Hello to any bride, or planner, planning a wedding at Fort Langley National Historic Site of Canada:
Fort Langley is supposed to be an awesome place to go, and really it is. But if you're thinking of having your wedding here, please think twice.
We just recently had our wedding there this past August. The venue was awesome for pictures and everyone had an amazing time, but that's probably because they don't know everything else that happened.
Leading up to the day, communicating with them was extremely difficult to say the least. No one would respond to me for weeks and when they did, I would get one word replies to a paragraphs long message. Arranging everything (which was all done by me. while going to school and working full time) was hard. I persevered because I thought it would be worth it.
Then, much closer to the day, they put me in contact with someone else. Who was absolutely amazing. She made our day even more memorable. I will NEVER forget her and her amazingly warm, kind and helpful personality.
Unfortunately, most of what was communicated to the original person in charge of our wedding, (I suspect) never got communicated to her (a big example of this was whether or not security would be hired for the overnight care of our belongings that had to be left behind. This caused A LOT of frustration and unnecessary stress leading up to our day, and now more than a month later.
At 11:30pm on a Saturday they RUSHED us out of the facility. Liquor and gifts and everything we could see and grab was hastily loaded into limos. All the while were being told (rather rudely) to get off the property. We loaded the liquor and attempted to load the non-alcohol despite being told by the bartender we were not allowed to do so (the bartender was hired by the Fort Langley on-site caterer but we knew we had to take it as our liquor license was over -- something he should know as bartender).
So off we rush -- my new husband and I to our honeymoon and our guests to the after party. We leave the clean up to our generous friends and family. Upon their arrival to the fort, they see strewn Red Bull. Broken drink dispensers. Missing audio equipment. Missing wedding cake. Someone had VERY OBVIOUSLY broken in and stolen the most expensive items they could find.
Jumping the fence is rather easy to do, which we were told by Fort staff prior to our event (hence us discussing security). Thankfully it wasn't much, but my brand new stand mixer (in yellow!) had been mistakenly left behind (that's what we get for rushing). I had been waiting years for that stand mixer and I hadn't even taken it out of the box. But it was gone. (This, by the way, is really the only thing I care about that was taken.) Apparently the security we were told they would look into was never followed through with. If we had been told this, we would have hired our own -- in fact, we had been looking into it for another venue we were considering. Unfortunately for us, we were told they would do it.
So they waited TEN DAYS to call the police. The police have told us The Fort has rather poor security -- dim lighting, etc. Now the fort is telling us that there was no evidence of a break in (because apparently we would throw Red Bulls around, break our own drink dispensers and steal our own stuff.) In fact, we are apparently to blame (this comes after we told by several Fort employees that our belongings would be safe if we left them there). Haha.. Ahhh...!!!!
They do not have the experience to deal with weddings. There is no understanding of the amount of communication, time, work and MONEY that is necessary to plan such a significant event.
BEWARE of holding such a significant event with them. And if you do plan on having one there, make sure you hire security if you leave ANYTHING behind.