Bernardus Lodge & Spa

Bernardus Lodge was a dream wedding destination! Stacey and the entire Bernardus staff went above and beyond to make our wedding wonderful for our family and friends. Our family and friends are still raving about the food, wine, garden, and staff. Many of our family and friends also stayed at Bernardus and loved it - especially the pool and dining!

Stacey is so responsive, organized, and kind. She always had an answer to our questions and personalized the entire experience for us. We didn't worry about a thing on our wedding day thanks to Stacey. We highly recommend choosing Bernardus for your wedding! It was perfect!

We knew we wanted to have a wedding experience that included the expansive ocean off Carmel Beach and the beautiful warmth and forested hills of Carmel Valley. After extensive research and visits to at least 4 other potential venues, we were completely taken by Bernardus’s gardens, simple elegance, and wonderful team. The ceremony space was exactly the size and feel we sought, including the winding path through lavender and beehives, through the geometric rose beds and bubbling fountains. The food and wine were also incredible. We opted for an all-vegetarian menu and even our meat-eating guests were effusive about the quality and flavors.

The hall for dinner and dancing were well-suited to our needs as well and the staff were amazingly kind and professional. In particular, Nicole Cabantac, our main point of contact and coordinator the day of our wedding was an endlessly warm, responsive, and thoughtful guide through a complex and at times overwhelming process. She laid out all the options for us in our first meeting, kindly walked us through a number of questions around details and specific requests and organized everything with patience and finesse.

The day of she was calming and engaged. She helped to coordinate all the various vendors to ensure we could focus on our guests and enjoying the experience fully. We also enjoyed the discounted night stays before and after the ceremony to give the bride and party a space to get ready in a relaxed way, and for us to enjoy a relaxing couple of days following the wedding to bask in the glow of the warm Carmel Valley sun and Bernardus’s beautiful surroundings.

We can’t recommend Nicole and Bernardus highly enough!

Our wedding was in October of 2018.

My family and I have been coming to Carmel for 15+ years and even as a little girl, I always pictured myself getting married at Bernardus. So it was a dream come true when we chose them for our venue! Our coordinator was Stacey Clapp and I have to say, she deserves an award. I probably sent her 100 emails with random questions about every little thing for a year and she was ALWAYS so helpful and sweet. She is definitely meant to be a wedding coordinator. Everything else about our experience with Bernardus was incredible as well. It is, of course, an expensive venue but in my opinion, it was worth it! They did everything to make our wedding day feel magical.

Our ceremony was in the garden, cocktail hour on the game lawn, dinner on the Lucia patio, and dancing inside the ballroom. Each location was beautiful and perfect but I think the garden ceremony MADE the event. It was amazing. We received so many compliments from guests that it was the best wedding venue they'd ever been to because of the location and backdrop, the hotel design and layout, and the service. I can't wait to go back to Bernardus! Hopefully for our one year anniversary :)