Sweet Cheeks Winery

Sweet Cheeks Winery was perfect. We could not have had a better venue. The team there was fantastic. They worked so well with all our vendors and I did not have to worry about anything day of.

I had wonderful time with Norah and her team. I feel very well supported throughout the planning and the event on my wedding day. Every planning meeting was very efficient, thorough, and detail-oriented. The wedding venue is so perfect from every aspect. I feel welcomed by the staff there every time I walk in, and the venue setup is very versatile for different styles of wedding, indoor or outdoor, simple or luxury. I have unexpected weather on my wedding day, but Norah and her team handled everything so perfectly just like as perfect as the original plan. Other than Norah and her team’s expertise in wedding planning and event management, Norah is so helpful for bride like me who could get anxious before the big day with step by step support and instructions on every important moment. I also feel emotionally supported by every staff there. I feel lucky to have Norah and her team for my perfect wedding at the sweet cheeks winery. It is definitely the most important day in my life that I don’t want anything to complain about, and Norah and her team made it happen with their excellent management and enthusiasm on this mission. You just can’t go wrong with Norah and her team at the Sweet Cheeks Winery for such big day.

Our experience with Sweet Cheeks Winery was absolutely amazing. Not only is the winery absolutely stunning, the team and staff are incredible. We were made to feel like our wedding was the only one taking place (in spite of the countless of other events and weddings taking place). Their team went above and beyond any expectations I had leading into our big day and I could not be more grateful for all they did to help make our day magical.

After contacting them to schedule a viewing of the venue they were quick to respond. After viewing and booking the venue they have been quick to respond with an questions we have and are very accommodating.

Updated 8/7: general manager is working with us to rectify the situation and have already partially reimbursed us.

My husband and I got married here earlier this month. The low ratings are due to the interactions we had with the venue coordinator Norah and the chosen staff at our wedding (with the exception of Norah’s new assistant Wyatt who was great). We want to warn people as all the current reviews are glowing.

After looking at the 5 star reviews about Sweet Cheeks and the staff on the knot, wedding wire, facebook, etc., we felt confident we were in good hands. However, there were many things about our interactions with Norah and the staff that tarnished our wedding day and were extremely disappointing. Here is our list of grievances:

When inquiring about having our wedding at Sweet Cheeks during the summer months (high season), Norah quoted us $4500 in writing. However, as we went to lock in the contract via email, she increased the price to $6500 saying that her original advertisement was the 2024 pricing catalog and not 2025 prices. Not honoring the price advertised or apologizing for the misinformation is shady.

When touring the venue after locking in the contract, we wanted a glass of wine as we toured the space. As a wine club member, I get free tastings. However, when touring the venue and having wine poured for me, they charged me for the few glasses my fiance and I drank. After I complained about it, they only gave me 50% off rather than comping the $20 for wine when we are spending thousands getting married there.

6 months before our wedding day, the day-of coordinator Norah recommended we hire quit unexpectedly. Because of this, we hired Norah to be the day-of coordinator in a panic, paying her an extra $1000 on top of all the other fees the winery charged us to have her be the venue-coordinator. This led to more interactions with Norah and her guarantee that she would hire all the necessary staff in order to set up and clean up all the decor, food, etc. (costing us yet another $1000). One thing that we felt is that Norah and her staff had some sort of issue with us because they all seemed to have a problem with us. Their attitudes were not friendly to us and their dislike for us was confirmed during a strange interaction we had a few days before the wedding.

As a few members of the wedding party were setting up bud vases in the Sweet Cheeks fridge, Norah and her employees were spying on us and Norah came in saying: “we were saying unsavory things and that there were cameras” referring to something the maid of honor said. Panicked, I told all my wedding party members to apologize to Norah hoping to find out what was said to offend her. The groom apologized to Norah and asked what was said, Norah informed him that the maid of honor had said something about Norah that her staff reported to her was unkind. Eavesdropping on private conversations is one thing, but feeling the need to call us out because we said something not nice about you is extremely unprofessional as someone in the service industry. This should have not been called out no matter how much her feelings were hurt from being called a sorority girl. Despite this, the maid of honor apologized, hoping to squash any beef Norah had with us.

From the best man’s perspective: “There was nothing for anyone to gain by her saying this, let alone her (or others) eavesdropping on private conversations; Only downsides. Unless there was a legitimate safety concern, monitoring private conversations on what we’re saying is intrusive and completely outside the role she is paid to do.

