Ravina on the Lakes Reviews

Ravina on the Lakes

Peoria, IL

4.1 out of 5 rating, 29 reviews

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4.1 out of 5 rating

4.1

Good

29 reviews

Recommended by 82% of couples

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Quality of service
4.1 out of 5 rating
Average response time
4 out of 5 rating
Professionalism
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Value
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Flexibility
4.1 out of 5 rating

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Joy Sent on 01/09/2017

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Do it! It is very nice and we had a GREAT time! Also, the smoking patio overlooks the lake and it's BEAUTIFUL!
Diana Sent on 11/22/2014

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The Garden Room was the perfect setting that my daughter ever dreamed of for her wedding reception. She has said so many times since that day that it couldn't have been more perfect!
Thank you for providing her perfect setting! All of our guests had a wonderful time!
Elizabeth Sent on 10/12/2011

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We had our reception at Ravina and it was everything I hoped it would be! I feel in love with the place as soon as I saw it for the first time! The service was outstanding and Melissa was awesome to work with! We have gotten so many compliments on the food. My aunt even said, "The best wedding reception food I have ever had." I would highly reccommend Ravina to anyone around the Peoria area.

Amy Sent on 10/11/2011

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Melissa was GREAT!!! Our wedding was so beautiful. The staff was so amazing!! They helped us set up and tear down. Everyone at the wedding was so impressed with them. The grounds are so pretty. I would recommend Ravina to anyone!
Nonnie Sent on 12/17/2010

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EXCELLENT!!!! The entire process was wonderful and very stress-free. Thanks again!
Serena Sent on 12/03/2012

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My daughter was married at Ravina in October. We had such a wonderful day and the experience could not have been better. My first and only daughter, I did not know what I was doing. Melissa the event planner was so great to work with, she worked with all my ideas ,some good and well some not so good, so she would suggest other options. Great to work with a place that will actually tell you the truth and suggest options, for those of us that may not know what they are doing. The day went so great, the food was wonderful and the staff really took care of us. The menu we had was so fun, we had something different and our guests just raved about it. Great day and great experience.
Rachel Sent on 12/04/2009

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Melissa was an absolute delight to work with during the reception planning and the day of the reception. She was prompt with replies, very thorough with everything she did, and she was also willing to let you bounce ideas off of her. She provided honest and helpful opinions when asked. The room was perfect when we arrived! She made my dream come true.

The serving staff was also very helpful and appeared to be happy to be there the day of the reception. It didn't appear as if this was just a job for anyone involved. I would recommend Ravina to anyone!
Christina Sent on 01/27/2009

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beautiful place
John Sent on 01/10/2009

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Wonderful, beautiful place to get married.
Chris Sent on 01/29/2017

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My daughter had her reception at Ravina and it was so great. A gorgeous night and our family and friends had so much fun. The food was so good too. Highly recommend.
John Sent on 12/28/2010

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We worked with Melissa Hinton at Ravina on the Lakes. She was great all around and made everything as easy as possible. The venue is fantastic, and it was the perfect day!
Chad Sent on 07/31/2007

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This was a wonderful place to have our wedding. The staff made everything go so smoothly. Did have to book 7 months in advance though.
Andrea Sent on 07/24/2007

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We had our wedding outside by the lake. It was a very pretty. The staff was very helpful in all the planning. They offer a wide range of menus to choose from for the reception. They also have an indoor banquet room or a screen in out door area. Very Nice!
User1974541 Sent on 12/17/2014

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We had our reception at Ravina. Everything was awesome. We had a bonfire and our guests said that was the coolest thing ever. Food was great my favorite was the Mashed potato bar..
Happy with everything we will remember our day forever
Adam Sent on 11/24/2014

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Melissa was super helpful and knowledgable. She was able to answer our questions and calm our worries within a day or two of our emails. She met with us, caught hold of our vision, and helped us get there.
Bill Sent on 10/25/2009

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I loved how clean this place was. The service was exceptional. Everything just came together really nice.
Canon Sent on 08/18/2009

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wonderful and beautiful right on the lake. would recommend it
Jennifer Sent on 05/12/2008

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Ravina on the Lakes was beautiful! We were very lucky and had awesome weather, they have a wooden arch and a beautiful water fountain in the background. It made for awesome pictures! They have a wide variety of food from cold buffett to hot meals. We paid a lot because we added the open bar option. I absolutly loved this place and staff was wonderful with helping. We also were able to decorate on the Friday before, which helped a lot.
Lori Sent on 11/28/2012

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Everything was beautifully done, just as was planned. The only potential problem we had was the room set-up had more guests attended. We thought we may have up to 375. The floor plan given for that number was really not conducive to the atmosphere we wanted for my daughter's reception. We weren't told at the beginning that we would have to have a set-up of all long (harvest or festival seating) tables if our number was that high. Since the number came in at 340, the set-up was exactly what we wanted.

