Happy Wife Happy Life Weddings & Events Venue Reviews

I am getting Married here in December. The folks that work here are very flexible and patient. They are understanding of situations and are great!

After visiting quite a few venues that just didn't fit or looked much better online than in person, we found this venue in Albany. They let us visit the same day we contacted them which was great as we were in a time crunch and we instantly loved it. Part way through planning, they had a staff change over which made me fear what might happen but the owner made sure to cover everything and get everything on the right track herself. She also was very responsive and I felt comfortable texting her just about any time of day with any questions I had. The only negative was sometimes we had to go over the same details a few times but with the staff changeover and everything, it was understandable and I never felt like anything was falling through the cracks, more like they were covering all the bases. The owner also owned the local flower shop which made handling flowers and decorations so much simpler too. I wasn't totally clear on what I wanted so I just sent them some photos of some general ideas and they took them and ran with it and the end result was beautiful. They also handled all the set up and decorating, clean up, rentals for additional outside chairs, linens, and day-of coordination. This is one venue that looks just as good or even better in person as it does online!

The venue is beautiful and the views are amazing but the way our wedding was handled was not what we expected from someone with such great reviews. They had a change of staff which was part of it but no one made an effort to clarify what the previous coordinator had done and it caused a lot of unnecessary stress. We had to hire an outside coordinator a month before our wedding to take over for us because we were worried about how our wedding was being handled. Our day of coordinator reported having a hard time dealing with them even after the wedding. The communication was lacking, catering was a let down as well, several guests reported not getting an entrée because there wasn’t enough food. We paid for a certain number of people, and we had less than that show up so there should have been plenty. The unused alcohol brought by the guests also was not returned to them. We have tried to clarify all of this with the venue but it has been a week and we have not received a response.

All righty, here we go. First off, the venue is beautiful! It is so pretty especially the view of the sunset. Texas skies are awesome. But... it's just not worth it because of the owners/management of this venue (before getting into it I should mention I was the groom for the first wedding of 2020 for them so this is from my perspective). Holy crap were they bad. So around July/August I believe, the person we booked the venue from got fired for showing up on the job drunk (lovely). So that person ended up taking EVERYTHING. Payments, records, folders, etc. The owners had to contact my wife through Facebook. FACEBOOK!!!!! Saying that her and my in laws needed to redo the contract. If they didn't do that, we could have been going to a venue where they booked it for someone else even though we paid. They wanted another $1000 down payment when we already paid that, but remember, the original lady took all the records. So my in-laws had to find a bank statement showing that they paid (which they did). Then the venue wanted to tack on an extra $4000 of payments for miscellaneous things. When asked to itemize what they were paying for, they said that they do not do that. HUGE red flag there! The day before the wedding we had the rehearsal dinner and there was no water throughout the whole venue. No water for toilets or sinks. Had about 3ish hours of no water. Then on THE DAY OF THE WEDDING, an employee, Devon, had the fricking nerve to show up unannounced (yes, I get it, they own the venue but I digress), go to the bridal suite where my wife was getting ready for the big day and my mother in law helping her, stand there awkwardly for a couple minutes, then asked my mother in law about her needing to pay for other stuff. ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS ASKING FOR MONEY THE DAY OF THE WEDDING DAY!!! Also, there was a wasp problem and want to know what Devon said when we addressed it? "I don't know what you want ME to do about that, there is a fly swatter in the kitchen." Horrible!!!! God forbid a guest or family member be allergic to wasps and get stung.

If you decide to have your wedding there, go for it. The wedding was wonderful and it was a very joyous occasion. But I HIGHLY, HIGHLY, HIGHLY recommend making sure you know exactly what you are paying for and to have them itemize it and to make a copy of your contract (or at least take a picture of it). Also, be aware of them adding more to any estimates. They make you pay the deposit, agree on a package, then when you look at how much it will cost, they charge you more than what you originally talked about, making you either pay for those charges, or leave and lose your deposit. I'm sure they make a few thousand dollars just by doing that.

Thanks for reading. Now let's see if the owners will respond to this review. Good luck to the Brides and Grooms to be!