The Historic Cottage (San Clemente) Reviews
Reviews
4.3 out of 5 rating
4.3 out of 5 rating
6 Reviews
85% recommend it
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![Rachel]()
Rachel W. Sent on 02/25/2023Beautiful coastal venue with difficult policies
Some of the pros of this venue:
Once you get past the tents and RVs of the State Park campground, the Historic Cottage is a naturally beautiful location. White adobe walls and red Spanish tile, a full 180 degree view of the California coastline and the Pacific Ocean, all the features of sandy cliffs, and distant lights of the San Clemente suburbs as a background. The only decorations we felt needed to be added came from our tables, the wedding arch, floral centerpieces, and small personal touches.
At a cost of $5000 for a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday event and only $3500 for a Monday through Thursday event (as of 2022), the price to cover the entirely outdoor venue is tough to beat, especially compared with other venues in the area and across the SoCal coastline. Plenty of places with comparable or better views, but expect to pay much more.
You can (as of October 1st, 2022) bring in any vendor you want. This was extremely important to us for cost and quality. Almost every other venue required us to go through their catering. This meant higher costs and in some cases lower quality of food for our guests. Bringing in our own vendors also meant huge alcohol savings because we were able to purchase our own alcohol from Costco and then ask our bartending rental and event company to serve our alcohol. Inconvenient but saved us about $3,000. We were able to purchase our florals from the LA Flower Market and a family member created the beautiful arrangements. The option of bringing in our own vendors would not have been possible had we gone with Casa Romantica or Ole Hanson. (The Casino San Clemente was much less strict and probably would have been just as good an option) However, we still had to get prior approval for all of our vendors because they have banned certain vendors in the past.
If you would like the ceremony and reception inside the venue, this is easily done. We had our rental company set up our tables in a back corner of the venue. We set up as many of our reception tables as possible, and then moved the tables into place during cocktail hour with our venue layout and diagram.
Although we were unable to take full advantage of this, one unique feature to this venue is the campground nearby. The facilities are adequate, and the beach is only a short walk away! An outdoorsy or rustic themed wedding where guests (or the wedding party itself) stay in the campsites or RV spots would clearly be able to avoid the high costs of hotels and overnight accommodations in the area. Make sure to be on top of the reservations though! The campground is booked months in advance.
Cons
The public bathrooms. This is a venue located in a California State Beach park. There are no private restrooms for your guests to use, so everyone at the wedding and all visitors to the beach and/or campground use the same restroom. They are large, open air restrooms that flush, but at the end of the day they are public state park bathrooms complete with sand, ants, and missing soap. The State Parks staff “thoroughly” cleans them before every wedding but depending on how many people visit the beach that day, you have to accept the state of the bathrooms as being a part of your wedding. We provided luxury soaps, electric candles, toiletries, etc. to help but it was frustrating to have to provide these items.
There is a small private bathroom within the Historic Cottage that is supposed to be used for the bride, bridal party, elderly guests, and the disabled, but in reality, this was such a small space that our elderly and disabled guests found it difficult to use. AND again no soap or hand towels provided.
We had several guests in wheelchairs and unfortunately this became a disability access issue. While there are two ADA approved bathrooms, they were not well maintained. My brother has cerebral palsy and cannot use the restroom without assistance. In the men’s restroom, ants covered the toilet seat, and the bathroom floor was flooded which made it very difficult to take my brother to the restroom. His pants got soaked because of the State Parks poor cleaning and maintenance. There were many frustrating aspects to dealing with the State Parks staff, but this provoked the most anger as it caused more difficulty for several of our guests in wheelchairs. Ants on the toilet seats, really? Completely unacceptable.
As said, the Historic Cottage State Parks staff do not provide any soap or paper towels. We went to Costco to purchase hand paper towels, bar soap, soap dispensers, and liquid soap because if we didn’t, our guests wouldn’t be able to wash and dry their hands. Not great. If that wasn’t enough, we had to accept that we would need to buy more than needed because the public would inevitably use the soap/hand towels that we provided. So we were in essence paying extra fees to the State of California and the City of San Clemente to provide basic sanitary requirements.
One suggestion that worked well to improve our guest experience was this: We purchased two folding picnic tables and created a “Guest Toiletry Basket” with lotion, breath mints, safety pins, tampons/feminine hygiene products, and other toiletry products for the men’s and women’s side. This looked great and we received a lot of positive feedback about this but again, we had to assume that the public would use these items as well during the event and they did.
While we had enough, we did have several of our tea candles, plastic soap dispensers, and bar soap taken/missing at the end of the night. These cost maybe $10.00 total but it is important to highlight the reality of this. We had to be prepared for the unlikely but very possible reality that all of our items: picnic tables, baskets, candles, bar soap, soap dispensers, etc. could be stolen. Not exactly a calming thought before the wedding. This is an issue that the Parks department could easily ameliorate but they have chosen not to. We know this because we had been looking at the Historic Cottage since 2019 as a wedding venue. It was a problem then and now.
