The Northridge Inn & Resort — Hotel in Strong Township

August 2021 Wedding Review

First I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to write this review, but better late than never! We chose the Northridge Inn sight unseen for our wedding. Deciding on a wedding venue mid pandemic and lockdown was stressful to say the least and to be honest, we relied on the Instagram pics and reviews to choose our location. We always wanted a unique, smaller wedding with high quality details and this is exactly what we got! Having looked at so many “corporate” venues, I was so happy to had found the beautiful Northridge Inn. We got married in August 2021 and our families and friends are STILL talking about the wedding!The wedding coordinator Kate was an absolute life saver. Her calm, professional yet hilarious demeanour is exactly what a stressed out bride needed. She handled every situation with grace and we are forever grateful for Kate!

Rooms - every room was stunning. We booked the chalet and cannot recommend it enough. So much room for the guys to get ready in before the wedding and was the late night hot tub spot! I would recommend bringing coffee and food for times when the kitchen is closed. We switched to a lodge room when we extended our stay a couple days after the wedding and that room was equally as gorgeous.

Bridal suite - amazing spot where all the girls can get ready with plenty of room. You can see the fun pool area from one side and the lake from the other. It was awesome getting to see our guests enjoying the resort (swimming, partying, relaxing) before the wedding began.

Staff - truly cannot say enough about the amazing staff. They were SO helpful and were very kind to all of our guests. Special shout-out to Carol who helped my parents one morning with a special coffee order and returning many lost items that were found after the wedding haha. Anything the staff could help you with, they made it happen. Any issues were quickly resolved and so minor not even worth mentioning. Kate was truly the rockstar that made the wedding day run smoothly, thank you so much again!

Food -wedding dinner was good and so was the farewell brunch. We missed out on the passed apps as we were taking pictures and nothing was brought out to us, but I hear they were great! Late night snacks wedding night (little Italy)were okay - nothing amazing to be honest but nice to feed our guests post dancing and drinks. Being a beautiful smaller scale inn, the food at the dining room is a bit pricey but nothing that was shocking. Again, you pay for the atmosphere and the overall charm so you’re not going to be getting cheap meals! Bring snacks or food with you if you didn’t want to always eat at the dining room as you will have to drive a little ways to the closest other restaurant. Just budget accordingly and enjoy dinner on the gorgeous patio!

Wedding- We wanted a smaller wedding (50 ppl) so we weren’t able to book on a weekend. Which to us, didn’t really matter. We knew that it being a two night celebration, our guests would be booking vacation time for this anyways! It was right after the lockdown where you could finally eat inside and safe to say it was the family and friends reunion everyone needed! I spent weeks looking at the wedding package sent to us and when I say every single detail is mentioned, I mean it! They know how to throw a successful wedding day and all of the minor details you would worry about elsewhere (renting ceremony chairs, linens, etc) are taken care of for you at the Northridge. We didn’t really choose any of the extras (fireworks, yoga) so I can’t speak on those. Tip - you MUST have your first dance and dessert/coffee outside on the patio with the twinkle lights. It was STUNNING and my favourite photos are from that time.

So book your wedding at the Northridge Inn and you will seriously impress your guests. We are SO happy we chose this place and I still get teary eyed thinking about how perfect our wedding was. Thanks for the best memories of the best...

