments made that rubbed us the wrong way and made us feel like because of our budget and my anxiety with planning, that what we needed from Barr didn't matter and that our contract wasn't as important to them as other clients they had who had a bigger budget. (We spent over half our wedding budget on this venue, their catering and bar package).

Another issue for us was the tasting. We were only given select dishes and cake flavors to try. Never had I seen this before and it honestly seemed wrong and stingy for the amount any couple hosting an event here was paying. We weren't loving anything set in front of us and opted to blindly choose other plated meals and cake flavors for us and our guests to have for our wedding day. Thankfully, those meals and flavors were a hit but we were very nervous leading up to the wedding because we had no clue what we were serving actually tasted like because we weren't given the chance to try it beforehand.

All in all, I think I would advise any couple going with Barr as a venue to let Barr know what your standards are on their backend because they fell short for what we needed. I do hope they are able to get more organized with their files and couples' accounts because the lack of that with ours left us feeling insignificant on a day that is supposed to be so...