One solution is to rent portapotties or actual mobile restroom trailers, but this seemed a far more expensive fix than just doing this bathroom prep.
Continued bathroom problems: There certainly is a theme. We visited the Historic Cottage about eight months before our wedding date and we noticed that every window looked like it had been shot at with a BB gun or slingshot. The glass was shattered or fell out completely and looked even trashier than a regular public restroom. We emailed the State Parks Historic Cottage staff and they assured us they were taking care of it and that “it would be completed” long before our wedding. About a month and a half before our wedding we went to the venue for our final walk through and noticed the windows were still shattered. We asked about this and received no email response. So we finally contacted the local Assemblymember in San Clemente for their help and after the Assemblymember’s intervention, confirmed that the project was finally finished about three weeks before our wedding. Without pressure from that Member, it is clear that they would not have completed the project in time.
The contract- they can change anything they want at any time with no notice or warning. And they did. To us. Three weeks before the wedding.
There is no lighting on the lawn after dark, except via the street lights out in the parking lot. No hanging lights from any of the trees or structures is allowed, per contract. It ALL must be free standing, which is expensive and makes estimating just how much light you need in the darker areas of the venue fairly difficult. If the bar is going to be outside of the patio area after dark, expect to need additional lighting the entire evening so guests and staff aren’t fumbling around after the sun goes down.
The beauty of being near the ocean means views, but also exposure to the elements. When remembering decorations, especially centerpieces, they need to be heavy enough to withstand the ocean breeze. We were told that a few weddings had centerpieces and flimsy table number holders blown over because of how windy it can get. Make sure your centerpieces/decor are heavy and not too tall. Additionally, since it’s right near the ocean, there was always a chance for a heavy marine layer to go through and make things less comfortable. Something to keep in mind.
Staff who are hyper obsessed with preserving the cottage at the cost of emotional labor/stress. Note to the Historic Cottage Staff: If you don’t want to risk your Spanish tile, then don’t have weddings or allow people to walk anywhere on the property for the rest of time. Restrictions on what flowers we could use so as to not stain said tiles are in the contract. At the end of the night, the State Parks monitor came up to us (bride and groom) and told us there was a chance we would get a big fine because tortilla chips had spilled onto the ground and had been crunched up into the Spanish tile. Food that dropped on the floor of a wedding with over 100 guests? That has never happened in the history of the world! Food being dropped on a floor! Unfathomable. To tell the bride and groom at the end of their wedding day, “hey sorry, but you might have another huge fine because of food that was allowed to be served during dinner,” was unacceptable. Gee thank you for such a great ending to our wedding day, adding one more stressor to the most important day of our lives. Just unbelievable.
On the day of our wedding, we had reserved our set up time to start at 1:00 PM. Unfortunately, the Parks department held so strictly to this rule they would not allow anyone associated with the wedding past the park entrance before that time. We were told we were not allowed onto the VENUE until 1:00, not that we couldn’t enter the park. As such, we got to deal with their more-than-eager teenage staff who ordered the groom, groomsmen, photographer, family members, and several other vendors to turn around and wait in a nearby parking lot until 1:00pm exactly. One guest got there at 12:58 and was told to turn around, then come back exactly at 1:00 pm. Adding additional stress and frustration on what was supposed to be an already highly emotionally charged wedding day. So, I suppose the solution is to pay the Parks department an additional $300 in addition to the $5,000 venue fee to enter the park two hours earlier. That said, once we were able to enter the property, we had no issues with set-up. Our wedding started at 4:00 pm and we had more than enough time to set everything up. Their policy on entrance to the park continued the theme of being an inhospitable staff and venue. As a government agency, they will all be paid regardless of how many couples book this venue, so there is no incentive to create and maintain quality customer service for any staff member.
On the whole, we were willing to put up with these challenges for the beauty of the cottage, an outdoor venue during the Pandemic, and as a way to cut costs. Our wedding was nearly perfect with gorgeous weather, great photos, happy guests, and an overall excellent day. This happened in spite of the Historic Cottage staff. It would have been a less stressful wedding planning process had the staff been more cooperative in their behavior and rules/regulations.
Our best recommendation if you decide to book this venue to reduce stress is to hire a full wedding planner and all inclusive catering vendor. (catering/tables/chairs/staff, etc.) Let them work out the small details and inconveniences so you don’t have to do all of it, only some. If you can afford the money, this will help in many logistics/planning issues. But at the end of the day, many of the cons we mentioned, will still exist. Our hope in writing this review is to help future couples consider this place carefully before committing to it for their big day. We wish we had known all of this when we first started planning for our Historic Cottage wedding. We also hope that the Historic Cottage staff will take this feedback seriously, change their policies, better maintain their facilities, and greatly improve their customer service from the wedding coordinators to the park entrance staff, and everyone in between. N&R -
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