Hotel Heron

Our event in the Heritage Ballroom was well beyond our expectation and the service was impeccable. The rooms were well-appointed. Toi, our sales professional really made our life so easy. I highly recommend Hotel Heron!

It was a great week. Intimate and cozy and the perfect setting. We worked well with Toi and the addition of the rooftop cocktail reception made took it over the top. The staff was exceptional and the spaces for photos was over the top - cannot wait to see all of our pictures. Thank you again Hotel Heron team.

Our wedding was nothing short of magical! From the moment we arrived, the atmosphere was filled with love, beauty, and joy.

The team were so heartfelt and helpful, turning a normally stressful situation into a breeze! The after reception was also such a blast! The food from was simply delicious and can we talk about the dance floor for a bit? Everyone, from the flower girl to the grandparents were tearing it up all night!

Thanks so much Heron!! A one of a kind venue for a one of a kind day!

Overall, Hotel Heron served as a wonderful venue for the wedding day, but our experience leading up to that day caused a lot of heartache and unnecessary stress.

The pros: location, venue, food, drinks, day of staff, and value.

The hotel is new and ideally located in Old Town Alexandria. It's replete with character and provided a base for our guests to enjoy the charms of the city. Out of town guests turned the trip into a pleasant getaway. For post and pre-wedding events, it was easy to find other spots in the area to gather our friends and families.

We had 90 guests and the event spaces at the venue were well suited for our wedding size. For our cocktail hour we had the option of using the rooftop or the Assembly Rooms - we opted for the Assembly Rooms to avoid the August heat. It was a little tight but no one complained and the hotel made it work. The ballroom is modern and airy, but still exudes Old Town charm. It was large enough for guests and a 6-piece band to fit comfortably but still provided an intimate setting for the event.

We received countless compliments on the food served. The appetizers were the star of the show. Every option we picked was a hit from crabcakes and lobster rolls to chicken sliders and bacon wrapped mushrooms. All were delicious and out of the ordinary. No one went hungry.

Day-of staff were professional, had the rooms set up neatly, and provided attentive service. Plated meals were served efficiently and guests enjoyed ordering genuine cocktails from the bar (martinis, margaritas, old fashioneds, etc.) in addition to standard mixed drinks. A two bartender set up kept the drinks flowing without bottlenecks.

Relative to other venues that we considered, the hotel offered great value for the event. All food and drinks were included, they offered several packages to choose from, and we were able to negotiate small details that were important to us without much push back.

The cons: planning experience, communication, preparation, lack of attention to detail, frequent staff turnover.

We endured more heartache and stress leading up to the wedding than anyone should have to. Our experience was soured by poor communication, lack of preparation, inattention to detail, and constant turnover in staff that would make us think twice if we were to do it again.

On the communication end, emails and phone calls went unanswered and unreturned more often than not. Our questions would sit unanswered and we'd send several follow ups, eventually having to escalate to corporate staff before we'd hear anything back. Things seemed to improve once Imane took over, but this went on for months.

Over the course of our planning, we were passed to 5 different POCs as one coordinator after the next came and left the hotel. We don't blame Hotel Heron entirely for staff turnover, but this rate of turnover may point to other problems in management and we can fault them for failing to communicate the changes to us. When each transition occurred, we weren't told that the person had left or who our new POC would be. There was one day that we had a scheduled meeting with a coordinator at the hotel only to find out upon arriving and waiting for an hour that they had been fired - seemingly with no clear plan of who would replace that person. We felt a constant need to reiterate and reconfirm things that were promised by one person would be upheld by another that was replacing them.

In terms of preparation, we had agreed on a floor plan two months before the wedding date. We had labored over the placement of guest tables, the cake, the bar, and the band. At the insistence of one coordinator we planned for two bartenders at a single bar (i.e., the event would only have one bar). We met for our pre-wedding walkthrough 3 days before our event only to be told that we need to have two bars and that the layout of the room would be a problem for the flow of wait staff - it had to be changed and there was no time to work on updates. This could have easily been avoided if the floor plan had been reviewed ahead of time by all necessary parties at the venue end. The event layout ultimately ended up being ok and very close to our desired floor plan, but upon arriving for the event we found that the whole room had been flipped and our cake was pushed to a corner of the room. At that point, what was done was done and we had no chance to make adjustments or tweak what seemed flawed to us.

Lastly, when working through contractual documentation, we had to spend a lot time and effort reviewing and revising terms, not because we wanted to but because they lacked necessary detail and contained inaccuracies. The original contract shared with us did not specify any of the details of our selected package - no price per person, entree selection, drink package, or other relevant details. Eventually, we got this added without much trouble, but it felt like we were experiencing the growing pains of the hotel as one of the first couples to choose it as a venue. In our BEO, we had to work through small inaccuracies and omissions - not a big deal but still more work for us.

TLDR: Our wedding day was well executed, food and drinks were great, and the venue provided excellent value. However, communication was poor, turnover in staff was painful, lack of attention to detail created extra work for us, and we were constantly worried about things falling through the cracks.