Blenheim Hill Farm — Attraction in Town of Blenheim

THE GOOD Blenheim is an INCREDIBLE choice for a wedding venue. The serene environment is ideal for any sentimental event. The on-site farmhouse is a phenomenal place for close friends and family to stay. The food is creative, fresh, and DELICIOUS; you will not find better quality anywhere. Yet what made Blenheim truly special is the staff. They are a close-knit team and provide the deepest value to the Blenheim experience.

Maria and Benjiy are consummate professionals and absolute masters of their craft. We cannot overemphasize the deep contributions they made to our wedding as managers of day-of events. They both have VERY bright futures in the hospitality industry. Lisa, Rebecca, and Sylwia (each with roles varying from day-of coordination, bartending, supervising service, etc) also made remarkable contributions and deserve special recognition. The chef and kitchen staff prepared food that was EXQUISITE. Unsung hero of the day: the young lady responsible for cleaning the farmhouse. She ensured we were able to enter the farmhouse an hour early and was extremely professional in completing her tasks.

There is a long list of reasons why Blenheim is such a special place, but the quality of the staff is at the top of that list.

THE BAD Due to COVID, our wedding was rescheduled nearly 11 months after the original date. We were offered a 10% discount on additional headcount for food and beverage, which was very generous. However, as our wedding approached, we noticed the updated contract didn’t include the discount. Unaware of an expiration date attached this discount, we questioned why it hadn’t been applied. We assumed we had missed a note and were prepared to concede the discount. However, we needed to do our due diligence to confirm that the error was ours. Blenheim did eventually honor the discount (which we very much appreciated), but our issue was with the final message we received on the topic.

This final message from one of the owners was demeaning and unacceptable. This owner stated that, “If our onsite team of 25+ staffers found out this is how you are nickel and diming, they could become concerned that they may not even be receiving tips from you for the weekend. And that is not a cloud I want hanging over any of them.” My husband and I are both very caring people. We understand the incredible importance of tips for staff. It is a critical component of their compensation. When someone questions our ability or willingness to tip staff, it is not a comment on our financial wellbeing. It is an attack on our character. It implies greed, selfishness, and a disregard for those doing the heavy lifting (literally and figuratively) for our event. As evidenced by our actual tip to the staff, this is NOT who we are.

We wanted to give this owner the benefit of the doubt and requested a phone call so we could smooth things over. At this point, we were less than a month out from the wedding date. We were denied this phone call. Instead, we received a dismissive e-mail handwaving the issue by claiming “no hard feelings.” This demonstrated the lack of intent to resolve the issue, as well as a lack of empathy for their clients. We arrived to the venue on our wedding day having been insulted by one of the owners, and our attempt to remedy the disagreement was rebuffed.

This is an important experience to share with other potential clients. Among both owners, we were exceptionally pleased with the professionalism of the other owner. However, as we leave this 5-star review, please know that it is a testament specifically to the employed staff who make Blenheim such a special place.

THE RECOMMENDATION Would we recommend Blenheim to other couples? The answer is a resounding YES. We do not want our negative experience with an owner to dissuade anyone from considering Blenheim. You will not truly understand the magic of Blenheim until you interact with the staff. They are so deeply caring and hardworking, and they deserve public...