Unfortunately, we continued to be disappointed on our wedding day. The ball was dropped in so many ways by Norah and her team - not setting up multiple decor/food items, blatantly not helping parents of the bride and groom, and ultimately trying to steal items from the bride and groom. Here is a detailed list of the mishaps:

-We purchased multiple items that were guaranteed to be displayed that were not: hanging pendants inside that the venue had for months, floating lily pad lights in the fountain, photos of the bride and groom, etc.
-The venue disclosed they would not provide water cups at tables for guests. So we provided all glassware and water carafes for the tables just to see that the venue could have easily provided those items. Did they withhold these because they did not like us?
-Not a single candle was lit (there were over 300 candles). Although it was windy, there were many candles inside that could have been lit and were not. This felt especially shady because of what happened with the clean up of the event…
-Norah did not assemble the charcuterie board which was the only appetizer, this was done by a friend of the bride and groom who constructed it and wrapped it in the fridge the day before. Norah’s only job was to move it out of the fridge right at the start of the event. Two hours into the event, the charcuterie table was still in the fridge. When the mother of the bride inquired about it, Norah did not go and get it; instead the mother of the bride and her husband had to lift the extremely heavy table out of the fridge to get it to the guests.
-The venue made us cut our own bread up and wrap each individual cutting board to display on tables. The head table received no bread and many guests did not receive the accompanying olive oil that was promised at every table.
- Mother of the bride asks for someone to cut the cake and Norah refuses
-Mother of the bride asks about timeline and Norah is rude answering questions
-Maid of honor asks for the charcuterie to be refilled and staff does not help, so maid of honor goes to get food out of the fridge
-Mother of the bride asks Norah to fill olive oil containers for tables that did not have olive and makes mother of the bride do this
-The DJ needed a table to put his controller and set up a DJ booth. Norah was reluctant to let him borrow a table even though it was completely necessary.
-When the groom asked for a drink at the bar before guests arrived, the staff said: “well who do you know here? The bride or groom?” The groom was dumbfounded as he had met this staff member hours before and had to remind her that he was the groom. The staff should all be debriefed on who the bride and groom are because they should be their top priority service-wise.
-When the bride asked for help bustling her dress explaining that no other person knew how to do it, people went to go find Norah to see if she could help. The entire time bustling the dress, Norah was complaining there were millions of ways to bustle a wedding dress and kept saying someone else should have known how to do this. This was not reassuring as a bride and the vibes between her, family members of the bride and groom, as well as the wedding party were overall not positive.
-The wedding party reports: “every time I tried to ask Norah a question, she would run away.”
-The communication between Norah and the MC/DJ was clearly off because the two did not make proper announcements about the timeline. Norah should have directed the DJ to announce literally anything in a timely manner. In general, we were constantly behind schedule and did not feel Norah informed us enough of moving the night along. Norah only checked in with us a handful of times informing us about being behind schedule, but not offering many solutions.
-The bride purchased a special bottle of wine as a gift to the groom that was meant to be taken home and aged until their 10th anniversary. Days after the wedding, when the bottle of wine was unaccounted for, I asked Norah what happened to the wine and she playfully said: “yall actually drank it upstairs…. We found the empty bottle during clean-up of the wedding suite” which was devastating to me. Knowing that was my wedding gift to my husband, why was it opened for others to drink and displayed with all the other bottles for consumption? I am still unsure how a guest got a corkscrew to open this.

Aside from all the above, the worst part of our experience was trying to get our things back the next day. When planning things with Norah, she was always very casual when it came to picking up our decor, leftover food, and other items from the winery. She said: “come by whenever on Sunday during business hours and pick up your things. Someone should be able to direct you to all the items.” We agreed to come grab our things and asked if we could donate a few items to the winery if we were unable to fit them in our cars, did not need them, etc. Norah said that they might be interested in a few items that we could discuss together the morning of.

The plan was for my dad to come as the winery opened and pack up cars with our items. He called me that morning and said it seemed like a lot of the items were missing… and requested I come back to the winery to check we had everything. Norah was not there, instead some other staff members were there.

Norah and her team did not communicate with the bride and groom about what we wanted to keep, toss or donate. Instead, the Sweet Cheeks staff ate our leftover food and took many of the bride and groom’s belongings as “first come, first serve.” When the wedding party and bride and groom went to retrieve items, the staff member onsite named James only pointed us to a portion of the decor. We asked where the rest of it was and the staff members lied saying “this was everything.”

-When we inquired about specific items e.g. bud vases and candles, they were dodgy and would not show us where things were. After more direct confrontation, James went to HIS CAR and got out one box of bud vases (only about 20% of all the bud vases).
-When confronted AGAIN asking for the remaining decor items, James said: “Oh well Norah told us we could take whatever we wanted” and the bride explained we wanted everything back and that we would be the ones to donate items to sweet cheeks or toss them. James finally pointed us to a spot we did not have previous access to where our items were hidden.
-The items hidden were about half of the decor and all the most expensive pieces. This included unused decor like the pendant lights. All the candles were there which made me think: “were they trying to reuse or resell our candles and that’s why they didn’t get lit?”

Overall, we still had fun at our wedding. It was a beautiful venue and many of our visions came to life. But with all of this happening in the background, it was really hard for both my husband and I to enjoy ourselves. Norah did not follow up with us once after the event, just charged my card $5000 for service + wine. It felt clear that her and her staff did not like us from the start and unfortunately, these memories will stay with us forever when we look back on our wedding day.