I have thought long and hard about what to write regarding our venue, and have decided to be really honest about it. First the good stuff. The Fred Heutte Center is an absolutely gorgeous garden in the middle of one of Norfolk's nicer neighborhoods. It is lovingly tended by Norfolk's master gardeners, and is charming in every way from the heirloom vegetable garden to the lathe house surrounded by camellias. They have a building on site which is normally used for gardening classes, yoga classes, community meetings, that sort of thing. The price is extremely reasonable. All other outdoor garden venues in the area were thousands for just a few hours, and fraught with rules about what caterer to use, what rental company, etc. We got the entire grounds of the Heutte center for $375 from 6am to midnight and we were able to use any vendors we wanted. The grounds were gorgeous and in pristine condition. No complaints there.

My difficulty came in dealing with Bill, the contact person at the venue. When we booked (many months in advance) he was very courteous and helpful over the phone. He was certainly happy to take our security deposit and hold date fee. The problems started when I needed to nail down a time for the rental company to deliver our tent and rentals. I experienced a very upsetting phone call where he was rude to me, spoke (yelled) over me and was very uncooperative, just because I wanted to nail down a date (could they deliver Friday or did it have to be Saturday?) and he had the possibility that someone <i>might</i> want to rent the venue for a wedding on Friday. He did not have this person's name or phone number to be able to confirm with them whether or not they wanted the venue, but could not give me (who had booked months in advance and paid for that privilege) a time to have the tent delivered since there was a possibility they might call back. I ended the call extremely frustrated and somehow Shayna, our wedding coordinator was able to nail down a date with him over the phone later.

The other problems came the day before the wedding. I had spoken to him on Thursday when I got the keys and told him we'd be bringing by some decorations and things to set up on Friday. There was no event booked and he said that would be fine. We showed up Friday around 1 and he told us we could set a few things up as long as we didn't turn on the air conditioner. We were fine with that, and brought some things in. About twenty minutes later he came into the room and just stood there, staring at us for several long moments. Finally someone looked at him and said, "Yes?" He angrily said that he had to go to the bank, and that someone needed to lock up when we were finished. We said okay and he left. He had not returned by the time we left a half an hour or so later.

We were scheduled to hold the rehearsal outside in the garden that evening at five, which was already cleared with him. Everyone arrived and when my father needed to use the bathroom, I went to the door and began to unlock it. The door swung open and suddenly his face was about six inches from mine. "What do you want?!" I took a step back, startled. "My father needed to use the bathroom." "Look, we already had this conversation!" "I'm sorry, what?" "You did not rent the venue for today!" "I know sir, we are going to have the rehearsal outside, which we already cleared with you, my father just needed to use the bathroom." "I don't understand why you are trying to get another full day's rental out of us that you haven't paid for!"

At this point he was very visibly angry and yelling and so I asked him to give me a moment. I was really rattled at having someone in my face yelling when I had been given permission by this same person to do everything we did that day. I stepped outside and asked Shayna, our wedding coordinator if she would deal with him. She stepped inside and handled him swiftly and professionally. The gist of the conversation they had was that he was going to charge us $50 to use the bathroom (which I gladly would have paid to avoid the unpleasantness). Shayna assured him there would be no problems, and we did not see him again the rest of the time. After all was said and done, they did not charge us anything extra.

I would have loved to give them a glowing review since everything else about my wedding was so awesome. It's a shame I really can't due to the very unprofessional manner in which I was treated on multiple occasions. So how about this. Venue: 5 stars. Representative: 1.5 stars.