We are a video team and had the privilege to work at this venue for the first time this summer! It was such a beautiful area and the staff were so friendly as well. We would highly recommend!

My husband and I got married on the Skunk Train last August. It was truly amazing. From the gorgeous ceremony site amongst the redwoods to the fun train ride that took guests to the private reception pavilion, our guests were both impressed and amazed that we found such a perfect spot for our wedding. It is kid and animal friendly, which were major bonuses for us. All the local vendors they recommended were easy to deal with and very talented in their respective fields.
I also really can’t say enough about how wonderful it was to work with the Skunk Train wedding coordinator, Prasada. We brought her in a bit late in the game, just 8 weeks before our wedding day but she brought everything together in a seamless way, taking all the stress of our big day off us and executing a truly perfect wedding day for us and our guests. She made it look effortless, although I am sure it was not easy to begin planning that close to the wedding date (and also since most of the vendors had to come in by rail).
I can’t imagine a more amazing place to start our lives together. Thank you to all the Skunk Train Staff for making this day perfect for us!!! This venue is a must even if you’re not a rail fan!

My wife and I recently got married at this venue on Sept 21st, 2024. We had 160 guests. It was a beautiful environment and everything about it would have been perfect, had it not been for the entire staff that operate the Skunk Train.

What should have been the most exciting time of our lives turned into a literal 1.5 year planning nightmare due to the Skunk Train management team and their inability and inexperience in hosting a large wedding (150+ people) or willingness to work with us to accommodate anything that was outside of their “standard offerings”.

We were assured by The Skunk Train event coordination team and staff that they had hosted many weddings before of our size, and sent us photos of these weddings. They seemed genuinely excited for our wedding and mentioned that weddings were an area they wanted to do more of. The photos they sent us included a similar level of production we were looking for, and we were assured they had experience in this space. We had even created a detailed wedding lookbook (slide deck) outlining our production vision, which we sent them ahead of signing a contract.

They did not specify any details in their contract, and went back on every single thing they promised us IN WRITING before we had booked. Here are some examples:

Contract Issues
OPEN BAR NOT REALLY OPEN: The Skunk Train said they were providing an “open bar” with a flat fee per head: turns out this only means 4 cases of wine TOTAL (no matter what your guest count is). They assured us that there would be standard liquor offerings available as well. They told us this 1 month before our wedding. They proceeded to charge us for all additional cases of wine.
LOAD IN AND LOAD OUT CHALLENGES: The Skunk Train contract stated we could have four separate round-trip train trips to and from Glen Blair Bar on the day of our event (two for vendor load in/out and two for guest transport). There was NO mention of any time restrictions on those trains. We found out 6 months in that The Skunk Train runs public trains on wedding days in addition to the wedding trains, and that vendor trains had to run on very specific time schedules and could not load in/out on the public trains. After ~20 hours worth of emails and meetings with Skunk Train staff and our planner, we were able to work out a schedule that worked for our vendor teams and the Skunk Train train. The Skunk Train team’s attitude was certainly not one of partnership on this front, and it seemed as if they had never had to do this before (which seems odd given they’ve hosted weddings of this size and production scale before according to the photos).

Bar Issues
DISCONTINUED BAR SERVICE MID WEDDING: The Skunk Train promised us an open bar in writing and required us to use their bar services; they unilaterally made the decision to stop serving all hard alcohol with 3 hours left in our reception (7pm). They did not discuss this with our planner or us, and in fact they lied to us and pretended to be out of hard alcohol (they were not out, plus goes against what we paid for).
RAN OUT OF WATER: The Skunk Train bar ran out of water and all non-alcoholic drinks by 7:30pm (reception ended at 10:30pm)
BAR FAILED TO MAKE MINOR DRINK CHANGES: The Skunk Train bar team refused to accommodate simple guest drink requests (i.e. dilution of a custom cocktail with tonic water) with no reason cited
BAR USED CATERER'S BEVERAGE WITHOUT PERMISSION: The Skunk Train bar team used our caterer’s lemonade to make our custom cocktails (elderflower lemonade) without consent of our caterer, us or our planner
BAR RAN OUT OF CUSTOM COCKTAIL: The Skunk Train bar team ran out of one of our custom cocktails within 1 hour. We provided a recipe and ingredients for 300 custom cocktails; it seems VERY unlikely that 160 guests would consume 300 cocktails within an hour given there were other bar options and not everyone was drinking.
INCORRECTLY CHARGED: The Skunk Train charged us $45/person for their standard open bar offering and an additional $10/person for an extended open bar from 9-10P, even though limited to no bar service was happening during this time.
PRE-TIPPING REQUIRED: The Skunk Train built in a ‘20% service fee’ for gratuity and made us pay this and 100% of our bill upfront, but the services we paid for were not rendered.
NO EXPLANATION: The Skunk Train has not contacted us nor our planner since the wedding nor offered us any explanation as to why they chose to stop serving early and ran out of non-alcoholic beverages.
BAR SERVICE ENDED BEFORE WEDDING WAS OVER: The Skunk Train bar stopped serving all items before the reception was fully over (10:30P) and started packing up

In summary, we would advise those hosting large weddings with high production value to avoid the Skunk Train for your special day. While the venue is beautiful and has incredible potential, the Skunk Train team has a long way to go in order to scale their venue for high end weddings and events.