SWEET AND SIMPLE
Great people, beautiful place.
Awesome venue to have your outdoor wedding and sheltered reception.

We got married at Park Place just a few weekends ago and we had an overall positive experience with this venue. We booked them a year in advance, which allowed us plenty of time to plan our perfect day. One of the main reasons we chose Park Place was because the venue was all-inclusive and we knew another couple who got married there. MaryAnn and Wayne are the owners and they take great pride in Park Place. They assigned us a wonderful wedding coordinator, Melissa, who we will brag about in just a second. Also included were tables, chairs, linens, all the tablewares, caterer and servers, open bar, and set-up & cleaning crew. We had booked for 100 guests and it was $122/person (children under 3 years old are not included in the guest count, and some vendors may be counted as part of your guest count so make sure you check with them if they need to be fed). The price per guest changes as your guest count goes up. The minimum guest count is 100. They also require a deposit, which is non-refundable. I believe we had 2 meetings with them before the wedding date. One of the meetings was to pick out colors and table linens. The other was the 2-week meeting to finalize linens, make final payments and map out the ceremony and reception. We were able to have our wedding rehearsal the day before the wedding, and we were happy to see that the tables were already set up that day.

The venue: The place itself is beautiful. It’s tucked between an almond farm. It’s a bit of a drive to get to (we are from Bakersfield). No uber or ride sharing services are available in the area due to the location. There’s plenty of on-site parking for guests, and if you party too hard that night, they will let you park your vehicle overnight to be picked up the next morning. We got married on November 5, so there trees were not in bloom, but there were still plenty of greenery throughout the venue. Our ceremony was held in front of the gazebo and our reception was in a large reception hall. The doors can be opened or closed depending on the season. MaryAnn just recently added a beautiful chandelier to the reception hall, which was a nice added bonus b/c it went perfectly with our wedding decor. We had a bridal cabin that was made available to me 4 hours before the ceremony (ceremony started at 4 pm) and the cabin was cute but had enough space for myself, 3 bridesmaids, and our makeup and hair stylist. The cabin has its own bathroom, a fridge, an ac/heater, and other amenities. The fridge was helpful because we needed food to power us through the afternoon until dinnertime, but I was sad to hear that someone had turned the fridge off at some point during the event because when we packed up for the night, our sandwiches and deli meat had all gone bad :( The groom has a small changing area, but we’ve been told it’s getting a makeover soon. They allow 2 hours for decorating the day of the wedding, from 8-10 am so make sure you have a plan and a team that day to do that. They will set up and dress the tables in the reception hall. Normally they also set up the ceremony chairs but since we chose to do a cathedral style seating arrangement, my husband and his groomsmen had to figure out how to set that up.

Melissa: She’s wonderful! We can’t brag about her enough. She was assigned to us several months after we booked the venue, so a lot of the wedding planning we had to do ourselves. However, once we got Melissa on our party planning committee, everything just went smoothly. She’s a pleasure to work with and she is beyond helpful. She makes herself available as much as possible and we were able to text and call her if we had any questions. She goes above and beyond, and it one instance, she even offered her truck when we were talking about bringing our own easels to the venue. Once in a while, she’d text or call us just to check in on us and to see if there’s anything she can help with. She helped us a lot with our wedding rehearsal—getting everyone lined up, giving everyone instructions, and timing the music we had picked out. The day of the wedding, she took good care of us making sure to check on us at our cabin and also running around the venue making sure everything is in place. She also made sure we were eating and even personally brought us our appetizers and meals. If you have the opportunity to book this venue, we highly recommend her as a coordinator.

We’ve read other people’s reviews and understand that people will have different experiences with this venue. Our review is based solely on our personal experience with the hopes of giving future brides & grooms as much information about this venue as possible.

I was the maid of honor for my sister’s wedding recently. We had a wedding coordinator who was very kind, but she was constantly stepped on by the venue owner,
Maryann. This poor girl was constantly bulldozed. Maryann also had a habit of pushing her own ideas and getting offended or frustrated if my sister said no. She pushed for a "sweets table" so abrasively and frequently it became a joke between me and my sister where I would
randomly ask her "you want a sweets table, right?" Similar things happened with a unity table, frequently forgetting and repetitively asking who the vendors are, and insisting that the bride switch sides with the groom when they walk
back up the aisle (something about how men used to carry swords). The pinnacle was when the bride got permission from the coordinator to let the hairdresser/makeup artist in early to set up. When she arrived Maryann blocked her, yelled at her to leave, wouldn't let her wait in the parking lot, and when asked where she should wait, Maryann replied "wasco." The florist was allowed in early to set up, but the hairdresser/makeup
artist wasn't. The contract did state that the wedding party couldn't get into the cabins until 4 hours prior, but we had gotten permission for a vendor to set up and she got verbally shredded. It's also not clear why she couldn't get into the cabin. It wasn't being cleaned or set up or anything, there wasn't an event that morning before the wedding, it was just locked and Maryann had the key. (By the way when we were let in the cabin smelled like sewer and was full of flies). This whole incident set back the timeline by 30 minutes. Not too bad except the late start meant the photographer was still taking photos of the bride in her gown in a grassy area right next to where the guests were arriving--meaning they all saw her before she walked down the aisle. The rest of the night Maryann could be found frowning near the bar snapping at guests and rolling her eyes. I very rarely give bad reviews. I love giving good reviews and usually keep bad experiences to myself. Since a wedding is a once-in-a-lifetime thing and this was an exceptionally
bad experience, I feel obligated to let future brides know that this isn't a good choice. The stress of dealing with this venue owner is not worth the garden setting.