The Alden Hotel—F
This venue is beautiful; however, the service is TERRIBLE! I booked my wedding in April 2011 with Catherine Bradley, the wedding coordinator at the time. She was fantastic! Then she left… and 3 coordinators later (yes, in the course of ONE year), I was stuck with Natalie Monk. Natalie was terrible. Here were my main grievances:
- The venue is NOT climate controlled! Do not believe them when they tell you that it is! I was told that the veranda was completely walled in and that it would not be hot on the day of the wedding. Our reception started at 7:00PM and it was hot in there! Yes, there is an A/C, but what they didn’t tell us was the “wall” has a 2 inch gap at the bottom, so all the cool air just seeps out. It didn’t get cool in there until almost 9:00PM when the sun was set.
- We had 4 coordinators in the course of 13 months! The coordinators were Catherine Bradley, an interim coordinator that I never met but my mom dealt with, Terra Worshek, and lastly, Natalie Monk. This is clearly a management problem.
- Natalie was rude. That’s the only word I can use to describe her. She met us with crossed arms, rolling eyes and a ton of attitude. We spent $18000 on the Alden alone! I felt like the lease she could do was be pleasant.
- They wouldn’t let us add rooms to our block, even though there were almost 4 months until the wedding. We were told by the original coordinator that it would be fine to add rooms to the block, as long as there were rooms available in the hotel. Natalie refused to add rooms and said our guests would have to pay the current rate for the rooms, even though the hotel had plenty of rooms available in the hotel. My mom had to call the COO of Alden Hotels, and he personally added 15 rooms for Friday and Saturday for us with no problem.
- One month before the wedding, they raised our bar package price $8 per person! My mom and I had a conference call with Natalie and Ty (her boss, equally rude), and they agreed to only raise it $4/person.
- The day of the wedding, Natalie didn’t show up until 1pm. My mom had been trying to contact her to get some help organizing the vendors that showed up to set up for the reception, move a few table to fit the current seating chart, etc. Basically, we needed her to do her job and coordinate the reception set up. She stormed into the bridal suite and said to me “What do you want? You guys have been calling me all day! I don’t get here until Noon on Saturday!!” All my BMs, make-up artist and hair stylists stood there with their jaws on the floor! I never raised my voice and said that we needed her to coordinate the venue set up and that my mom had some questions for her. She threw her hands up in the air and then started to walk out of the room. I said “by the way, Good afternoon, Natalie.” She rolled her eyes and said, “Hi Kelly.”
- My florist and linens company pretty much set up the entire reception site and it was GORGEOUS (I’ll do their reviews in another post)! To my dismay, Natalie had set up 5 appointments to book clients on the day of my wedding! She was selling weddings using our set up, when she thought we had left for the church. She was bringing clients into the veranda and signing contracts on my linens when she was supposed to be working for us. I couldn’t believe that on the day of a wedding, the coordinator would book appointments to sign new clients! It was unbelievably unprofessional and I hope the prospective brides took notice that on their wedding day, they could expect her to be doing the exact same thing.
- Natalie left early from the reception. She told me that she was staying until 10 PM, but my maid of honor saw her leave at 9.
- The bartenders had tip jars out on the bar at the cocktail hour and at the reception. One of my bridesmaids asked Natalie to have them take it down. A few hours later they were back up and I personally told them to take them down! We paid 22% service charge that covered their tip. It was very rude to ask my guests to tip them to pour wine and champagne. Later I found out from one of my guests that the bartenders had a full bar of liquor behind the bar and was serving cocktails to the guests and pocketing the cash for drinks. This is unbelievably unprofessional and out of line!
Basically, the whole experience with the Alden is one that I will regret. They were rude, unprofessional and not willing to help at all. I feel like everyone was sweet until they got our money, then all sense of professionalism and customer service went out the window. I would not recommend the Alden to anyone! Yes it’s a beautiful venue, but it’s not worth the disrespect and terrible service you get along with it. Save yourself the hassle and book somewhere else!!