Red Lion Inn – Cohasset MA
I’m really struggling about what to say in a review about them, because in the grand scheme of things, when it comes down to it, the place looked absolutely gorgeous, it was the best day of life and I had an absolute blast and so did my guests. However, there were quite a few things throughout the process, and the day of the wedding that bothered me.
I’ll start with the good. The place is drop dead beautiful. From the second I walked in there I was in love and it looked 10 times more beautiful than I could have imagined on our wedding day. Our wedding food was really good as well and tasted great. At our tasting we tried SO much food—and literally there wasn’t one thing I didn’t like.
Now onto the bad. You will read a lot of bad reviews about the Red Lion from previous years. I do think that they have gotten their acts together quite a bit since those reviews, but customer service is definitely not their foretay. Throughout the process it was difficult to get in touch with them and they took a long time (sometimes up to a week) to write back to emails. That may be okay with some people, but in this day and age to me, you should respond to emails in a day or 2 MAX.. There is only 1 email address for all of the wedding coordinators there so maybe the emails sometimes get lost in the shuffle – but either way, it was hard to work with.
The day of the wedding , was really where they let me down the most. First of all, we couldn’t get into the bridal suite till late that day b/c the bride from the night before was still in it—which is fine, the Red Lion volunteered for us to get ready in the room where we had our cocktail hour and they set up mirrors. It actually worked out great (big, a lot of space, bright, etc) UNTIL I was in the middle of getting my hair done about an hour before we needed to leave, and the wedding coordinator from the Red Lion came in saying we had to get out right away, they needed to set up and we couldn’t be in here anymore. So here I am, an hour before my wedding, with all my stuff everywhere and my hair half done, scrambling to unexpectedly get out of the room. Then as I was literally leaving the Red Lion, the coordinator came running up to me asking me to pay for the lunch they had brought us from their restaurant. Really, as I’m getting on the trolley, I should not be having to worry where my credit card is so I can pay for a $50 lunch – I think the 25k in food I just spent with you for the wedding is enough J
Again, none of that is a super big deal, but, it added a lot of unneeded stress to my day.
Now onto the reception. My husband and I went to the beach during our cocktail hour to take pictures, just us and our photographer. So the bridal party and my parents got to go to the cocktail hour. Sadly, neither my parents nor the bridal party were offered ANY passed appetizers the entire cocktail hour (in fact, my mom and bridesmaids never saw any being passed). I started asking around, and it turns out many people didn’t even know we had passed appetizers and never saw any. This upset me a lot, because I spent a long time talking to the Red Lion about how many would be served, etc. (We didn’t order a certain number, it was just part of our package that they would continually serve passed apps the entire cocktail hour). We had 4 different apps that were suppose to be passed, and I’ve been asking around and much to my dismay everyone is saying they didn’t have any. I’m not really sure what went wrong or where the problem was – they brought over a plate to my husband and I while we were taking pics and everything was delicious. It made me sad that none of my guests got to enjoy the greatness. As I mentioned above, we went to the beach for pictures and we were suppose to be back at 6:30 for the reception. We ran a few minutes late and got back at 6:35. My wedding coordinator from the Red Lion was super angry at us about this and literally gave us attitude and yelled at my mom about it. I still don’t understand why she was so mad about 5 minutes.
Going into our wedding, many of my already married friends talk about how great it is during the reception, how all the wait staff goes out of their way to make sure you’re happy. While this isn’t a huge deal or deal breaker for me—that was NOT my experience at all. I was never once asked if I needed anything or wanted anything. At one point I had to stop a waiter and ask if they could bring over a water pitcher and refill my glass. After dinner, they were suppose to take away our sweetheart table since it was in the middle of the dance floor – that never happened. At about 9:45 it was still there people were dancing around it (3 glasses got knocked off of it) I had to go INTO the kitchen to find someone and tell them to take it away. My wedding coordinator was no where to be found from dinner on and I still haven’t talked to her since before dinner!
Anyways, like I said before, it was the best day of my life, the venue looked absolutely gorgeous and in the grand scheme of things everything above is minutia. Would I recommend it to someone, yes, it is that beautiful I would. I would even have my wedding there again in a heartbeat. I would just forewarn someone interested, that it’s not as easy as it should be with them along the way. I did want to give an honest review thought of things that bothered me. One thing I did do, which I would highly recommend if you’re interested in the Red Lion is hire an outside Day of Coordinator. I did and these 2 rocked! They brought all the things the Red Lion Inn doesn’t – a personal investment into wanting your day to be fabulous and the best day of your life. They went out of their way to make sure everything ran smooth, and I truly believe it did – because of the people I hired.