Pecandarosa Ranch — Attraction in Valley Park

I'm not one to write a review unless I'm completely wow'd or disappointed. Unfortunately, I'm completely disappointed in my experience with the owner, Janet Young. We chose this beautiful venue over a year ago when two lovely ladies worked there- Savannah and Gina. Both were very accommodating, friendly, and easy to work with. In January, we learned they no longer worked there. From this point, we were left to deal with Janet. Nearly every conversation with her left me feeling frustrated. It got to a point where I dreaded having to contact her. She made everything difficult- EVERYTHING. Knowing we paid a pretty penny for this venue, I would think the owner would bend over backwards to make sure the bride and groom were happy. That was not our experience. Small examples include rude/confusing communication during the planning, but one of my BIGGEST concerns was the sound system. Janet was rude about this and told me she only allowed professionals to operate the sound system- what she didn't say was that she didn't know how to operate it herself, which was to blame for the awful sound at our wedding. The sound was horrible and we had screeching feedback the entire wedding. We had a live Zoom session going, so we needed the mic on in order for guests to hear. Unfortunately, the sound system couldn't be tested out since our rehearsal was canceled on us. Janet claimed the roads were flooded, which might be the truth, but she asked my coordinator how long our rehearsal would last since she had dinner plans. I had to wonder if they cancel a wedding when it rains?? I am not the type to hide behind a screen to complain. I called Janet to let her know exactly how I felt about my experience with her the day after our wedding. She had an excuse for everything. The sound system was my band's fault apparently. She said she "didn't want to speak ill of my band, but..." Well, a sound system should never be the responsibility of a band who has never been to the facility and is only contracted to play during the reception. It should always be the responsibility of the venue. A venue of that caliber should have a reliable sound system and someone who knows how to operate it. Sound/music are a much needed part of a wedding- especially one over 300 people. Additionally, we were locked out of our bridal/groom suites as she changed the codes after the wedding. She said she gave our coordinator the codes, but that wasn't true as she only gave her the daytime codes. She told my photographer to move her things out of the bridal suite and into the vendor lockers on the opposite end of the venue, even though she was taking all of our post pictures outside of the the bridal suite. It shouldn't matter to her where my photographer chooses to put her items. My photographer was very put off by how rude she was. We learned the next day how the end of the night went, which was a disaster. She refused to let a friend of ours-the owner of a brewery in the community (Listed as a vendor, but attended as a guest as well) take his personal property, which was five kegs donated to us for our wedding. He was required to bring these kegs and set them up himself since it was his property, but he was not allowed to take them?! Janet made my coordinator take his property. According to many witnesses, Janet was extremely rude and called security over (HER security guards that did nothing but stand around all night- all three of them) to stand behind her on not allowing him to take his property. Unreal! She could have taken an opportunity to make a business connection, yet she chose to make an enemy. Janet had nothing to say regarding these things other than the excuses she had and "I'm sorry you feel this way." The excuses do not excuse how she made us feel-as we felt we were treated like children out to destroy her venue. I told her I hope she reflects on this experience and changes her ways or she will never be successful in this business. It is a shame because the venue is absolutely beautiful. However, I would never want another bride to...

