Costanoa Lodge and Resort Reviews

My husband and I couldn't have dreamed of a more perfect wedding. Susan, Karter, and Chef Henry helped make our wedding a success! Our friends and family are still raving about our big day - the delicious food by Chef Henry for our reception and brunch the following morning, ocean and mountains views, and how seamless the coordination was.

The event director and coordinator, Susan and Karter, made planning our day so easy. They were extremely helpful, responsive, and receptive to our requests. We look forward to celebrating our anniversaries here every year and visiting the team!

Costanoa, specifically Teri and Chef Mo were great to work with. We had a large wedding with a lot of vendors and guests (over 200) and they made the process as easy as possible, were flexible, fun and helped make our wedding weekend a huge success.

If you are looking for a location to hold your ceremony and reception near the Northern California coast, you should consider Costanoa Lodge and Resort. We were incredibly happy with the beauty of the location, the convenience of hosting our friends and family in a single location for the event, reception, lodging and activities, and the wonderful skill of the staff who made our event so easy to enjoy.

The staff at Costanoa were responsive and flexible and they were able to meet every request that we made, including expanding our original request from 50 attendees to 105! The food is excellent and the wine list is superb. The chef was able to accommodate an elegant meal, outdoor reception and an outdoor breakfast gathering the next morning. All of our guests were thrilled with the peacefulness of the location and the comfort of the lodge.

We highly recommend Costanoa if you are considering a venue that combines high quality services with a natural and beautiful outdoor environment.

Debra & John Godon

We were the out of town parents of the groom...We had never been to Costanoa and wanted to help the bride and groom with the planning and vision. We were very dependent on the staff there...we could not have been more pleased. Terri and her resources like tent rental vendor worked so closely with us over many months...we even send packages out before the wedding filled with supplies for our 4 grandchildren under 3... Terri had them in our rooms upon arrival....We made numerous calls to the stff and they were responsive at every turn....We did fly out 6 months before the wedding to stay overnight at the venue as we did want a real feel of the space and area....Note in the Sept. 2011 issue of Martha Stewart Living magazine there was a lovely review of Pescadero, California and we did all the things in this article well before the article was out because of the guidance of the Costanoa staff and the bride and groom who knew the area well ( They live in San Francisco ) ....we did rent out the entire lodge for our wedding guests and this ended up working out very well....We did rent a tent because the evenings in June can be cool and we needed the lighting... we also rented larger tables and linens.....this was an additional expense of course but well worth it for our group of 120 as there was no inside space that could have easily accommodated us....Carla from Classic Party Rentals knew what we were going for and exceeded our expectations....we had the rehearsal dinner at the Davenport Roadhouse 15 minutes away and had a goodbye breakfast in the tent that was still up from the wedding the night before.......Everyone had a great time and we received many compliments- .....note there are no TV's on the property..at first we were concerned but the guests mingled more and this was a good thing as it served to bring people together. The only downside was the fabulous chef we had worked with left about 3 weeks before our event so the food interpretation slightly different from what we expected- we knew this in advance and there was really nothing we could do about it...the food was fine and fortunately the setting was a real plus........
Hopefully they will keep up the standards........you do need to consider a tent esp for a late afternoon or evening wedding........however they will help you with any and all vendors.......we used some vendors ( flowers/pies ) from San Francisco and they worked well with the Costanoa staff....A bakery in Santa Cruz did a great cake for the rehearsal dinner......
Loralee Arcuni

the most beautiful place I could have ever imagined getting married. The service the weekend of the wedding was outstanding in every way possible. I cannot recommend this place enough. The key thing is you have to be able to fill the space with guests(depending on size of wedding. For 150 people we had to reserve 51 rooms). I splurged on a tent(best money spent)
If you are ok handling the stress of that, then you will be rewarded with the most amazing retreat style wedding imaginable

3 catered meals, best wedding food I have ever had, extremeley reasonable pricing, flexibility for special requests. Cannot recommend enough

So, look. If you've read reviews of this place, you know that the hotel front desk staff at Costanoa is... not the most professional. They seem to mostly be teenagers working summer jobs, so expectations aren't going to be the highest, but it did create some issues for our guests at times. It would be one thing if they just said "I don't know," but they often gave bad information, even telling a friend of mine that the entire property was full (it wasn't, not even close) and that there wasn't a wedding that weekend (there obviously was).