Don't get married here - pocketed our nearly $10K deposit despite having done no work AND sold out the entire resort for another event the weekend our wedding was supposed to happen on top! My fiancé & I were supposed to get married at Northridge in August. They really mismanaged their COVID response & took advantage of couples who were supposed to get married there in 2020 that they knew were locked in with hefty non-refundable deposits already paid. They reached out to us early May with a proposal: we could forego our date in 2020 & reserve a new date in 2021 before they heard what the government pandemic restrictions would be in August for a $5,000 postponement fee. The fee would be credited to our 2021 wedding if by the time our original August 2020 date came around there were government restrictions in place preventing large social gatherings, BUT if social gatherings of at least 50 ppl were permitted (notwithstanding that our wedding was for over 100 ppl & we were required to book out the entire resort for the weekend which accommodates much more than 50 ppl) the $5K would just be an additional fee tacked on our invoice. We could tentatively reserve a new date, but they would give it away to any new couple that wanted that date. They also said they may not be able to let us know whether our wedding would be cancelled or not until as late as 2 weeks before the wedding if we decided not to pursue the postponement option, which would have been impossible with guests travelling from out of country. Our impression was that they were prioritizing new bookings for 2021 and were giving new couples preference over available weekends (e.g. the original list of open dates they provided us for 2021 were only during early Spring and late Fall when the resort is normally not even hosting weddings because it's off-season and when we told them we were disappointed with the available dates they said a new couple was considering a date in August 2021 and they would let us know whether they decided to move forward with it; a couple months later when we pushed them again there happened to be early September dates available). We were not willing to pay an additional $5K for what we felt was an unethical proposal, so we continued to push them to provide reasonable notice as to whether our original wedding plans could proceed. When they let us know in July that our wedding would be postponed & proposed a new date in 2021, we thought hard about it & decided we wanted to cancel. We found the experience with them really stressful & we weren't looking forward to having the wedding there anymore. We knew that we wouldn't get our entire nearly $10K deposit back, but asked whether they would be willing to return a portion of it & proposed that they could keep the full deposit until they had locked down a new wedding for the 2021 date they had offered us & received a new deposit for that date. Notwithstanding that they had not done any work at all for our wedding, they refused. They offered to give us a gift certificate for an undetermined amount at an undetermined date in the future - unsurprisingly we've heard nothing further from them on this. On top of keeping our full deposit, they also rented out the resort for the weekend of our original wedding! Based on Instagram posts, they hosted a large event and sold out the entire resort that weekend - outrageous & GREEDY. We appreciate that this has been a really precarious time for small businesses (maybe not this one...), but no effort was made to engage with us to try to work through a situation that was challenging for everyone involved. We didn't hear from the owners once throughout the entire process other than to respond to our email declining to refund any amount of our deposit & we had to play broken telephone with the wedding coordinator who never had all the facts & was pretty cold to deal with. We decided to elope instead & couldn't be happier with our choice! Will...

I sent this feedback to the owner via email 2 weeks ago and never received a response:

Cleanliness is 1 or 2 star. Rooms and bathrooms are not clean. Ceiling fixtures and bathroom floor are gross, as per photos. Air ventilation not cleaned. Towels are tiny and rough. Doesn't have a curved shower bar, so the dirty shower curtain touches you while showering. Electric garbage can out of batteries. Toilet paper is 1 or 2 ply, and only 1 extra roll. No toilet brushes. Dehumidifier full of water upon check-in. There are faux fur blankets and pillows on the beds. Given the state of the other cleanliness items, I'm left wondering if the faux fur items even get washed?

No glassware, plates, corkscrew, cutlery or microwave in room. Rooms are dark, with only lamps instead of potlights or fixtures.

Serving staff is 5 star. The resort was lucky enough to have 6 local girls working there, all family of each other, who live around the bay. They're great! Sarah is also fantastic.

Unless you have a dog, there's little to do. Shuffle board has furniture covering it. Tennis court is completely run down, full of weeds, no nets to play. Large outdoor Chess board had broken pieces. No cleanup at the beach - old plates of food not cleaned up for 3 days. Nobody puts the canoes away so they're full of water when it rains.

General lack of attention to detail around the property, with uncut grass, weeds, garbage. Many areas in need of paint. Signs are all falling over. Deck and stairs in disrepair. No cushions on patio furniture.

Management customer service is 1 star. We were there on our honeymoon, and received no special treatment. We spent 5 nights, all at full price. When we arrived the resort seemed empty. It appeared to fill up throughout the week because of a half-price offer on Instagram, so we met many couples who had just booked, paying half the amount we did. Management didn't do anything to make us feel valued, whereas a gesture would have gone a long way. Nobody ever asked how our stay was, including at checkout. One morning we were even teased with a complimentary breakfast, but then the waitress told us it was for somebody else. We were really made to feel that the resort caters exclusively to weddings.

On our last night we were asked to leave the restaurant because they had reservations at dinner. This was after spending the entire rainy day eating breakfast and lunch and drinking in the empty restaurant. We were the only guests of the hotel at this point, paying full price, and we weren't even asked if we wanted a reservation. The other 4 nights we were there the restaurant had many empty seats. This was unacceptable.

Most of the food was mediocre anyways - the meat was all underseasoned, except for the crabcakes which were very salty. Food quality seemed to be dependent on which cook was working. The hollandaise was very runny, which caused soggy bread, the brie was warmed rather than baked and wasn't melty, scallops were overcooked, pasta was undercooked and undersauced. The bacon wrapped meatballs were good, as was the arancini and breakfast poutine.

One night I started a fire with my own firewood, and some other guests came down and told me that the staff had claimed they had built a fire for the guests. I believe it was the same waiter who asked us to leave the restaurant to make room for new diners, who took credit for the fire.

We ended up leaving here and booking in at the Port Cunnington Lodge, which is excellent - clean, gorgeous, great food, equally beautiful lake - and similar...