The Odyssey Venue — Attraction in Rich Township

I truly wish I could give Odyssey 0 stars and would advise anyone considering the venue to avoid them purely from the standpoint of the terrible business practices they forced on us during the COVID pandemic.

We had our wedding ceremony/reception planned here (pre-COVID). When COVID "hit", they essentially put us in a situation that forced us to agree and sign an addendum that ultimately did nothing to help us and allowed Odyssey to keep a sizeable amount of our initial deposits. So many other venues worked with couples to find a reasonable solution, but Odyssey did not.

Understandably, Odyssey had to follow certain guidelines that led to the addendum restricting events to 50 guests (our contract was for 300). Ultimately, the addendum forced us to make a decision between canceling and losing deposits, going forward with 50 people, hope that a cure for COVID was found and restrictions would suddenly be lifted, or reschedule within a limited time frame.

At this point, with new couples scheduling weddings and other "COVID weddings" frantically rescheduling, Odyssey essentially only had winter 2022 available to reschedule. With much of the wedding planned and other vendors booked, there was an extremely limited time frame to re-plan and change almost every detail of our spring wedding to a winter one.

Due to the addendum, we were forced to make this decision 60 days before event.

With guidelines rapidly changing, we requested that Odyssey allow us to make our decision 30 days before, rather than 60 days. We wrote an appeal to a faceless and nameless "board of directors", and our request was rejected.

What makes Odyssey's business practice laughable (honestly, even disgusting) was that in addition to our request being rejected, we were informed that even if COVID restrictions were lifted even ~2 weeks prior our scheduled event date and we chose to go forward with our original contract, that Odyssey would not have been able to order food/be prepared to host our contracted event because they did not having sufficient notice to plan and coordinate... yet they somehow expect us to have made decisions to completely alter our wedding plans over 60 days in advance... and to top it off, they would have also forced us to have paid the full amount of our original contract for 300 guests, even though they at maximum would be able to host 50!

Even the experience of canceling our event was made difficult and the employee who we met with offered no help or sympathy to us. Rather we we were told how difficult it was for her to be the only employee on premise and how there was nothing she could do for us personally and that her hands were tied. So when we requested to be put in contact with someone who could actually help us (i.e., manager, owner, member of the board) we were never given any contact information and were not referred to anyone. Rather, she mentioned the nameless and faceless "board of directors" would be the decision makers, but that we couldn't be put in contact with them. To be honest, we don't even know if this "board of directors" exists because we never received a formal response to our appeal. We were only told verbally that our request was denied. Is there a board of directors? Did our appeal ever make it to them? Who knows? We surely do not and the only employee we were able to meet in person also claimed to not know either.

Overall, our experience with the Odyssey was truly terrible. To summarize what the Odyssey did for us: they printed a contract for us to sign, they blocked a day in their calendar, made us sign an addendum, and kept a sizeable chunk of our money. The level of work and effort that was put forth from the Odyssey to somehow think its reasonable for them to keep any of our money is absolutely ludicrous. They never even held a tasting for us.

We ended up having a beautiful wedding at a different rockstar venue and are incredibly happy with how our day turned out. But our memories will always be dampened by The Odyssey, a shady venue, and its utter lack of respect...

I really wanted to give this place five stars because this place is beautiful it is spectacular the grounds are just unbelievable I went there for a wedding they have a gazebo right off a lake or pond and it is just a fabulous setting so let's talk about why it's not getting 5 stars management makes you feel like you are bothering them the staff they seemed very unhappy I don't know if it's because they're not being treated well by management or not being paid well or just not happy people this made me sad because working and such a beautiful place staff should be happy so there's obviously a problem at this place management needs to take a self-portrait and think about how they can make working there a more pleasant experience so that the staff is much more pleasant to the guest hopefully the management will see this message and make changes because this is a fantastic place but if it doesn't have a happy staff and great service it will go down and that would be very sad talk to and treat your staff like you would your own family and I am sure they will treat the place they work for like it...

Nice venue potential but the event was marred with error. No elevator for seniors who were directed (golf shop attendee) to go outside to the wedding. No venue staff or signage to direct guests, so we walked down stairs to the wrong outside setup and up again to start over.

Clearly short staffed and maybe some new, yet to be trained, servers - which impacted eveness in food distribution.

Good food and although there were hors d'oeuvres, dinner did not come out until 10:00 PM for an event that started at 6:30 PM. The final challenge was the wedding favors were mixed up and guests found that boxed gifts -- engraved glasses -- were for a wedding couple whose event was the next day. At the point that our group left to head home, the main dinner meal was not served and gifts purchased for our event (if any) were never distributed.

We traveled far to attend this event. Impressive backdrop for outdoor weddings if only there were better access opptions...