A few changes

When we originally were beginning the process of planning our wedding, we hadn't taken into consideration anything around a reception.

When we finally figured out that we would likely need a space to serve dinner and have the family together, I tried to see what options were available to us. With my job, I'd achieved status with a major hotel chain - so I figured why don't we start there.

I contacted one of the hotels that we had stayed at before when we were in the process of moving down here. The property had been nice and staff were available and friendly. So began the saga of reserving a reception space and blocking off some rooms for our out-of-town guests.

The event coordinator for the property was difficult to get ahold of and soon it would be almost a week before we'd get a response to any of our inquiries. Over time, this just became a non-starter for us; we needed someone to be able to look at the space, coordinate food/drinks, go over table layouts, linens, etc and she stopped responding to messages all together.

Fast forward to last weekend when Dani and I had to go down to the hotel because I couldn't get anyone on the phone from the hotel at all.

We got there and the front desk was completely empty. There were some checked-in guests milling around in the lobby area, but the place was otherwise a ghost town.

After waiting at the front desk for a bit over five minutes, someone came out from the back room and asked if she could help us. I told her that I needed to cancel some stuff because of the reasons listed above. Well, the event coordinator doesn't work there anymore. Nobody is reading her email or responding to inquiries and some other new person is in charge of all that - details that nobody communicated to us.

We asked the lady to cancel our contract for rooms, but she was unable to and we were given the new contact information to follow up with this new person (which I have, but have still not received confirmation that the contract has been cancelled).

Room reservations have been moved to the hotel next store, which is still part of my rewards program and whose staff is much more responsive.

The reception was relocated to Oak Marsh Golf Course - which is about a mile and a half from us. The space is beautiful and their staff is fantastic to work with. We've already nailed down the contract, linens and settings, table layouts, and are just about finished working on the dinner menu. Even though we've only been working with Oak Marsh for about a week, they've been outstanding all along the way and the decision to move in this direction has left Dani and I feeling much more comfortable about the reception.