We have very mixed feelings about our having our wedding at Blenheim. We were so excited about the venue since it's beautiful and had good reviews however after spending 2 years planning our wedding and having it there, we were left extremely frustrated and disappointed. - First, the pricing was advertised in a way to draw you in - however every little thing is an "upgrade". And expect to pay a 20% admin fee on everything. And no, this does not include gratuity. They expect 5-10% of your total spend in gratuity. So at minimum, expect to pay 25-30% on top of their listed prices. And don't expect them to concede on prices for anything. We asked what the difference would be if we skipped the appetizer at dinner and their response was that it would not correlate to any savings for us. Really? Not serving a course to 132 people doesn't save you any money? For our 132 guest wedding and 90 guest rehearsal event, we ended up around $50k for venue spend alone (outside vendors separate). The most pressing issue - Friday afternoon we showed up at 3pm to the shock that they had gotten rid of the cocktail hour tent (clear topped tent, right outside reception barn doors) and moved the event to the other side of the barn without telling us. The clear tent was gone and no longer an option. We had spent 2 years planning this and had car loads full of decor and were hit with this when we showed up. They also wanted to move our rehearsal dinner to the same tent instead of the brewery barn meaning everyone would see our decor the night before. We shot that down. To make it worse - there was no apology. Min, one of the owners, instead tried to spin it on us and say they had "invested in the new space" and that other guests had liked it. She even said "well you toured in winter" - in fact, we had been on site 5 weeks prior for our tasting and still no one told us. How hard is it to send an email to your customers saying you’re changing the event location? We were appalled at how she responded their huge mistake. It left us in shock and frustrated just 2 hours before our entire wedding weekend was due to start. - Their communication and planning form system was extremely burdensome. When we first met they sold it to us as if we did not need a wedding planner because they have a "wedding roadmap" that walks you through everything. This is not accurate. What they have is a website and then a set of 10+ forms that take an incredible amount of time to complete. They ask you to outline the entire weekend essentially minute to minute. We also didn't get access to these forms until a month prior to our wedding (and then Min tried to say they had sent them to us months prior - which was not true). Very stressful and not helpful to us at all. - Min, one of the owners, was miserable to work with. She made us feel like we were being cheap every step of the way and gaslit us to make it seem we were doing something wrong. She made us feel bad and told us "communication would be difficult" because we did not want to rent out the on site farmhouse. Every question we asked, made us feel we were trying to burden her staff. She really needs to work on her communication skills. Morten, her husband, is much more professional. - The pros: Maria, our day of coordinator, spent the entire day and reception trying to make up for the huge mistake about the change of cocktail hour location and poor communication from upper management. It did not go unnoticed - we can't thank her enough for her efforts. The servers, bar staff, were all wonderful. The food was delicious and the venue setting is breathtaking. We ended up having a wonderful, fun wedding. It's unfortunate that the negatives so strongly outweighed the positives. We were also told we’d be contacted for feedback after the wedding - it’s been 2 months and we haven’t received anything. ...

we got married at blenheim hill farm on 10/15/22 and it was incredible-- the temperature was a perfect mid 50s, a bit windy but sunny and every single guest was blown away by the reds, oranges, and yellows of the trees by the lake. the farm is truly perfection in the fall, and an absolutely gorgeous place to get married. maria and rebecca and the whole staff on site were truly a dream all week long. we stayed in the farmhouse starting on the wednesday before the wedding until the monday after, and we really started to feel like a little family. both maria and rebecca were so amazing to work with and made us feel at ease throughout the week, despite feeling like things were kind of falling apart (DJ got COVID, brother, sister and nephews got the flu, horrible downpour the thursday before the wedding that threatened to loom into the weekend). they're both so warm and inviting, and made it really easy for us to contact them with any questions throughout the weekend. everyone working the rehearsal and the wedding wedding itself was so friendly and warm-- special shout out to grace for making sure we had the canapes at our table when we didn't get a chance to enjoy our cocktail hour like we planned and the desserts when we didn't want to get off the dance floor to cut our cake. there were so many deeply touching moments like this throughout the weekend-- a few that really stand out: when i was feeling a bit too nervous at the rehearsal dinner so i didn't eat as much as i should have, so rebecca made me a little to go bag of tacos that she DELIVERED to the farmhouse like the truly angle she is; grace taking the instax camera around the party later in the night to take pictures of guests to put in the guest book for us when they forgot about the book (which was truly such a perfect thing to look through the next day); literally the whole staff checking in with bryan and i all night long to make sure we were properly fed, that we had drinks, that we were feeling happy and having fun; ben putting up with our rather inebriated guests for the shuttle until 3a, even when they didn't want to leave on that last trip. when our car wouldn't start when we were leaving, rebecca came right over with ben to give us a jump and hangout with us a while and let us hangout in the house even though it was well past checkout. one note: i will say that there were a few financial things that were frustrating to deal with prior to the wedding-- we had signed out contract in nov. 2020 but there were changes in policy and costs that we had not been aware of, some of which were more than double what we had contracted. we did feel like a lot of the time we kept trying to be upsold, despite having already spent a considerable amount of money-- and when declining certain aspects, were met with some resistance, or so it was perceived that way by us. nonetheless, these really did not diminish our view of the venue which is why it's still a 5 star from us-- i honestly cannot say enough good things about maria and rebecca and the on-site team. if i could afford another wedding, i would divorce husband just to remarry him at blenheim. thank you so much maria, rebecca, and the whole crew. we miss...