The only reason I didn't do 1 star, is because the venue is beautiful. If you do not want undue stress added to your wedding, run away from this place. They were abysmal at customer service, they changed policy constantly, even two weeks before our wedding and they were super restrictive on using the venue. Overall a horrible experience leading up to our wedding. Also major frustration day of. Very overpriced for you getting nothing but a building. You will have to clean up after yourself not have much access outside of your defined times and for over 7k there are better things to do. And you can't get a refund. To begin with, they are awful at communicating with us. It took over two weeks to get our contract, and lock in our date. We kept calling and calling. I was ready to give up and use a different place but my fiance really wanted it here.They were slow to respond. Never to us, only to our wedding planner. We gave up trying to contact them directly and just used our coordinator as an owl. Less than 2 months before our wedding they decide to change their policy claiming we had to use a trusted vendor for bar tending. When we did our first walk through, they said they didn't have a preferred vendor, and they didn't care who we used. There was also nothing in our contract, no exhibit showing approved vendors or anything. They suddenly limit us to two with less than 60 days to book someone. Luckily we found one, but the owner said, the only reason she agreed to even do an event at this venue was because of the woman we used as a wedding coordinator. Not a great sign right? So, Week before our wedding. We did our ceremony outside in the pecan Grove. When we originally toured this venue, we were told to pick a spot, the Monday before they would clear it, set up chairs and everything else for the ceremony and reception, and we should come a few days before to verify everything. Well my fiance did her two walk throughs to figure out table layout and a ceremony site. Week of the wedding we email to try and set up a time the day before to come and verify the site and everything. Our coordinator told us they were claiming it was their policy we only get two walk throughs and couldn't come Friday. But we should trust them to take care of everything and know the right site. We weren't comfortable with this after everything else that happened. We also checked our contract (again) and it says nowhere about a limit on walk throughs. Our first walkthrough was over a year ago, the second one about 4 months before our wedding. So asking to come the day before didn't seem unreasonable. When we sent this information to them insisting we just need 10 min to verify everything, they turned around and said they suddenly have a private event and wouldn't allow anyone in and would now first thing Saturday. Originally we had been told they have no events Friday and we could have done our rehearsal there Friday night. It was only after we said there was no walkthrough limit on the contract this event appeared. Finally, day of we get a text, our bride and groom suites would only be available to us till 730 pm. After that we needed to track a staff member down to let us in. This was insane and we knew nothing about this till that day when it was already too late. We had the place booked from 10am - midnight. But couldn't get to our stuff easily. My groomsman kept coming to me saying they needed to get their phones, or their babies stuff from the room and I had to tell them to track down a staff member who I didn't even know. The sad thing is these rooms had keypad locks on them with codes set up just for us. This was ridiculous. The rooms were meant for us to store things like changes of clothes and back packs and to get ready. Yet we only got access to them for a little more than half our reservation time. Unprofessional and inconvenient. Also, we had arranged to rent for two extra hours during the morning to facilitate getting ready and decorate etc. They began hounding my mother in law for the money during...

The wedding venue was beautiful, but we dealt with many issues. Lack of communication, the bride and her mother were not allowed to communicate with the venue when the wedding was getting close and could only speak through the coordinator lol (even though the contract did not state we even had to have one - just random cut off communication deep into the process which made everything SO stressful), the wedding was threatened to be shut down if any groomsman or anyone else snuck in alcohol on their person even if the ceremony had already started, and much more. It was a wild experience. It was all going smoothly until about 2-3 months out and then our hallmark dream wedding went south. Because of the venues strict and unclear rules, there were big decisions to be made on décor, music, dj's, live music (had to be professional, tf?), outdoor activities, alcohol, food, and more that could not be decided in peace because of the constant yes and no's and changing of the contract. We would be told one thing and we would have to jump through hoops with vendors and local officials to receive on our OWN to meet the requirements of these VAGUE rules (that changed constantly) just to be told a different thing after the bride had to hunt for answers lol. There is a place in the contract that says the VENUE CAN CHANGE THE RULES AT ANY TIME. This came into play, and could come into play at your wedding too. When this caused conflict and we reached out to the venue, we never got a clear answer. We were told a few times (through our coordinator of course, because we weren't allowed to communicate directly) that the mix was because Janet the owner and Janet the employee were giving us different information. I DID NOT believe there were two different Janet's. I thought it was the biggest cop out excuse because I had never seen Janet the employee on all our visits out. This happened several times when it came to deciding on what we were allowed to do. But then, I thought I saw a ghost, when in a group conversation with family our coordinator, and Janet - the employee Janet hopped into the conversation LMBO. Several of us were convinced she was not real. I was speechless. Honestly an amazing memorable surprise I will not forget. That being said, that does not excuse the crazy communication issues. Regardless of the craziness the venue was beautiful and I am grateful for that. The design and the up-keep is amazing. The customer service needs adjustment from what we experienced. So many issues could have been easily avoided. This venue is way too expensive to be treating people this way. I just don't understand how someone can be charged 7k and be treated like this. I hope the best for...