Canandaigua Country Club — Restaurant in Town of Canandaigua

The venue is gorgeous, all our guests are still raving about it. Kristen was amazing day-of with coordinating things on the ground, and was responsive to emails, calls and texts throughout our planning. She is an absolute events MACHINE and when she is focused, she is the best. Pretty sure she custom ordered us the most exquisite sunset. She did an incredible job with the new space. It's great that they provide linens, plates, glassware, all that stuff. That being said, our planning process was a bit all over the place as after we booked, they told us they were building a new venue on site (when we booked it was just an outdoor tent). Though thrilled with the upgrade it presented some logistical challenges (example, didn't know what the chairs or tables would look like until very late, was hard to get answers on how the layout would be as it was not finished until a few weeks before our wedding, so we couldn't answer questions from vendors about setup, etc). The bridal suite also was not fully finished for our wedding (alot of spackled walls in our photos that look terrible). There were some weird quirks like they tried to make us go with the arch being decorated by a florist they have a relationship with and rolled that cost into our total, we obviously wanted our florist to do all the flowers and had to ask that cost be removed.  They also only ever talked about decorating the arch but failed to mention that the arch isn't actually theirs - its the florist's - so when we arrived that day it was being taken away! Luckily we convinced the bride from the night before to leave it for us to use. Another hiccup was that after we booked, we found out the price noted in our Nolan's contract that referenced a separate fee due to Canandaigua Country Club was not accurate but by that point were under the other contract and had to just pay more. It was sloppy and should have just had no cost listed or said we had to confirm cost with them if they didn't know it, but we relied on that to make a decision on venue. The biggest challenge was that they increased our food/beverage cost by 45% a year after we booked. With 1 less hour of open bar and 1 less entrée. Now. I am a lawyer and well-versed in contracts. It did say it was subject to market adjustments, with prices to finalize in January of the wedding year. I asked about this in our planning and was told "if anything it is slight changes like to the type of chicken entrée we serve, or a slight adjustment to prices, nothing big." And I understand COVID and supply chain considerations. We booked this during the pandemic. But I talked to many other venues and wedding planners and they agreed this was obscene, and not a slight market adjustment - it was a MATERIAL term. It would have changed our decision on initial venue decision as it jumped them up way above our other contenders. But only 6 months out from our date, we were stuck. Their prior menu under which we chose to book had both package and a la carte options. The new one only had package, and included many things (like a champagne toast, cheese platter, etc) that we did not want. They should have at least honored the a la carte options for people who had already booked, maybe with slight price adjustments. It took substantial discussions to get us to a place of being slightly less angry about this but in the end they did make a slight accommodation for us. The food here can only be done by Nolan's which was totally fine by us as its amazing! Only problem was they pulled the buffet super fast with tons of food left and people have mentioned to me they would have gone back for more. But the food was excellent. The bartenders and servers were great and so attentive and fun. Wish we would have been told in advance no shots, which also meant no whiskey neat for my uncles (would have been nice to be aware of this). Despite the challenges in planning, it was an amazing day for our wedding and Kristen was a rockstar who checked on us constantly and was in 1000 places at once. Overall, definitely...

We got married here in July of 2022. Let me start by saying this is one of the most beautiful locations on the water and you can't beat the view. We love Canandaigua Lake and knew we wanted to get married by the water so that is why we chose it. They also had great reviews. We had to become members of the country club to have our wedding there. The food was very good. Our ceremony on the patio was beautiful!

