The Pond at Casey Orchards, LLC. — Attraction in Redlands

I got Married here at couple of weeks ago and I am going to give the most straightforward honest review that I can. The place is gorgeous. The lake, waterfall, wedding ceremony area, etc... it is honestly a hidden gem. If you get married here your pictures will come out amazing. Our families and friends cant stop talking about how beautiful the place was. This venue lets you bring your own vendors. While looking for different venues I noticed that they usually have their partnered vendors and you have to go with them. For example, catering. Alot of the venues we looked at, we had to go with their specific catering. The Pond at Casey Orcharrds, lets you bring your own vendors. You save so much money on drinks and other amenities you want in your wedding. Now the hard part. The Owner. From the start of the process to the end of the wedding. She had a complete condescending attitude with us the entire time. I tried my absolute best to be 1.Respectful 2. Courteous 3. Mindful. On the day of the wedding the entire time she was completely negative with us and our guests. She walked around in the middle of everyone and watched them like a hawk. No one was doing anything our guests know eachother there wasnt any problems.For example I wanted to get something from the refrigerator where we had the drinks water juices etc. About 2 hours before the ceremony started. She already had an attitude. I had asked our wedding coordinator to ask her if she could get a couple things for me. The wedding coordinator came told me that she wanted to talk to me. I went up to her and she said "NO ONE MESSES UP MY BAR!" Remember these are the drinks that I bought and brought to the wedding I was shocked at that response but i bit my tongue and walked away. I didnt want to start any problems on my wedding day but i was infuriated. During the actual wedding she was patrolling walking around in the middle of the guests and she went up to a group of our guests and said "I KNOW YOU ARE ALL TALKING S**T ABOUT ME" and threatened to kick them out. Completely unprovoked. They were just looking at her how she was patrolling the area like a prison guard. This was at the beginning of the reception too for Christs sake. To top it off, the reception set up we had agreed on the tables had 8 chairs. The way the owner arranged it, there were tables next to structural posts that reduced the capacity per table from 8 to 7. This caused confusion and people were left without a place to sit. We are so thankful that our wedding coordinator (Amanda from Your Day Your Way) was able to fix the situation by moving people around and getting extra seats. However this should of NEVER happened. These past weeks Ive been reflecting as to why The owner would act like that with us. My wife and I had another venue that we had already paid for that was booked that got canceled due to Covid. We got our refund and paid Casey Orchards before schedule. So it wasnt because we were late on payments or anything like that She required an insurance policy and i got it right away. We followed every instruction the best we could. Then I thought maybe one of our guests said something to her that triggered it. But then remembered she'd been acting with a patronizing attitude even before the day of the wedding. Im not going to be petty and leave 1 star because that would be emotional and discredit my review. The place is great but the service is intolerable. By the looks of the other reviews she seemed to be friendly to some people. Im not gonna call her anything but all I got to say if you are Hispanic and you catch that vibe, Id stay away. Not worth being treated like that on your...

We were just there for a sibling’s wedding last night. This is SUCH a beautiful venue! The pond, the trees, the grotto, etc. There is plenty of room for the bridal party to get ready, too, which was nice.

The decor is nice, for the most part, although there are a few random items, like a painted WW2 missile. And there is a lot of very not-family-appropriate material in the men’s restroom. The bride and groom asked repeatedly for those images to be covered on the day of their event, and were told that wouldn’t be a problem but it didn’t happen.

The biggest issue, by far, and the reason for the low rating, is the owner? manager? woman. Since this was a family-friendly wedding, we knew there would be children at the event. This woman required a $1000 non-returnable “deposit” just to have children at the event, regardless of their behavior and whether or not any damage was caused by the children. And her definition of a child is anyone younger than FIFTEEN, so be prepared to cough up an extra thousand dollars if you choose this venue and plan on inviting any loved ones younger than high-school aged. She also threatened that if she caught any child not being directly supervised by an adult, she would kick the child and adult out of the venue.

Even after paying this “deposit” (child fee), the woman spent the entirety of the event prowling around on her golf cart and yelling at every child and teenage guest. The biggest fault we noticed in these kids/teens was 1) standing on the wrong side of the sidewalk, 2) looking at the pond, and/or 3) touching something.

Again, the venue was so beautiful, but the open hostility of this woman toward all of the children and teenagers was incredibly trying. We were there to celebrate the wedding of our sibling, but no one in my family could actually settle in and enjoy the event because of this woman. There were a lot of parents of young children in the wedding party, and all of us were on edge due to the predatory and discriminatory behavior of this woman.

EDIT in response to the owner’s response:

Yes it is their policy to police the children and teenagers. We just didn’t realize how intense it would be, and think you should know that before deciding whether or not to book here.

And, our children were not terrorizing anything. They were very well behaved, and were going in and out of the wedding party house because they were part of the...

It's too bad the owner of this place can't act more professional and keep his extremist right wing opinions to himself. In the 10 minutes we spent with this guy, seeing things he'd built on the property, he claimed that the rattlesnakes on his property "only bite liberals", he claimed that "California is a communist state" with no hint of irony that he privately owns a large piece of property and a business within this "communist state" and the most obscene thing he said was when he showed us the elevator shaft he's building from an underground bunker up to a party deck, "to introduce newlyweds, or to string up people who's politics we don't agree with." What a classy guy. I'd like to note that I was there for someone's MEMORIAL service. And that the person we were there to memorialize was a Vietnam Vet who held views that this owner joked would be cause for being hanged in his elevator shaft. Absolutely disgusting behavior. Then there's the other owner, his wife. I don't know what her problem was, but she definitely had one. On the day of the event, and the day before, when we showed up to drop off a bunch of supplies, she just had this angry scowl on her face the entire time. Read some of the other reviews here for more detailed accounts of other people's run ins with this woman. Also very unprofessional. Hospitality is the WRONG business for these people. If you just want a nice event that's not gonna be ruined by the venue owner spewing their politics onto your guests, or making sure they feel completely unwelcome, don't subject your friends and family to...