The Villa Bed and Breakfast in Tacoma held a wedding that I was a guest at this weekend and here is what happned.
At first sight you think you have pulled up to the filming of a horror story. The grounds were not maintained well although the grass had been trimmed, the Villa sign had rust stains dripping from it and the building and grounds were not well maintained. A pressure washer and some bleach would go a long way. Very different then the pictures online.
This was supposed to be an all inclusive wedding and reception. It was to include a room to get ready as well as spend the wedding night, flowers, someone to marry them, decorating the fireplace mantle, wine and sparkling cider served before wedding and during pictures along with fruit, cheese, crackers. Dinner including wine and sparkling cider with Caesar salad, chicken Marcella with baby carrots and asparagus, rice pilaf and cheddar bay biscuits. Champagne and cake for toasts and desert.
The people getting married picked the place based on pictures online because they live an hour away as well as numerous phone calls to the current and old owners. Granted they only had 2.5 weeks' notice but were told that the Villa could do a wedding with 48 hours notice and they could totally handle the small wedding totaling 12 people. They meet in person 4 days prior to the wedding to finalize details and they still had not found someone to marry them, that happened 72 hours before the wedding.
The wedding was to start at 4:00pm. The photographer asked about taking pictures of the cake and flowers around 3:15 and was told they were not ready. The room was dated and not well maintained, there were 2 dogs barking in the room next door as the bride and groom tried to get ready. At 3pm the mantel had flowers on it but was not finished. At 4 pm, they were still adding final twigs and candles as well as turning the fireplace on, they had to borrow a lighter to light the candles from a guest. The bride and groom were ready to go but missing flowers, the old owner was supposed to help the new owners of a month or so get everything ready. I as a guest was asked to take the bride a glass of wine the groom requested for her. The guy they found to marry them kept bugging the bride saying they needed to start. The groom and Jr. bridesmaid got their flowers at 4:05. The brides bouquet was finally finished and the wedding started at 4:20. The mother of the groom finally got her corsage after the wedding and we never saw one for the bridesmaid as well as best man, maybe they did not order them but the groom thought they had. Mid ceremony one of the candles ignited one of the decorative twigs, fortunately it burned itself out and we did not have to interrupt the ceremony. You could hear the people in the kitchen talking throughout the ceremony. As soon as they said I do the guy marrying them could not sign papers and demand payment fast enough, The Villa should have paid him and added it to the bill since they hired him, the groom had to run to the room to get checkbook within minutes of being married.
During pictures I had to go ask for more crackers as well as a garbage can for the strawberry ends and grape vines. The cheese selection was excellent, strawberries and grapes were yummy. I also saw the husband come in with more groceries. The groom asked if dinner could be served a few minutes early and he was told no you said 5:00 pm that's when it will be ready. The lighting was horrible in the room and as it got dark we turned on the two small lamps. They had ordered 4 bottles of wine for the evening and we went through 2 at this point. I went back to see when dinner would be ready as it was already 5:15. Dinner was served around 5:30. We were told to keep our wine glasses and bring them to the table with us. They never did serve the other two bottles of wine. We had to ask for water and the husband handed out bottles of water. They brought the champagne and sparkling cider out mid salad, none of the champagne flutes matched. The caesar salads were nothing special and the croutons so hard they were flying across the table. The bride and groom were still eating salads when dinner was brought out 2 plates at a time by the wife and she seriously reached around as they were eating moving the salads because she wanted them served first. The food was luke warm at best. Each piece of chicken was so different in size, the bride had a huge amount while I had a tiny tenderloin. The 3 baby carrots and asparagus stalks were so over cooked they would make good baby food. The rice tasted like nothing had been added to it. There were no seasonings on the food nor salt and pepper on the table. They did bring out a plate with extra chicken but I think only one or two guests took any because it was so bland.
About 20 minutes after everyone was done eating they brought out the cheddar bay biscuits saying sorry we forgot about them(the recipe had been sitting on the hutch just inside the front door all afternoon) and the cake. They asked if anyone wanted coffee or tea, the coffee was brought to us in cups half full and was really weak. 3 of the guests ended up leaving. We thought they were joking about the cake, around 7:00pm the groom goes back to the kitchen and they say we are working on it. At 7:15 the cake comes out and the bride hold back tears. They ordered a two layer cake, the bottom was to be a vanilla cake with strawberry filling with fresh strawberry pieces in it, the top layer was supposed to be a chocolate cake. I am not sure what the decorations were to look like. What they got was a mess. Parts of the cake had no icing, parts had barley a tiny coating, it looked ready to slide apart. They had tried to add like 2 inches of a border on part of the cake leaving the rest empty, they threw strawberries on it and what looked like a tip off a pint tree on top. They told us they ran out of frosting. When they went to cut the cake the wax paper was still attached to the bottom of the chocolate cake. The chocolate cake was under cooked and the center was like warm nasty pudding, the vanilla cake was dry and they used watered down very thin yam so you could not even taste strawberry. Also during dinner other guests were coming and going and going into the room the wedding had taken place in where there were presents and peoples purses.
A few guest politely ate cake, the groom had to chase down a crying bride. They decided not to stay the night. We got the car packed and left the bride and groom to handle the bill. They didn't charge them for the cake or room but begged them to stay saying it would look bad if they left. The old owner was in the kitchen crying. They did not discount them for the poor service.
The business cards had the old owners name crossed off and the new owners name and number written in.