The one positive thing about the venue is the venue itself. It is very unique, beautiful, rustic, and timeless. We loved the way it looked, the historical ambiance, and knew that for a July wedding it would be the best location due to the hot weather. Tina gave us a wonderful tour and was very communicative with us during the booking process. However, the beauty of the venue was not worth the experience we had the day of our wedding. The owner of the venue, Amanda, was kind to us up until the day of our wedding. She had mentioned a number of times that she usually isn’t present at weddings, which became obvious, and looking back I wish she wasn’t present at mine. To summarize, she micromanaged many of the details from our walkthrough to the day of the wedding and did not allow for any suggestions on what we thought our special day should look like. I understand it is her venue, but she was very condescending when we brought up ideas. When issues arose the day of our wedding, instead of consulting with the day coordinator we were REQUIRED to have and paid hundreds of dollars for, she refused to allow her to do her job to problem solve. Instead, she pulled my husband multiple times from our Bridal portraits. Amanda took on the role of the day-of coordinator and expected us to be thankful for her help, despite her being absolutely rude to my actual day of coordinator, sister, and especially husband. Not to mention how she made some of my guests feel, as some of them shared with me after the fact to express their frustration with some of the comments and tone she was using with my guests. Lastly, a side note if you are planning a summer wedding, it was about 100 degrees that day which is one of the reasons we booked Merryman. I knew it was hot and I wasn’t expecting it to be cool, but the second story had absolutely no airflow. Even throughout the night it was very warm inside. Just something to consider.

While I have reached out to the owner to voice my concerns, she apologized for one out of the many issues we were directly burdened with that day. The rest of the concerns were met with the response of “I am sorry you feel that way” and not taking any accountability for her actions that resulted in us feeling the way we did. She also blatantly lied to me about concerns I had brought up. No responsibility was taken for those concerns, even when my guests, family members, and other vendors confirmed the issues at hand. Instead of going back and forth trying to get her to see the other side, I decided to just write a review.

If you plan to book with this venue, I would recommend avoiding having the owner, Amanda, present at your event. She was, after all, the main denominator to all the frustrations and issues we experienced that night. Unfortunately it would be hard to avoid since she is the owner. Therefore, I would not recommend this venue for anyone planning to have their wedding or reception there. I can only speak from my experience, but I do hope that others who choose to book here have a better experience than we did.