Soka University of America Reviews

We got married at the beginning of 2024 at Soka University. At first, we were going to use the lake for our ceremony, then we switched to the garden and it was PERFECT! The setting was unbelievable. Soka staff were exceptional. Fae worked really well with us - especially when we switched up the plan. We will look back on our wedding with fondness.

Absolutely stunning!! The water and fountains made my wedding look like it cost a million bucks. The landscape was so beautiful and the architecture makes for wonderful photos. We loved that Soka made the fountain area private and peaceful, including blocking off the parking for our guests only. So there were no wandering strangers into our wedding. All my guests commented on how beautiful the location was. The blue of the water makes our photos pop. And added with flowing drapes that we used to provide our guests with shade....the perfect "wow" combination. We couldn't be happier!

This venue is breathtaking! There are no words. You drive in and immediately your mouth drops open and the beautiful fountains and waters that are before you in the middle of orange county! Trees and mountains surrounding you and beautiful stone walls and buildings around it as if you just fell right in the middle of Italy. I just got married there and I have to say that every one of my over 200 guests have commented on how stunning the venue was. It is such a unique location. My contact was Fae Monroe who is nothing short of AMAZING! She made the process so easy, so fun! I love her!!! She followed up on everything so quickly and efficiently and helped me through any "freak out bride moments" I had. I love Soka so much! I wish I could drive in and sit by that Peace Fountain every day. Our ceremony was by the Peace fountain, cocktail hour on the balcony and reception in the Founders Hall Art Gallery which has hard wood floors! Thank goodness because I cannot have those hotel carpets in pictures that take a way from the beautiful decor brides work so hard for. Everything was perfect!

This venue is literally the most beautiful place! Upon driving into the campus, our guests were immediately in awe of the peace fountain lake, and from start to end of our wedding, it was nothing but comments of amazement about how truly beautiful the venue was. Fae, the coordinator at Soka, is also an amazing, responsive, and just plain nice person, and we were so lucky to find this gem. And as far as our pictures go, there was no such thing as a bad backdrop area, every part was absolutely breathtaking!

Soka was a dream! I'm so glad we had the opportunity to have our special day there!

This venue is seriously gorgeous! I recently got married here & It was beautiful. We got married by the fountain area & had the reception in the Art Gallery. The best thing about this venue is the fact that your guest don't have to drive to different areas, It's all right there.
Unfortunately, this venue has a lot of unexpected cost & requires a ton of unnecessary things. In addition to the rental fee, you have to pay per hour for setup, an event monitor & security. They require you to hire your own event planner, insurance, lots of paperwork, contracts, etc. 2 days before the wedding, the event coordinator at Soka was emailing us saying we need to bring our own fire extinguisher & that the required dance floor we bought was not good enough. It seemed somewhat unorganized. Also, this venue offerers absolutely nothing, but the facility. It is completely DIY, even tables & chairs. Since they have tables, & chairs on-site, it's disappointing that they don't let you use them.
They need to put up signs warning the public that there is an event going on. We had random people walking around, dogs in the fountain, etc.
We were unable to have the rehearsal here because the allowed time would require everyone to take off work, Mon-Fri 10am-3pm. Also, you would have to pay for event insurance for the rehearsal, which is ridiculous.
We had to have family & the groomsmen set everything up the day of the wedding, which was no fun.

There is TONS that this venue can improve on. If I knew what we were getting ourselves into, we would have chose another venue.
Overall, the venue turned out gorgeous because of all the HARD WORK.

This school is beautiful! My fiance and I found this venue online and were so excited to take a look at it as a potential wedding venue for our wedding. I called Faye, the event coordinator that is in charge of booking the weddings and handling the tours, and was able to set up an appointment to see the venue with my mom. Faye emailed us and confirmed the appointment. But on the day of, Faye was not to be found. I called her three times, left messages, and even went to see if she was in her office, but still could not be reached. Luckily, we were still able to see the venue. We met Bryan, a groundkeeper who showed us around and was extremely helpful. Again, the venue is beautiful. I immediately knew that I wanted to get married here. I emailed Faye shortly after leaving the venue. Faye called me right away and apologized. I understand that things happen so I told her it was not a problem and that I was still able to see the venue and was interested. She emailed me a price list and I told her I would talk to my fiance and get back to her right away. After about a week, my fiance wanted to take a look at the venue with me. I emailed Faye again to ask her if I could come to see the venue with my fiance on a convenient day. She didn't respond back. Five days passed and I decided to call her. Fortunately, I was able to reach her and we set up a day for us to look at it. On the day that my fiance and I went down to see it, Faye met with us. She was very knowledgeable. She also said that was going to be getting married there in 2022. We told her we loved the venue. My fiance loved it. We sat down and talked with her for a bit. I told her that I would like to get married in October of 2022 but I was very flexible with my date and would take anything that was available either in that month or the month before or after. She said that she would email me available dates the following week and never did. I would have called again or emailed her again, but I really just got the feeling that she didn't want to be bothered. When you go out to find a wedding venue, you want to be able to know that you can at least reach them and get a response back from them in an appropriate amount of time. I know that this school has other events and that weddings are not really a priority for the school, but I really did not think that it would be this difficult to get in touch for a tour or even to get available wedding dates.
For future brides that are interested in this venue as a potential, it's beautiful, and I hope you do not have the same experience as me. I really felt that It was difficult to get in touch with them. Faye, although nice in person, did not do her part. I was bummed but I also found a beautiful venue pretty quickly after that is prompt, diligent, and very professional.

I am really sorry for the long rant, but I will end this with some advice to future brides. Wedding planning can be very stressful and you want to make sure that the venue that you choose, wants you and your business. Although beautiful, the first impression I received from the event coordinator, Faye, was not the best and I was scared that that would carry into my wedding planning. Find a venue that wants your business and gets back to you!!

We had our wedding here in June 2018. The photos look great and the price looks reasonable, right? But it was not. Do not read this and say that you weren’t warned.

Soka is incredibly difficult to work with during planning. Weddings are not their primary business, so they are not eager to have you as a client. Frankly, they treated us and our professional wedding planner with contempt. Be prepared for simple clarifying questions to be answered with hostility and suspicion, if at all, and requests for basic coordinating information to be answered with stonewalling. Be prepared for strange and arbitrary changes to the basic conditions imposed on you for using the space (like the start and end time) - yes, even after you've signed a written contract. Be prepared for what feels like active, deliberate obstruction with your plans, including in the last days before the wedding. Expect the process to be a constant struggle and a source of anxiety. By the wedding, we felt that Soka saw us as the enemy, and treated us accordingly. They even imposed restrictions on us because another couple - employees of Soka University - were getting married the same day.

In the end, we loved our wedding, but only because of (1) Herculean efforts by our wedding planner and other vendors to overcome Soka's obstinacy and unreasonableness through creative problem-solving (2) our ability to compartmentalize all the stress Soka imposed on us away from the day itself and enjoy our time with our friends and family, and (3) a healthy dose of luck that we managed to find ways to work around the various problems Soka created.

If you're confident in your wedding planner, you don't mind a lot of unnecessary stress, and you're willing to gamble, Soka might just be the place for you. Otherwise, look elsewhere.

Photo: Soka University refused to even discuss redirecting traffic for the 2 minutes it took us to walk down the aisle, which is why this bus is there on a Saturday. A BUS.