So let me start off by saying our wedding was BEAUTIFUL, but that was largely due to our AMAZING wedding planner, Tabitha Roberts, of Roberts & Co. However, working with Airlie has been an absolute nightmare. At our initial site visit we were told EVERYTHING we wanted to hear. The minute we submitted our non-refundable deposit everything went to hell. We were told we would have to do the a la carte wedding because we were having only 50 guests, which was not what we were told during the initial walk through. We were told all we had to do to hold rooms for our guests was to pay for our room (the bride & groom suite) up front. Later we were told we would have to pay for 50% of all the rooms needed & finally, we were eventually charged 100% for all the rooms we thought we may need (which broke down to just under $7k). How they expect us to know EXACTLY the rooms we will need 6-8 months in advance, prior to even mailing out invites, is beyond me! All the contracts were unclear; they changed depending on what mood the staff was in and when asked to clarify we wouldn’t hear back from them for WEEKS & then we would never get anything in writing, even after requesting it over & over again!
The staff is polite in person, however are super condescending on the phone and in emails. They were even rude to our wedding planner, which seems like a REALLY bad idea, since she was the reason we were initially referred. She had worked with them, prior to multiple changes in staff & management, so this in NO way was her fault. At our final walk through, 4 days prior to the wedding, they only provided estimates of overages and remaining balances. Also, they failed to include the service charges (i.e. gratuities in these estimates, which later we discovered breaks down to about $4k!)
After everything, that walk through that took over 1 month to schedule, felt as if it never even happened, all the requests and changes were conveniently forgotten or ignored. The weekend of, we found out some of our guests were not assigned their own rooms, as requested. The rooms were OVERPRICED ($185/night), small and poorly decorated. In other venues, hotel blocks are given discounts or will give the bride & groom their room for free, this was not the case at Airlie. We also discovered that our rain back up was a STORAGE CLOSET, which they were graciously going to throw in for free! Patrick, the one competent staff member, realized that they gave us this horrible excuse for a wedding site and gave us a beautiful room instead. One week later, after returning from our honeymoon, we received a very rude email stating we owed them over $1k, when we called them to clarify they realized they made several errors in accounting! After several emails, angry phone calls and threats to get small claims involved as well as attorneys, after 1whole month after our wedding did they finally reimburse our overages. Oh, also, as a courtesy they offered to give us access to “tag along” on someone’s corporate event to try and make up for all the difficulties. Really?!
Yes the location is beautiful and the food was delicious, however the staff is completely incompetent. We went through 2 different event coordinators and 1 manager and still feel that our privately hired wedding planner was our saving grace. The accounting people, front staff and special events coordinators are completely incompetent and do not have a problem stealing and lying. Don’t go to Airlie, this venue provided great pictures but also brought on multiple headaches, tears and near homicidal ideation. It was not worth it.