Chapel at Palacios — Attraction in Westlake

The Chapel at Palacios venue is gorgeous and our wedding day ended up being absolute perfection, but they didnt exactly make the road to get there very easy. I have to say that for the amount of money we poured into this company, their planning & communication skills are lacking. If they try to assure you that you will have a wedding planner "to guide and support you along the way", do not fall for it and get ready to do it ALL on your own! Wedding planning is already stressful enough & we truly feel they added another level of chaos to our experience by their lack of organization & communication. Our booking coordinator was Mahogany who was bubbly, inviting, thorough & informative. After booking the venue, we had to filter through 2 different wedding "planners" (Hailee & Malyn) before we were finally paired with one who knew how to do their job & do it WELL (Payton K). Hailee wasnt attentive at all & we couldnt get her to respond to us in a timely manner. It took her days to respond, it was absurd! Malyn was more responsive at first, but went completely MIA & eventually left the company forgetting to pass along our info to the next person taking over & so our planning timeline was forgotten about & we received zero communicaion from anyone for MONTHS. Finally, we were paired with Payton who was absolutely fantastic & helped us catch up on everything we became so behind on. She made us a top priority & handled every meeting & phone call with care. She responded DAY OF via email & text & followed up with me before due dates. Let me just say, Payton knows how to get SH** done!!! Thankfully, she was also assigned to us as our day of coordinator, which we are forever grateful for. SHE DID EVERYTHING! Payton was our biggest blessing as she really DID IT ALL & completely turned our experience around on day of. We also had Brenda helping us & she was fantastic too! Extremely helpful and sweet! We appreciate everything she & Payton organized to make every magical detail come to life. Jenny Layne Bakery made the most fantastic Almond Buttercream cake for us.It was beautiful & tasted even better! Cohost Entertainment assigned us DJ Jared & he was UNREAL! He is so much fun, extremely personable, funny, keeps guests entertained & does so much more than Dj! He really went above & beyond for us. In terms of food, the whole course was surprisingly very yummy! We felt proud to serve it to our guests! DesignHaus floral was a HUGE let down for us. Luckily, we chose to use a third party vendor “The Grand Poppy” for majority of our floral & we are SO glad we did.We used DesignHaus only for what qualified for the $1600 “credit” that we already paid for & didn’t want to lose out on.We used The Grand Poppy for ALL ELSE. The DesignHaus flowers were dull, wilted & looked like they were a few days old.I also had to ask the Grand Poppy to completely REMAKE my bridal bouquet originally made by DesignHaus on the SPOT because it was just.. embarrassing. EmilyChappell Photo had assigned us to a photographer(Meg) who was also nonresponsive, so we were then reassigned(again) to Jose Negrete, who was MUCH more attentive and extremely personable! On day of, he was extremely efficient in coordinating all of our friends & family for photos in a timely manner.He happily worked alongside our 3rd party videographer & content creator as well (we got so much more for our money using a third party videographer btw) Lyon’sPaperie, was incredibly responsive & informative & we received all of our orders very quickly! We did feel like the website was very confusing/lacking info so that made placing orders frustrating and stressful.Our officiant, Kyle Embry, was very personable and informative and created the most beautiful script we have ever heard. There were many ups and downs, but overall our day was so incredibly perfect & we wouldn’t have changed a single thing about it. I wish the planning process would have been handled differently, but very grateful for the team of people that came together and completely turned our experience...

Our experience with this venue was just okay. Here are the positives.

Venue Aesthetics: The venue is beautiful. You don’t need to do much décor-wise to have a beautiful wedding here.

CoHost Entertainment: Our DJ knocked it out of the park. CoHost was the one Walters vendor we interacted with that truly went above and beyond to make our day special. If you choose to get married here, we can’t recommend DJ Michael Valenzuela enough.

Jenny Layne Bakery: Our gluten-free/dairy-free cakes and other desserts were delicious. The bakery did everything they promised in terms of design on our cakes. However, all our interaction with the bakery was through our venue coordinator. We never spoke to a direct representative of the bakery, which was troubling to me (it may not be to everyone).

There are many negatives. Granted, none of them caused catastrophic errors on my wedding day. However, our planning experience with this venue and its vendors was less than seamless. Almost all of the venue’s preferred vendors (except CoHost and Jenny Layne) were incredibly frustrating to work with.

