GREYSTONE MANSION

The Visions location is lovely; the weather was perfect. I'm an easy-going person who gets along with everyone and handles large and small problems with ease, and was remarkably relaxed on my daughter's wedding day. It should have been perfect.
  From our first meeting, the owner was hurried whenever we contacted him. Our last meeting with him was less than two weeks before the event to finalize the menu, but he served corn in stead of the green beans with almonds that we selected. The food ranged from mediocre to terrible. The "wedding planner" (his wife) spent a 1/2 hour with the wedding party at the rehearsal, and directed people during the ceremony. Base price was $8,000 plus $500 for having the ceremony there, but then he added a mandatory 18% gratuity to everything (and I mean everything, not just the food). There is also an "additional fee" for anything and everything. Would you like your guests to sit in stead of stand? That will be $2 per person for chairs at the ceremony. Want their beverages to be in glass in stead of plastic? That's another $2 per person. Want actual ham in stead of a pressed ham; that's $3 per person. Oh, and everything carries a 100-person minimum charge. Like a colored tablecloth in stead of white? Yup, that's extra. How about just some plain paper beverage napkins for the bar? They don't provide them, nor did they let us know that until that meeting less than two weeks before the wedding. That's also when they told us we'd have to bring our own garnishes, too. Their staff was supposed to decorate the tables, and did do some of it, but what they didn't do left my family scrambling at the last minute. We asked to bring in a dessert buffet and they agreed. They set up the tables, but would only provide skirting for "their" tables. You guessed it--another "additional fee". I asked where we could work getting the desserts ready for the tables and was shown the employee break room and told "no one's ever in here anyway". I asked about refrigeration and was shown the refrigerator in that room. I hired a young girl as an assistant for the day to oversee keeping the dessert tables stocked. After delivering what my van could hold to that room I left her and another girl to watch over things. When I returned with the rest they said Jo (the wife) had come in and yelled at them, telling them they couldn't use the refrigerator except for the top shelf (Jo says that was our agreement and she could be right, but I didn't remember her saying that) and that they couldn't have things on the tables. Shortly after I arrived the kitchen manager came in (they do have a kitchen just off the reception area) and said "I need all these tables and the countertop; you'll have to use the window ledge". We moved things again, but before long Bob (the owner) was there announcing "you'll have to have all of this out of here in five minutes". That was utterly impossible since we'd spent our time shuffling things around three times and lost much of our organization--all of this in a room that was supposed to be for our use. The kicker is that there's a conference room right next to it that nobody used for anything, and we would have gladly done our setup there in stead if they wanted to use this space. Meanwhile, it is, after all, the employee break room for a public building so I question whether any of us had a "right" to be there. Thankfully the staff that was there was willing to share the space, and actually had more room to work than they had demanded because we squished into a corner. The bottom line is that the setting, view and china are terrific. They charge top dollar--the most expensive I know of in the area--but  fall way short of providing top service.The overall message is that they're doing us a favor to allow us to be their customer (mostly Bob; I suspect it would be a better operation if Jo were in charge). There's also a pall of downright greed. To cap it all off, today I received a PARTIAL refund of our damage deposit. No, nothing was damaged, and the bride's and groom's families stayed after and meticulously cleaned up everything that was our responsibility, and even some that wasn't. No, the charge was for "unauthorized access and early vendor setup from 12-2 @ $50 per hour". At 12:00 I was getting my hair done; none of us were near their reception room. When I arrived at about 1:00 my husband came to help me unload, and the janitor asked if we needed to put anything in the room. We said that would be nice, it would keep us from needing to move things again later. We set our boxes inside the reception room, then went downstairs for another load. When we returned Jo had re-locked the room and we saw her leaving. We continued to set things up IN THE EMPLOYEE BREAK ROOM, then I left to get the rest from home. Our official, allowed "entry" time to the reception room was 2:00, and we were not in there until after 3:00. Moral of the story: if you like to be nickel and dimed to death; if you like feeling that you are being barely tolerated; if you think adding stress and people with bad attitudes to your event sounds like fun then Bob's the guy for you! If not, then look for a venue with people who are there to serve you, not be served by you.