My Fiancé and I chose Bard Mansion for several reasons. Price was a huge factor - It is extremely reasonable. Beauty and historical significance was also a big reason we chose this venue, a true gem of Ventura County. The staff is wonderful and it is obvious that they are old hats in the business, no request we made was to much for them. The food was delicious, the chocolate fondue was a BIG hit. They even have a coordinator/manager to help you in the planning with the mansion, Jessica is the "super woman" of the mansion and she knows her stuff - love you Jessica!

My husband and I were so thankful and incredibly relieved to stumble upon Bard Mansion (esp. after extensive research/visits with other venues!) We were on a very tight budget and we were very surprised by how reasonable it was to pay for the whole shebang (wedding + reception.) Our ceremony was outdoors in the cute little gazebo behind the mansion and the reception was inside the mansion. There's no venue fee and you pay according to the amount of guests (aka food) you'll be bringing in. Jessica Maheux is the coordinator and she was a pleasure to work with. Always very prompt and informative.

Pros: It's absolutely beautiful there! Just check out all of the pictures on the "Bard Mansion Wedding" Pinterest board. It's nice and set apart. (As I said, my husband and I were looking into "cheap" options: parks, churches, museums, unconventional places... but with the costs of renting tables, plates, & dance floor + hiring a caterer + dealing with random strangers popping in, we realized that we would be saving a lot of MONEY and a lot of STRESS by choosing Bard Mansion.) I got ready in the upstairs area with my bridesmaids. The staff there is incredible! Our DJ came over 4 hours late and the staff really jumped into action to help us keep things moving smoothly. We had a buffet and the staff actually stepped in and released table by table to the buffet at a nice pace. The dance floor was so fun (when the DJ finally came!)

Challenges:
Since it's located on a navy base, you need to send in government issued ID information for EACH guest under 18 (aka Drivers License, Name, birthdate, and State.) We had many international guests at our wedding and the protocol was even more extreme for them: they needed to send in a copy of their passport. ALSO... each international guest had to be personally escorted onto the base in a special van. This took quite some time for Jessica (who was amazing!)
Lastly, it got quite hot inside as the night went on.
Overall: AMAZING!

We had our wedding ceremony and reception at the Bard Mansion, and it was wonderful. The ceremony was in the backyard at the gazebo, which was surrounded by trees full of singing birds, and the reception was held in the mansion. The main room was set up very nicely and the glass doors let in a lot of natural light, folks enjoyed wandering from the dining room to the bar and patio, and around the rooms in the mansion filled with historical memorabilia from the Bard family. Jessica, the event manager, was great, she was very responsive and helpful, she answered all of my questions, and was present and available the entire day of the event. The food was tasty and the whole thing was very reasonable financially, for a ceremony and reception for ~60 people with hors d'oeuvres, lunch, cake, champagne, and an open bar, everything came in just under $5k. I will say that there are some limitations that come with having your wedding on a Naval Base. We needed to send our guest list with information about the guests, like SSN, two weeks ahead of the wedding so that everyone could go through a background check. This isn't an issue if you have friends and family who already have military IDs. We also had a really hard time finding vendors who would submit information for their drivers to get background checks so they could bring the cake and flowers on base, and my Mom wound up picking up the flowers and cake and driving them over herself. If you're a DIY kinda gal, or you know someone in the Navy who can order things from you on the Naval base, this shouldn't be an issue.