The Celebration Farm — Attraction in Newport Township

I normally don’t like to post negative reviews but this was one of the worst customer service experiences I have ever had. Whole long despicable story below, but short version: the place is pretty but the staff are unscrupulous and will cheat you while telling you it’s your fault they’re doing so. Save yourself the headache and go somewhere else.

Full story: We booked the venue for our wedding in 2020. Unfortunately, as you can imagine, 2020 turned out to be an impossible year for weddings due to the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and restrictions on gathering sizes. So we were forced to reschedule or cancel. We decided not to cancel because Celebration’s management refused to give us our deposit back, even though we were not allowed to have the wedding. We gave them the benefit of the doubt for that since the pandemic was hard on them too, and it is called a deposit for a reason, but it turned out that was just the beginning.

Since we could not cancel, we wanted to book the same date the following year, which was a cheaper date than the original by a few thousand dollars because it was a home football weekend. The lovely Celebration management refused to let us pay the new rate, insisting we pay the more expensive original rate for the cheaper date. They only relented when we pointed out that it would be cheaper for us to let them keep our deposit for 2020 and fully re-book for 2021 (paying a second deposit!) than to pay the original date’s price. And by “relented,” I mean they said we could pay the new date’s price if we paid in full a year before the event, rather than the 25% required in the contract. And then in email communication about it they congratulated themselves for being so “generous”. We honestly should have heeded all the red flags about this shady company at that point, but we had already spent a good amount of money on the deposit so we paid in full.

Fast forward to 2021 - it turns out, we still could not have the wedding due to COVID-19. Most of our family lives abroad, and at that point the borders were closed for all non-essential travel. We told the Celebration staff the situation and they could not care less. We were told we could rebook for an additional $850 on top of the thousands we had already spent, but it would have to be a Friday or a Sunday - which would leave us paying way more than the date was worth, and anyway was clearly impossible given that most of our family would be traveling from abroad and had jobs to get back to, which was why we booked a Saturday to begin with.

We told them that wouldn’t work for us, and asked only for the 25% back that we wouldn’t have yet paid per the original contract rules if they hadn’t forced us to pay in full to reserve the 2021 date. They refused. Instead, they had the gall to ask us to give up our date without a refund so they could book another party and get paid double for our date. So here we are, out many thousands of dollars for a wedding we were not...

The Celebration Farm is stunningly beautiful. For pictures and location you can't go wrong. The staff prior to the event was very helpful. However we were told somebody would be there on the day of to help us set up electronics. We were hooking an iPod into their sound system for wedding music. Unfortunately, on the day of Pam told me that she didn't know how to set up the sound system with "outside equipment" I was left to set it up myself despite the cables and sound board all being their equipment.

Later in the evening we noticed the staff trying to "help" clean up by taking all of our drinks and dumping them out while we were dancing. I lost several drinks myself and when they were caught taking away the wine glasses we rented at about 10:00 we were told to "drink out of plastic cups" despite renting the place until midnight.

Overall, the venue itself deserves 5 stars but the staff on the day of deserves 1 star only for helping to clean up at the end of the night. They otherwise seemed like they were just trying to get out of there for the night.

After the wedding I emailed Elizabeth to express my concerns. She seemed to disregard my points on the staff taking our drinks and told me:

"Our staff is taught to be helpful to each group, and rarely is the help not needed or used. Several groups in the past have thanked our staff for being so helpful because it makes the clean up at the end of the night easier for all."

This is true we did appreciate their help at the end of the night. But the help during the event was not helpful.

Its hard for me to say anything bad about the venue itself. However, before your event be very clear with the staff what you do and don't want the staff to be doing for you.

Matt and everybody before the event were great. Those there on the day of were not so great and made for added stress on a day when you don't really need any...

We had our wedding booked for the Spring of 2020. When the pandemic hit, we were able to reschedule. However, when 2021 came about, vaccines were not widely available and were not looking like they would be available until June. I reached out to Pam to see what our options were or if we could reschedule slightly once more. She was very rude in response and added that they would charge us $2450 to change the date, in addition to the $4900 for the actual event date. We begrudgingly kept our date.

Come wedding day, the place looked as though they didn’t do any upkeep during the year long pandemic. The paint was chipping, the roof looked damaged, etc. The patio on our building had a thick layer of bird droppings, there was a dead bird by the front door, the one staff member they give us was very unhelpful, letting us know they would be in the office and to come get them if we need anything. They forgot champagne flutes for us because the wedding coordinator forgot to put it on our invoice, they inflated the price of all of the rental items, each table linen, each dish, etc. When we originally toured they showed us a freezer with ice in it. When we got there the day of, there was only one bag and they said we would have to go get our own ice for the bar. The drink cooler galvanized wash tubs they provide had old water sitting in them.

Overall, this venue was not worth the money. If you are looking into this venue, I would like to stress that the price you pay is simply for the space. It is a beautiful space, but other venues will work harder for you and you will get more out of that experience. The Celebration Farm was not easy to work with and they made it very clear they are only after the dollar, they do not aim to please or help you have...