Customer O.
Jun 19, 2019
Absolutely perfect place to host your wedding! Beautiful event venue with so many accommodations!
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Evan H.
Dec 12, 2022
We worked with Matt Starnes with Hospitality Butler and the White Home and would not recommend their services due to overall dishonesty.Tent rental: We found out the weekend before our wedding that there was a tornado expected in the surrounding area on our wedding day and that we should expect heavy rain for our ceremony and reception--which were to take place outdoors. We contacted Matt immediately to help us arrange a tent but he told us he was too busy on Monday and would get back to us. By Tuesday (for a Friday wedding), we decided to take it upon ourselves to find a tent. We finally found a company that would be able to provide on our day--they estimated that the tent would cost about $1300. We brought all of this to Matt and he told us we could not use outside rentals at our venue. He sent a quote for an in-house rental (his own company) for over $3800, almost 3 times the cost of the other vendor's quote. When we questioned Matt as to why the tent through his company was so much more expensive, he discounted the rate to $2800, but even that price was more than double the other vendor we'd contacted.Charged for fake services: We were told that with alcohol being served at the wedding, we would have to pay to have an undercover officer from the Rock Hill Police Department for 4 hours during the reception. This was fine with us and we didn't have any issue with it until we realized that there wasn't an officer at our wedding. We reached out to the department to confirm that there was someone working but they said they hadn't had a request from Matt since May, and no requests at all for our wedding date. There was never an attempt to provide the service that we were charged for and when we brought it to Matt's attention he tried to argue with us and claimed that he had requested an officer but there was "a miscommunication". Even with a miscommunication, an honest wedding planner and venue would have realized there was no officer and remove the $200 charge from our bill.Condition of the venue: When we arrived at the venue on the day of the wedding, there was no cold water and the sink was clogged in the bathroom closest to the stairs. The sink in the bridal suite was leaking during the event and eventually fell off the wall, missing one of our guests' feet by inches. When the guest told Matt about the problem in the bathroom, he yelled at her, accusing her of sitting on the sink causing it to fall (the guest, who was 8-months pregnant, was not sitting on the sink). Though the sink installation is solely the responsibility of the venue, Matt acted as though he was doing us a favor by not making us pay for repairs. (This also raises a question about liability insurance and whether it is the responsibility of the client or the venue. We were made to take out liability insurance to book the venue).Missing/stolen items: We were responsible for buying the alcohol for our guests and planned to take any leftover with us. We were upset to find out that $400 worth of the purchased alcohol "went missing" the night of the wedding. Though we contacted Matt about it, he made no effort to help locate the missing items. He told us he "had done everything he could" but when asked what he actually did to help find the alcohol he had no answer. We then asked the bartender, who asked us to not tell Matt that we had spoken because Matt told the bartender not to talk to us about the missing alcohol. When we asked Matt if he could review the security cameras on site, we were told that only two cameras in the venue actually work and neither of them would show the area that our alcohol went missing from.Not only did Matt make us feel like an afterthought for our own wedding, but he also was rude and argumentative to us and our guests and obstructive when we simply tried to locate our missing property after the event. In hindsight, I feel that we were too trusting in the Hospitality Butler and the White Home to provide us all of the services we agreed on and to make sure our belongings left their venue safely.
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