Our wedding experience at Vanderosa farms can at best be described as mixed. We have been left with an overall negative impression, which we are guttered about.
Although the venue itself was really nice, and the clay bird shooting offered to the groomsmen was a nice gesture, we feel the owner of the venue was unprofessional and overbearing. This left us feeling stressed and misled.
Examples include:
2 weeks prior to the wedding, the owner attempted to change the finish time of our event to 10:30pm, contrary to the terms and conditions we had agreed to. All arrangements with vendors had been finalized and confirmed beforehand, and while we ultimately were able to stick to our 11.30 finish time after some negotiation, this cause a lot of stress for us.
On the day of the event, and in the lead up, the owner was controlling towards our vendors (busses, food caterers, drink caravan) and on more than one occasion tried to commandeer them without consulting us.
On the night of the event, the owner remained present and was going around closing the doors (apparently this was required for noise reasons but was not communicated to us when we booked the venue and paid our deposit).
On the night, the owner locked our chiller with our remaining drinks inside it, without consulting us, knowing the key had been taken from site. He eventually agreed to cut the lock so we could take some of our drinks to our (offsite) after party, but this was highly inconvenient and unprofessional. It also led to an altercation with guests and was completely unnecessary.
When the owner went to retrieve an angle grinder to cut the lock, he was driving extremely fast up the driveway in a polaris while our guests were leaving to catch the bus. We thought this put guests in an extremely risky position, as one of them could easily have been hit. This health and safety risk caused by the owner and was completely unacceptable.
We felt compelled to relocate our scheduled day-after function to another venue, as we were no longer comfortable working with him. Despite hiring the venue for 3 days at significant cost, we only returned to clean, pack our stuff and leave.
Extra hire costs and items were imposed on us at the last minute, including extra portaloos being required, site managers being necessary and additional items hired under our names.
If the owner had been upfront about these requirements at the beginning, we would have factored that into our thinking. However, we feel that what we were promised about our event and what we received were quite different. We spent a lot of money on this venue and ultimately felt like we were treated as an absolute inconvenience to the owner. With hindsight, we would have chosen another venue to celebrate our wedding. Potential patrons should approach with caution and ensure clear communication and agreements are established to avoid similar...
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