We couldn't have imagined a more perfect place to celebrate our wedding than Vizcaya! The location is absolutely breathtaking, and it looked like something out of a fairy tale as the sun set during our ceremony. The atmosphere at dusk was magical, with the lights twinkling and everything perfectly set to capture that dreamy ambiance we were hoping for.
From start to finish, the Vizcaya team was incredible. They went above and beyond to accommodate all of our vendor schedules and even made last-minute time changes work without a hitch. The bridal suite was the ideal space for getting ready, spacious and elegant, creating a relaxing and fun environment for us and our bridal party.
Our rehearsal the day before was seamless, and the staff ensured everything went smoothly and kept us all calm and organized. Even when we had an unexpected change in coordinators, our new coordinator, Andrea, didn’t miss a beat. She jumped right in and brought such positive energy, making sure every detail was handled – and we were lucky enough to have another venue coordinator, Haley, come on board for our rehearsal and for the big day – her help was absolutely invaluable! All in all, Vizcaya and its amazing team made our wedding day unforgettable, and we’re so grateful for the exceptional service and stunning setting they provided!

We had our wedding at Vizcaya in May 2024 during the 10am-4pm slot. We absolutely loved our wedding and the venue fit our needs really well. Overall we were really pleased with Vizcaya. Here are some highlights as well as things four other couples to consider about this wedding venue before booking. 

PRO's
--Vizcaya takes care of so many things that we did not need as many vendors as we would have at another venue (catering, servers, bar staff, day-of coordinator). This was a huge plus for us. It was one of the reasons we picked the venue and it made the whole planning process much simpler. It was so great to have the day-of coordinator provided by Vizcaya: she managed so much on the wedding day, so that we and our families could really enjoy the celebration as much as possible. 
--The east patio really is beautiful. We picked the venue in part because we wanted to have our ceremony there. That wasn't able to happen due to weather, but we still got some gorgeous photos there when the rain stopped. 
--Vizcaya is a rain and weather safe venue! There was a rain storm the morning of our wedding (not typical/expected for May). Vizcaya staff was very flexible and accommodating about making all the changes to move our ceremony/cocktail hours indoors. We made this decision the day before, based on the forecast, after a week of biting our nails worrying over the weather. While we were initially disappointed, the indoor ceremony turned out beautifully and we were so relieved to have booked a venue that could easily accommodate a rain plan for our 110 guests. 
--Great location. We live in Midtown Sacramento and most of our guests stayed in Midtown. They loved being able to walk to the venue from hotels/airbnbs. 
--Vizcaya is BYOB: this can be a big savings (if you don’t hugely overbuy alcohol like we did)
--Price. We did a daytime wedding and we felt like it was a great deal. The price for a daytime event was substantially cheaper than nighttime. This is something to consider, especially if you have a large party, because savings scale for larger parties (the per person cost is lower for lunch than dinner) 
--Vendor selection was made easy by Vizcaya distributing a list of "approved vendors". We picked almost all of our vendors from this list. It made the vendor research/vetting process much easier, quicker, and more comfortable knowing that all had successfully worked at Vizcaya. Some of their vendors know the venue very well. 
--General event experience: Vizcaya does so many weddings, we always felt very comfortable and confident in their ability to deliver our event for us. 

