Ocean Place Resort & Spa Reviews

We got married at Ocean place in May of 2023. We had a South Asian wedding with 4 events between Friday Morning to Saturday Night that took place on the property. We had always wanted a beach wedding and this was the perfect place in NJ with a nice beach, well-maintained & clean sand, and minimal people visiting mid-May. The wedding itself was on their easily accessible beach front & the other 3 events were indoors. ALL of the events were extremely perfect, and we worked with Nancy (on-site coordinator) to make that happen. We also worked directly with Danna from the city of long branch to get the proper paperwork in for the beach wedding since that belongs to the township. During our initial visit to tour the property in March of 2022, we thought we might have to get Nancy up to speed on the Indian Wedding events and the expectations, but she was pretty familiar with what they are and what to expect so it made things much easier. We immediately fell in love with the venue and knew it was in our top choices. Upon entrance, there is a beautiful water fountain, a huge lobby bar & a nice restaurant. Their outdoor patio and overall space is gorgeous. The hotel rooms and event spaces are also very easy to get to from the lobby making it easy for guests. We hit a couple unexpected hiccups in the road and Nancy was there to offer different solutions and guide us towards a decision/path-forward. Nancy was always easy to reach via phone/e-mail and very on top of providing status updates and getting promised deliverables to us on time. We had about 400 guests at our biggest event and Ocean Place had no issues managing that. The event spaces, dining areas, and buffets were set up on time and looked crisp as expected. We used outside catering to serve Indian food and rented OP’s kitchen to serve the food fresh and had the OP staff tend to our wedding and they did an excellent job. The toughest part on the event side was following the strict rules OP holds about each event having to be a minimum spend verses the overall contract, this was tough for us because we primarily did not use their catering services (only at the reception we added a few items) so without that it’s hard to reach a min spend. The hotel side is worked separately from the event side, so we worked with Erica Owens to set up a block for our family & guests rooms. She was very nice, quickly replied to my requests via e-mail and phone call and was very thorough with her explanations of how it all works and gave her recommendations where needed. The block rates are pretty expensive at OP even if you get a high number of rooms to book, so we ended up also needing an additional block option for guests at a more affordable hotel and it was within 10 minutes away so it worked out. Erica was quick to set up a contract and provide an easy block link for our guests to book online. One thing we did not like about having two different POC’s to work with is that the hotel block rate offered, the number of rooms you guarantee to book, and the contract negotiated for events are looked at very separately although the income is all going to one overall venue. With what we had spent on 4 events and the number of guaranteed rooms to book, other venues would’ve reviewed the overall income & comp’d the presidential suite (upon avail) for the bride and groom and a regular room for both sets of parents as a courtesy, but OP offers a standard ocean view suite for only the couple (no parents rooms) which was a dissapointment. We did end up purchasing the presidential suite at a discounted rate because we knew we needed the space. It was a newly renovated, spacious room with a large fridge and kitchen area. The groomsmen had dance practice there & the bridesmaids were able to come in the morning for getting ready shots & the bridal HMUA was easily able to set up in the living room. The room was perfect with beautiful natural lighting and view of the beach. The only other two complaints we received came from family/friend stating that one of the staff was asking for tips at an event & that some of the bridesmaids (over the age of 30) were asked to show their ID at the reception bar to be served which is not your norm at a reception. In the grand scheme of things, when planning such a large wedding, the complaints were minor and the wedding was truly beautiful. We did not feel a single ounce of stress when it came to the event weekend, everything went so smoothly! We are so happy we got married at Ocean Place and can’t wait to visit again.