I was so happy with our entire wedding weekend at the Faena. We had our ceremony with 270 people on the beach, cocktail hour in and around the mammoth garden, and ceremony across the street at the Forum. Due to pricing we did a complete buyout of Casa Faena and had guests who wanted to stay at the main Faena Hotel book on their own. The guests who stayed at Casa Faena raved about it. Staff was friendly and they loved the charm of the boutique hotel and spent a lot of time on the roof). It comes without saying, the entire staff at the main hotel was also exceptional.
As for the wedding I couldn’t say better things. The food was delicious from the cocktail hour to the late night snacks. The drinks were flowing, the there was a great selection in the standard menu that came with the wedding pricing. The weather helped the beach ceremony go without a flaw. Cocktail hour at sunset near the mammoth was dreamy. The Forum was such a cool space the have the reception. The guests loved the unique room, and the sound was great. We were worried after reading a review about the acoustics with the tall ceilings, but we were very pleased. Overall, this was a great place to host a wedding.
P.S. when you book a wedding with the Faena a bridal concierge is included. Hilda! She was the best and so helpful throughout the day – the one person I didn’t know I needed. She helped me and the bridesmaids while we were getting ready, helped usher my husband around the property, and was always ready with a new drink while we were on the dance floor. She is the best!

We had a large wedding 200+ guests at The Faena using several of their facilities in November 2019. I have waited several months to try and find a better prospective before I wrote this review as I wanted to try and be as fair and balanced as possible. I am writing this review to make prospective brides aware of some of the issues that plagued us through out our experience with the hotel and the events and group bookings departments.
The venue is beautiful and offers a great range of spaces for events. In addition I must sing the praises of the performance of the catering department on the evening. The food was great! It looked fabulous, tasted lovely and the service was wonderful. These are the positive things I can say about our experience.
Planning a large destination wedding is an incredible amount of work and the one thing a bride and her family should be able to count on is the hotel's ability to do what hotels do. They need to take reservations, keep track of those reservations as well as keep track of the accounts, deposits made on catering, event space rentals and room block deposits. This was where we found The Faena lacking in nearly every way. The group bookings department that dealt with room blocks seemed to have an ever changing staff and not only did we have to chase every month to get room booking updates but they could not seem to keep track of our blocked rooms. We were continually for a full year given incorrect numbers of rooms available in our room block. In addition on several occasions guests would contact the Faena following booking instructions and be told there were no more rooms in our block left and that the only rooms available were higher priced rooms. One guest was sold a room for $1700 dollars a night being told that was all that was available when in fact there were rooms available in our block for $500 per night. The bookings department was also incredibly poor at answering emails or returning phone calls. This made our work much greater as we had guests in over 70 rooms at the hotel. In the end after exasperation consumed us we had a meeting with the manager who did help to some degree but we had to call on him several times especially regarding reservations.
The other problem that has plagued us is the lack of ability to keep track of deposits. It was incredibly difficult to get accountings from the catering and group bookings departments showing deposits made across the year of planning. When we obtained them they were often not correct. Again staff did not reply to emails or often would not return phone calls greatly increasing our level of stress and increasing our work load.
Two weeks before the wedding the grooms mother received a phone call from another mother who had also had their child's wedding at the venue. They had all the same issues we did and warned us of many things in regard to the upcoming event but especially warned us to very carefully check the final bill.
It took us over a month to get a final bill from the hotel as well as another call to the manager to obtain the final accounting. When it did arrive it was sent to us in a ridiculous format, a jumble of different individual pages of charges and receipts rather than a proper balance sheet or statement of account. It took a great deal of time to cover thoroughly but only a brief time to understand why we had been warned. It was incorrect... by far more than $10,000 dollars. The mistake of course was not in our favor. Upon review we found there were several mistakes. We were charged for items that were meant to be included, credits were not applied and then there were some silly items like a $150.00 charge for a pack of Potato chips. They even tried to charge us a resort fee on the bridal dressing room we had for day use bridal preparation only. I spent a great deal more time going over item after item before all departments agreed they indeed owed us money and that amount. I was assured the remaining deposit funds would be returned right away. Here I am writing this review more than a month after this was agreed and the funds still have not been returned, and as usual phone my phone calls are going unreturned as are my emails.
Summing up our experience. The hotel made our entire experience far more stressful than it should have been. Hotels should be able to keep track of rooms, guest and bookings not to mention accounts. They should also always do their customers the courtesy of replying to calls and emails in a timely manner. The Faena is in my opinion one of the most beautiful and special properties in Miami but this being said it is Miami and there are lots of choices. If you are seriously considering the Faena for a wedding or event take to heart my experience. While the wedding was beautiful I would chose another venue if I had a time machine. The hotels lack of professionalism just made my job all that much harder.