Moonlight Ballroom & Conference Center — Attraction in San Antonio

The ballroom without a heart. My 80 year old mother booked an event with Isaac for a sweet 16 as a gift to her great granddaughter for March of 2022. I was not able to go to the meeting with her so my very young niece took her to the meeting. She ended up booking the event and was provided with a hand written estimate that does not outline all the charges in detail for what is all included and is very confusing to understand. I was even able to notice that she was charged sales tax on a $300 damage deposit which I thought was strange. She was billed a total of $14938.50 with a $2000 deposit that she paid at that time with her credit card. He also put my mother on a required $1617.32 monthly payment plan. Most venues don't require monthly payments and only require you to have the balance paid 30-90 days before your event. (I thought it was strange) Fast forward about a month later my 80 year old mother was hospitalized and due to her declining health and we were forced to cancel the event due to medical reasons. Now in the agreement it does state deposits are non refundable "unless approved by Moonlight management". As my mothers representative I met with Isaac to let him know about the cancellation and since it had only been about a month and due to the circumstances at hand with my mothers health asked for a "management exception" to the cancellation deposit refund policy. I was even open to a partial refund for the troubles we might have caused. He did offer to move the event; however since my mother was paying for it and she was hospitalized this was not an option. I asked to move forward with a cancellation. I was told to wait about two weeks so he could see what he could do with his subcontracted vendors who he says he paid to hold the date for us with our deposit. I waited two weeks only to be told that the vendors that he subcontracts with for food, dj, etc. were unwilling to help us in this situation and that zero refund would be offered. While this is not what I wanted to hear I did not give any hassle as I know it was something in the agreement we signed. Where I have a problem is why on earth would you put "unless approved by Moonlight management" when clearly management has no ability to do anything. Needless to say I felt it was important to share with anyone looking to use this venue to be prepared to lose you money should something happen that would force you to cancel the event (even less than 30 days after you sign). In addition ask for detailed explanations of what your paying for and what your being billed for and understand that Moonlight subcontracts the services.

The intent of our review is to share our experience with this business only. We wanted to keep it factual...

This place sucked royally. And ripped us off. First they experimented and did a corner two way entrance down the isle for my daughter's wedding, which the two sides could not see the one coming from other side at all, their photographer sucked, he did not get any close up pictures at all, in fact all were far and lots of b's in back ground. The 4 hr photo booth we paid for and they didn't even give 4 hrs, was suppose to be open while bride taking photos so guest can take their own at cocktail hr while waiting. So from 6pm to 10pm and close, as when must people pack up. Wasn't open till 830 to 1030 for 2 hrs only. And wasn't even gonna be open, till I said open now and waited 30 mins for that. The margaritas were suppose to be 2 of the colors of her wedding coral and teal, so peach or orangesicle and blue hurricane or blue raspberry, but had blue and a white color pina colada. And was told up to 1 hr away will have it, than less than 30 mins to start, we were told only the white, and for an hr both the Shiner beer and frozen cocktail were not severed to dome, guest were told that Shiner was out, what a keg from 7 to 8 pm and frozen wasn't ready yet. When paid for 110 plates and 32 didn't show. We take home leftovers, well they only gave us 16 of those a week later. We are the ones that decorated the venue not them, also they did not announce all events happing, as I the mother missed the cake cutting and bouquet throw as they said in 10 mins will do, I go outside for less than five mins and next to the door, hear no announcement and I go back inside and guess what, already done, what? So not just 1 or 2 or even 3 things wrong, but several, as we complained and still to date no refunded amount given of any amount. Oh and they kept our hawian placemats and unauthorized used 8 of our pictures of faces in their web gallery and Facebook, which ironically were the best pics taken and they had to crop to put up. Kind of cool to be there, but come on. They pressured and talked us in to their ideas instead of letting the brides have their dream ideas happen. We paid for a runner on floor and never got. No photos of just parents and brides, none of grandparents at all in any pictures. Don't waste your time or money. They don't even get one star. We cleaned up too. This all was a nightmare. Isaac is a liar and con...

The ceremony was nice but all the extra stuff was poorly executed, felt like we were chasing people down to get things done that we had told Issac we wanted done at our last meeting. The bar staff was rude, I had purchased the $150 liquor license for the open bar .....and while there was product out that we didn't bring it's understandable that guests were charged for that, BUT what we did bring some of our guests were charged for and someone tried to charge me as well (the groom) this is how I know it was being done. I was married on March 25, 2023 we are in May now and still haven't received my reception pictures. And later we found out the photo booth who is a subcontractor for the venue printed the WRONG date on our photo booth pictures and also all the guest ones as well. Reached out to Issac so he could somehow make this right, like a refund for the photo booth but still haven't gotten an answer or resolve. I mean I have just what pictures my guests had sent me from our reception.

Next was the videographer, I reached out to Issac again requesting the raw footage shot for the day because the video that was made by the venue's subcontractor was cheap and poor visual and audio quality, reminded me of a highschool multimedia project.

Over all we got married and had a good time while doing it but wasn't close to what we were promised by the venue. Was gonna post what the venue looked like the night of....but still haven't gotten those...