We did however have to recreate the seating chart on Tuesday of the week of the wedding. Fortunately we did not yet have place cards printed or that would have been more problematic.

All in all the day was wonderful and Ravina did a marvelous job of helping to make the day what we had envisioned.
Katie Sent on 10/19/2010

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Beautiful reception in the lower level, open-air building, but it was an unseasonably chilly day in October. Keep that in mind when picking your venue. After we started dancing, it was not an issue, but guests were definitely chilly at dinner.
Jennifer Sent on 12/06/2009

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Overall, our experience was good. However, the plastic in the lower building is not worth the $200.00 that they charge you for it and it is something that they do to winterize the building any way so charging that much seems a bit extreme. Other than that our wedding was beautiful and I would recommend them to friends. It was bad weather on our day and they were good about the last minute changes to accommodate the weather. The food was wonderful and all of the vendors that they recommended were wonderful as well.
User237918 Sent on 09/08/2009

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Melissa from Ravina was very helful, she came up with new ideas and made the planning worry-free.
Hannah Sent on 01/18/2017

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We loved our wedding at Ravina. We were thankful for their flexibility and how up front Melissa was about all costs involved in the event.
Alyssa Sent on 11/27/2012

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It would be helpful to see the room set up just as it will be on the day of the event earlier in the planning process.
It was very easy for my other vendors to work with my venue and the prices were reasonable compared to other venues in the area.
Amanda Sent on 04/30/2018

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While I loved the setting for our ceremony and the indoor reception area (we used the upper building) was lovely, Melissa is not very easy to work with. Any time I tried to get in touch with her she took quite some time to get back to me which was fine up until the week of the wedding. Once it got closer it took three tries to meet her at the hall to drop off our final check and the actual day of she seemed as though she would have rather been anywhere else. The food was great and my day was still fantastic but I really wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
Kayleen Sent on 11/25/2018

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Book at your own risk

We had just our wedding reception In the garden building at Ravina on Saturday May 19th of this year. I will give some credit in saying up until the day of, things went smooth and staff was helpful. However the week of our wedding I had a conversation with Melissa (the property coordinator) about bartender tipping when I called to make my final payment. This venue requires a mandatory 20% gratuity on your total bill which is fine but for some reason does not include bartenders. I stated I did not want tip jars on the bar and that we would be tipping the bar tenders out at the end of the night. Through some miscommunication when my mother arrived at the venue the evening of the wedding tip jars were out and she asked the bar tenders to removed them as my husband and I would be handling the tip. There was a rude exchange of words between the bar tender and my mother that ended in her being told to “f**ck off”. I was told about this when I arrived at the reception and spoke with Melissa. She had the nerve to ask me how much I planned to tip the bar tenders. At that point I was done and told her they would not be tipped out and they could use the tip jars if they were that important. (We planned to tip out $1500 to be split between two bar tenders)

I then went up to the bar tenders in front of Melissa and more or less told them they were not to be rude to my guests especially my mom. Both bar tenders were extremely rude to me in front of Melissa (their boss) and she did NOTHING to come to my aide.

Conveniently during the father daughter dance melissa chose to leave knowing of the issues with her staff. That was at about 8pm leaving us to deal with her staff until 11pm

Later in the night I went to order a drink and the bar tenders ignored me and told me “I was the rudest bride they had ever dealt with”. At that point I got the “manager” Melissa left in charge. Although he was polite it was clear he had no authority over the bar tenders. He got melissa on the phone at one point however she did nothing to fix the situation. The bar tenders were so horrible to me I cried at my wedding reception.

I would also like to add that we paid for a designated amount of bar service for a certain amount of time. The bar tenders closed the bar early on purpose. Leaving us without something we had paid for.

At a post wedding brunch the following day several guests approached me to advise me of the horrible things the bar tenders were saying about me in front of guests. Many of the things contained expletives and are not appropriate for Facebook.

We contacted Melissa that Saturday night (May 19th) and heard nothing from her until that Tuesday. She claimed she was investigating the situation but ended the e mail by accusing guests of mine of bringing alcohol onto the property during the reception (something that makes no sense considering we had an open bar). Also for those who are unfamiliar with the property their are two reception venues and another reception was going on. So it’s highly possible that it was the other reception as she has no way to tell whose guests are whose.

After two weeks and multiple attempts to contact Ravina we were finally contacted by the owner of the property to have a phone confence. This came after this review blew up on social media (it was shared hundreds of times) Melissa was unable to participate because she was “too emotional” about the situation. Something I have yet to understand considering the problems arose from her not doing her job and it wasn’t her wedding. The owner explained that one of the bar tenders had been terminated and the other conceded to closing the bar early. Although the owner was apologetic and did refund us for our unused bar service that does little to undo having such an important day be ruined.