DesignHaus Floral: I cannot recommend against this florist enough. We were in discussions with DesignHaus for about a month. During that time, two separate employees explained we would receive a $1600 floral credit if we chose to book. We thought this sounded too good to be true, so we inquired further about the credit. The same two separate people then explained the credit to us as a “gift card.” So, we were surprised when we were invoiced by the venue for $1600 after deciding to book with DesignHaus. The $1600 credit isn’t a credit at all. The credit is paid to the venue for them to pass through to DesignHaus. Personally, since two separate employees explained the credit to us as a gift card (and since I’ve seen other reviews related to the “credit”), I feel DesignHaus is being deceptive toward potential customers.

Emily Chappell Photography: I planned my wedding from start to finish - so it was important to me to carefully research each vendor. When I contacted Emily Chappell Photography to request an initial meeting to discuss a few questions, I was told they don’t schedule calls for “planning and logistics.” I would have the opportunity to meet with my assigned photographer only after booking and paying. This blatant disregard for potential clients’ communication preferences caused me to look elsewhere for my photographer.

Venue Event Coordinator: We were passed through two other event coordinators before finally being assigned to Lainey O’Steen. There was no formal communication at any time about the switches in coordinators. I did not feel Lainey was helpful on our wedding day. We didn’t see her for most of the day, and she didn’t seem to enjoy her interactions with us when we did see her. This caused my family and other assistants I brought in to work overtime to make sure everything went smoothly. Also, we paid $500 (plus a "service fee") to reserve our rehearsal for the day before our wedding. About 2 weeks prior, we were told we had to change our rehearsal time to accommodate a wedding adding extra time to their reservation. To the venue’s credit, they did not charge us for the rehearsal after this change. However, we were asked to leave about 10 to 15 minutes before our rehearsal was scheduled to end. We understand weddings take precedence over rehearsals, but I would have expected more professionalism & efficiency in scheduling given the amount I paid to have my wedding here.

Other Day-Of Mishaps: There were high schoolers taking prom photos around the venue on our wedding day. My husband had to ask venue staff 3 times to remove them. To top it all off, we chose the fajita buffet for dinner - and our guests were told they were only allowed 1 tortilla in the buffet line. This limitation was not mentioned during the planning process, and quite frankly, it was incredibly embarrassing to hear about after my wedding. Again, I would have expected better service given how much I paid to have my...

Lainey and Payton were fabulous! We had a wonderful event! We did most of the planning on our own, but they made sure all of our questions were answered, and helped us with the timeline! Hector took such good care of us, and made sure we had everything we needed! Lexie was an exceptional photographer. She worked seamlessly with our personal videographer and took what we know are the most beautiful shots. Lexie made sure we were always looking our best, and came prepared with a long list of fun shots to take! She even got the shots we felt like getting at the last minute, and all with a big smile and top-notch efficiency. Miranda was a phenomenal DJ. From MC to music, she had our guests asking about her the next day - everyone was so impressed with her mixing, how she spoke during the event announcements, and even about how much they loved the lighting! We wanted to directly thank Linda and the team at Lyons Paperie for our beautiful announcement cards, save the dates, invitation suites, and thank you cards. We will continue to use their services for thank you cards after our event! Jenny Layne Bakery made the most beautiful cake for us - we don't know who to thank specifically, so we wanted to make sure the team got a big thank you from us! Our gluten-free guests felt very well taken care of, and we LOVED the design that the team came up with for our cake. It was everything we wanted and more. We wanted to take a moment to thank the wonderful woman on security at our event. We didn't catch her name, but she had such a warm personality, and guests came up to us multiple times during the event to mention that she was so wonderful and kind. Her presence made the night even better. Thank you! Our bartender, Charlie, was loved by all! Our parents all commented on his bubbly demeanor and how quick he was! Thank you, Charlie!

Overall, the event was beautiful. We had a floral snafu, which Lainey immediately fixed and made sure was ready before the ceremony. Thank you, Lainey! Along the process, there were a few pieces of information that were inconsistent, and things that we were told that ended up not being consistent at a later date, which could have posed to be more frustrating, but we didn't feel like pressing the matter, we had also asked to receive the remaining desserts to pass along to our traveling family at the end of the night, and the last few plates of items that we saw didn't make it home with our family. Life goes on! At the end of the day, it was a beautiful venue and a wonderful ceremony, made better by all of the vendors who worked tirelessly to make sure our event was seamless. We could not have asked for a better wedding...