THINGS TO KNOW
--Our coordinator was awesome during in-person meetings/contacts, but was difficult to reach by email/phone. We would frequently wait 1-2 weeks for email responses or follow-up she promised us after meetings. This ultimately didn’t have any negative consequences for our wedding, but it was frustrating. Vizcaya could deliver better communication and responsiveness considering the cost. You have to rely on email to reach the coordinator, because they don’t give out their cell phone number and they are away from their desk a lot. As far as I could tell, the coordinators prioritize giving you attention you when you’re booking and in the week of your wedding, but we found communication in between during the planning phase to be quite slow. 
--The coordinators seem to be overworked (especially during wedding season). Our coordinator's last day with Vizcaya was one week after our wedding. Her role had her splitting her time between Vizcaya and another wedding venue in Forrest Hill (an hour away, owned by the same company), so several days a week she would not be at Vizcaya and seemingly did not have access to information about our event when she was away. This seemed to contribute to the slow response times to emails/phone calls.
--This didn’t bother my husband, but the building next door to Vizcaya is abandoned with a number of broken windows that are visible from the larger Vizcaya patio. In my opinion, this detracts from the overall elegance of the patio space. I did not want to have our ceremony on the larger patio for that reason.
--Vizcaya staff collect your items (decorations, booze, etc) for you to load into your car at the end of the event or the next day. They returned a number of bottles of wine that were not ours. We suggest labeling your alcohol and other items if you want to make sure it’s returned to you after the event. 
--For daytime weddings, you only get access to the getting ready space at 7am. For most brides, this won’t be enough time for hair and makeup so we had to get ready off-site to start at 5am. 

We had our wedding at Vizcaya in May of this year and were very excited leading up to the event. Unfortunately, our onsite coordinator dropped out the day before the wedding without any notice to us, and we found this out during our rehearsal 24 hrs before the wedding. As you can imagine, this caused a lot of stress leading up to the event and had a ripple effect that impacted the wedding day in many different ways. The team that took over did their best to play catch up and help us execute our event, but unfortunately there were a few things that really missed the mark. This was a 200 person cultural wedding with a lot of moving parts so to lose your coordinator the day before was a massive blow.

One of our new coordinators was extremely stressed out during our day and was causing undue stress and panic for our wedding parties and us (bride & groom). She was telling bridesmaids to walk at the wrong time, she was late to grab the groom for the start of the wedding, and overall had a negative impact on our day.

The next big area of frustration was the fact that the uplighting for the reception, was not setup so our entire reception hall had obnoxious overhead LED lighting that was incredibly bright and not at all the mood/ambiance we were hoping for. They were able to add them in eventually after we asked about them, but by the time they were added in dinner was finished and we were just starting the dancing. Our grand entrance does not look the way it should've (both in person and in our pictures) because the lighting was off.

The venue itself was beautiful and there were a lot of things that went well, but these three things all definitely had a really negative impact on our day.

After the wedding we were hoping to speak about what went poorly during our wedding and get some kind of refund since there were so many issues and many things where we did not get what was promised. They had one of our coordinators jump on with us to tell us they were sorry and hear us out, and then they read us a list of issues that management experienced from our side of things. This part was pretty insulting considering we had just gone through an incredibly stressful event with them and they objectively messed up in key areas, most importantly our coordinator who we had been working with for months disappeared the day before the wedding. Instead of trying to make it right they told us about the things that we did wrong. This list was ridiculous and included things like "a vendor was rude to us", "something was spilled on the floor in the reception hall", "there were extra tables we needed to setup" and "someone was smoking on the property". While I can appreciate these are inconvenient and challenges you might experience during a wedding as the venue, it was really insulting that this was brought up in contrast to the areas they fell short. It was almost as if because these things happened it balances out the fact that they messed up so badly. At the end of the call we asked to speak to management about a refund because we understood that it wasn’t up to the coordinator to decide. She said she would reach out and get back to us. It’s been almost 2 months since we met with her and we’ve followed up multiple times and gotten no response.

At this point, we're not sure if we'll ever get a response so we feel like we needed to leave a review to warn other potential couples. Vizcaya has had a lot of turnover with coordinators over the last two years (we had a total of 3 before our last one cancelled the day before and we were assigned 2 new ones). They will not honor any refunds no matter how badly they mess up and impact your special day. It seems like their management cares more about profit than their customers and that could be why the staff has such high turnover. I wouldn't want to work for that type of management either. All in all we would not recommend anyone use Vizcaya for their wedding venue because of these reasons.