I would also like to add that guests from the other reception crashed our wedding reception and weren’t leaving. However since Melissa left and didn’t leave anyone with any authority in charge, my family and I had to deal with getting them to leave.

Guests have continued to come forward with horrendous stories of their experience which is horrible based on how much we paid. For example the venue put up a sign on the bar (which was horribly ugly and done after I had been done decorating without my consent) welcoming guests to our wedding and spelled my name wrong. When a guest suggested the bar tender put it away his response was “why does it matter”. That sign showed up in several “detail” shots my photographer took. Another guest asked for a specific type of liquor (which he could see on the bar) and was told they were out.

BOTTOM LINE BOOK AT YOUR OWN RISK. if I could do it over again I would not have paid this company a dime.
Tonya Sent on 07/12/2021

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Do not use this venue.

DO NOT GO TO RAVINA ON THE LAKES!!. SOOO OVER PRICED. THE PLACE IS DIRTY, DISGUSTING, HORRIBLE COMMUNICATION, MICE RUNNING AROUND DURING THE CEREMONY. They couldn't bother to sweep out cobwebs, old leaves, mouse 💩, dead bugs. We paid for some outside toilet options and there were no lights, no toilet paper. Very unprofessional management.
Heather Sent on 09/16/2020

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Absolutely disappointing. **LONG read, but worth it.

I'm not one to write reviews, but I hope I can prevent someone else from making a terrible mistake. Don't be fooled like we were.

When we arrived at Ravina on Friday to decorate for our wedding, we were taken by surprise to see that the pond was completely scummed over and actually looked more like a swamp. When approaching Melissa ("the coordinator") about it, she informed us that the fountain was struck by lightning several weeks ago. My first question was “why are we just now hearing of this?” The least she could have done was communicate with us prior to the day before our wedding. I find it very unprofessional of Melissa and her lack of communication was evident from the beginning. We weren’t even asked if we wanted our chairs moved, so the ceremony could face another direction. My guests had to sit and stare at the scummy pond, which was upsetting. Every ceremony picture we have, has the pond in the background. No fountain, a dirty pond and no knowledge prior. The grounds also looked very unkempt and messy. The landscaping seemed untouched for months and there were dead flowers in the flower pots.

On the day of my wedding, my family was decorating the arbor, which had not been cleaned and there were wasps swarming it. They spent a lot of time cleaning the arbor and swatting the wasps away, at which point my matron of honor was actually stung by one. We were told the arbor would be cleaned prior to the wedding and that did not happen. We were also told the ceremony chairs would be cleaned and that did not happen either. Because we were busy getting pictures prior to the ceremony, we were unaware that the chairs were still filthy. It wasn’t noticed until 30 minutes before the ceremony when my guests had begun arriving. Melissa was informed and sent out one person to wipe down 180 chairs. There were other staff that could have been helping the woman, or Melissa could have been out there helping. My matron of honor had to approach Melissa again to let her know that one person clearly couldn’t do all the work alone. So as my guests were coming, they were watching two staff members cleaning all the chairs and had to wait to be seated.

I was also very upset to find out that the reception venue had 21 lanterns without bulbs. It looked a little ridiculous and unfinished. During our wedding party pictures, a friend was putting out our desserts. We had a limited number of personalized cookies that we had put on our dessert table for guests. One of the bartenders decided it was okay to help herself to over half a dozen cookies. We also had several other issues with the bartenders that night. One of them showed up with a black eye. They refused to serve my wedding party and guests who went inside during the cocktail hour because they had a keg outside. We paid for the alcohol, so it shouldn’t have been an issue. They were charging some people $5 for a mixed drink while charging others $8-9 for the same drinks. The prices for the drinks were inconsistent which raised a red flag. By the end of the night, one of the bartenders was sitting at the top of the hill screaming and crying about how she didn’t want to go home because her boyfriend beat her. It took two of my bridesmaids to get her in the car. I’m now wondering if she got belligerent on the alcohol that we had paid for.

Overall Melissa lacked professionalism and communication and didn’t seem to care about making her clients happy. We still haven’t received any kind of follow up from her. Some of the bar staff was rude and took it upon themselves to take things that we had paid for. I am very disappointed in the way the staff running the business handled everything. To pay that much money for a below average experience was disheartening and upsetting.
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User2182820 Sent on 06/16/2015

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Horrible communication, service and industry knowledge by the manager, Melissa, who handles all events out at Ravina. Beautiful location and scenery, but you won't enjoy working with management!!!! The location is beautiful but I suggest you better be on top of everything if you have a wedding or event here. Management is very difficult to work with. You will be treated like a one time only customer. You will be told one thing and then get another. BE PREPARED!!!!!

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