Here's the good news: the events team at Costanoa is amazing. We just did our wedding there and working with Ren and Ocea was great. They made our wedding look spectacular (the s'mores night after the rehearsal dinner was particularly imrpessive). Moreover, whenever the front desk staff created any problems, Ocea was able to fix it. In the end, the biggest challenge was getting our guests to understand that when we said "when you call, ask for Ocea" we really meant it.

But at the end of the day, everyone ended up staying in the right place, the accommodations were lovely, Ren and Ocea were fabulous (and from my perspective, Ocea was particularly impressive, regularly appearing out of nowhere to get me water or a drink or whatever else I needed at the moment).

We could not have been happier with our wedding. The only reason any of my ratings are below five stars is because on average between the hotel staff and the event staff, that's about where it ends up. The key is just figuring out quickly to just bypass the hotel staff entirely and work with the two pros on the events team.

Thanks Ren and Ocea and team!!!!

My wedding at Costanoa turned out perfect and that is entirely because of Tricia Rhoades who held our hands through the whole process. Tricia is amazing. If you are interested in getting married at Costanoa and Tricia can run your wedding, do it. It's a stunning location, the lodge is beautiful and comfortable for guests, and the food is fantastic (the salmon was amazing). We wanted our wedding to feel like it was in nature and not some where manicured or overly "wedding-y". Costanoa felt special and unique because of the gorgeous setting and the feeling that we were set apart from the rest of the world. We also loved that it was a fun, relaxing place for all the special people in our lives to spend a weekend together. The down side of Costanoa is that they are not well organized. Tricia was amazing but when I spoke with any of the other wedding staff I would be given different answers depending on the person. Only wedding staff could book our guests lodgings but often they wouldn't return guest calls or emails for several days, or more. We got numerous complaints from our guests which was stressful. Ultimately it all worked out and the wedding was completely perfect but I think all the credit goes to Tricia for watching over every detail, being available for any question big or small, and being incredibly patient. 5 stars for Tricia, but maybe only 3 for Costanoa even though it is stunning. If you can handle a little uncertainty then you'll do fine with the place and the end result will make it all worth it.

I had a tough time rating within each category. My review of Costanoa is simple. When my husband and I drove up the first time, the place took our breath away. It is a jewel nestled on Highway 1 near Pescadero - the perfect spot for our semi-destination wedding. The majority of our family and guests flew great distances to attend our special day, and we wanted our local friends to also have a chance to make a weekend of it and not have to drive home at the end of the night. Costanoa provided that for us. It's a spectacular place - you can be comfortable in nature here.

The simplicity here is that the place is naturally beautiful and works as a "naked" space when it comes to event decoration - and, what was important to us, was to have on site overnight accommodations for our guests.

I was disappointed with the quality of service and lack of organization. Example: something as simple as checking numbers in spreadsheets. A wedding is a huge financial investment. That is not to be taken lightly, and I wish I had been working with a team that I truly felt was on my side, taking care of me, looking out for us, and doing high quality work. Instead, we had to do so much more work than we would have thought (considering how much we were paying them), and we had to double check everything. It gave us endless headaches throughout the wedding planning process.

But, of course, it was worth it in the end because our day couldn't be ruined by errors or shortcomings of others. We got married under the bright sun, on the hillside, on the beautiful green grass, with the ocean to one side, gorgeous mountains to the other, and after dinner, the full moon came out and greeted us among billions of beautiful shining stars on the clearest night I've ever seen on the coast.

To sum it up: gorgeous place - if that is worth it to you, then be prepared to work with a staff that needs better management.