I'm not sure if we were regular, long time, members if our experience would have been different. This is super long but I think it's important to share our experience. The event planner, while I'm sure is amazing at what she does, had way too much on her plate and needed someone helping her. I could tell early on when we communicated with her she was overwhelmed, overworked and didn't really have time for us. I always had to reach out to her and there was a lot of miscommunication. We had a VERY simple, 60 guest wedding, with no bridal party, that overall should have been very straightforward. I feel like there was no record kept of our requests or how our wedding was going to go, etc. For example at our rehearsal the night before, she asked me about our bridal party when we had already told her when planning everything we don't have a bridal party. Just something that should have been written down and known already. Another huge issue was the fact that we had cheese cakes as our wedding cakes. I asked her multiple times if there would be fridge space for them and she said yes, even the night before at rehearsal. On the day of there was no fridge space (apparently it was being installed that day and it didn't fit). She didn't seem to care at all that we had no where to put our cheese cakes on an 85 degree day and should have made it right by putting them in the club house or doing ANYTHING to help. Her suggestion was to leave them in the bridal suite where it was air conditioned. We ended up having to have friends bring coolers with ice to store them. That is just unacceptable when it is something they said they would accommodate they should have made a better effort to do something to help. Other than that hiccup I felt our day was rushed. We went over a tentative schedule right after the ceremony and everything was an hour ahead of what we agreed to. While it wasn't a huge deal that dinner was an hour early it bothered me that she brought the cake out and insisted we cut it almost immediately after dinner. We had JUST finished eating and were going around to tables to greet everyone and she says it's time to cut the cake. People were still eating. It was only 6:30. It just felt like everything was being rushed so she could set up for the next event for the following day. She started cleaning everything before our guests had left. I just wish we could have taken our time a little bit more. Another issue was taking pictures near the golf course. The photographer had to take the first look and family pictures in the shade and it was a battle. She advocated hard for us and we did end up doing them but then when we went to do golden hour photos it was another fight. We weren't near any people golfing but this woman who was golfing started walking towards us and just kept repeating "you can't take pictures on the golf course" pretty aggressively and was very rude. She said she was the president of the country club. You would think the president would be more professional and want paying guests having their wedding to have a good experience. I understand the safely aspect but we were not near anyone. I also think if a wedding is going on maybe you block off golf during that time so there's no issues. Like I said maybe if we were long term members they would have treated us differently. If you are getting married here I would just advise you to stay on top of everything!

Obviously you can't beat the location and our day was absolutely beautiful just wish the staff had been more...

Canandaigua Country Club & Nolans On The Lake: We wanted to get married on the water, and with this beautiful location we quickly knew CCC was right for us. We met with Kristen, and addressed our initial concerns 1. Other venues we liked had MULTIPLE staffing changes and we wanted someone consistent 2. We wanted a full gluten free dinner, Kristen assured us that both of our biggest concerns were not a problem. She has been a long standing employee and didn't plan on leaving, and they had done multiple events with many allergies and made everything just about from scratch. We had some back and forth with contracts because we wanted a few things different and they were accommodating to our needs. I was NERVOUS, this was our biggest vendor, however, Kristen has INCREDIBLE correspondence. She is always prompt and direct. With all that she has going on we did have to have some follow-ups, but she remembered our conversations or had them written down from her emails. She coordinated beautifully with ALL of our other vendors including my outside wedding planner with grace and kindness. About eight days before I had concerns about having everything gluten free because there weren't any notes about that on our contract and I didn't want to make final payment without it nailed down. At that point Kristen had the Chef Jim call me. We talked over our entire menu for about an hour and he really went ingredient by ingredient with me to comfort me. Having a food allergy I know that when I am completely distracted it can be hard to trust that the food you are eating is safe, so this for me was everything. I know catering can be insane for venues because both my husband and I work in the food service industry. After our conversation I was relieved and really went into the week before our wedding with little stress. Our day went smoothly on our end- everyone worked together as a team and our guests were happy. Everyone loved our signature drinks and RAVED ABOUT THE FOOD. We had chosen CCC also because of the reputation of great food from Nolans. We are very happy with that decision. The one thing that got missed was our favor sign never got put out for our guests to view. I had a sign made that highlighted our favorite dog rescue, so once we got home from our honeymoon I posted a nice picture with our boy & the sign. All in all, we had an...