Avent Orangery

The venue is objectively gorgeous, but the managing staff at both Avent and its sister hotel Chateau Avalon were so bad that I truthfully wouldn't choose this venue again.We had no issues until a few months before the wedding when we learned that they had booked out our bridal/honeymoon suite to other guests. Our coordinator called the hotel to resolve it and spoke to operations manager Sara Pier, who recognized that they had booked out our room, and said that their game plan was to contact the people who had booked our room a week before their stay and tell them that there was a maintenance issue and they had to be moved to another room. Our coordinator confirmed this a month before the wedding. It struck me as shady- why not just tell the other guests that you accidentally booked out someone's wedding suite?- but if we were gonna get the room we booked, okay I guess.So we were obviously upset when we showed up Friday and learned that other people were already in the room. The hotel's general manager Kristy Davis clearly caught wind that we were not happy and was immediately up in arms when she came to talk to us. She was visibly annoyed that I was asking for an explanation of how this happened. Turns out it wasn't even just one reservation booked over ours - there were multiple - and Kristy said she personally was unwilling to move even the guests who hadn't checked in yet to other rooms.Later talking to Sara, she said that the issue was squarely the fault of Shelby Beaumont, Avent's venue director, who she accused of booking out rooms and not communicating that to the hotel. Sara also said they were not apologizing to us bc they were being "disrespected" (they were not). (Btw this is the same Sara my coordinator had been talking to before the wedding.)This is about the end of what I was aware of during the wedding day, so everything below I learned after the fact, but all of this has been verified by multiple people.Apparently, right after the ceremony, Sara pulled my coordinator and MoH aside and told them that shortly before the ceremony, "a bride and her mom" had broken into the bridal suite and screamed at the teenage guests staying in the room. She said the teenager's mom wanted to press charges and that she (Sara) was about to call the cops to have me arrested. During my wedding.Obviously, my mom and I did *not* break into the bridal suite and/or yell at any teenagers. When I learned about this the next day, my very first response was "well let's pull the tapes!" But conveniently they don't have cameras in that hallway.Another thing I learned after the wedding is that Sara was shit talking me so openly that my friends heard her. My personal favorite was, "What a crazy bitch, she needs to be medicated." Now I have to talk about Shelby Beaumont, the venue director. She seemed very nice at our 30-day out meeting. But as soon as Kristy told us on Friday that we could not have the wedding suite and that we needed to talk to Shelby about it, Shelby ignored almost every single call she got from my MoH and my coordinator for 2 days straight. I don't think she was even present at the wedding. I don't know who finally managed to have a conversation with her, but I learned that Shelby claimed she emailed me a month ago to tell me that our wedding suite was not available. (I did not get an email.)After all this happened, we were reading reviews online and learned that they've done this exact thing to others. I've attached screenshots of similar reviews as well as one of Avent's responses. There are many similarities -- accusations of abuse from the patron, threats to call the cops, even saying the worst people were "the bride and her mom." (Not the mention the only other Yelp review.)Sara swears Chateau Avalon is a totally separate business from Avent, but the threats and lies appear to be a coordinated effort. It was the hotel attacking/threatening us, but Avent's Google account attacking/threatening the other reviewers.Despite what appears to be a deliberate attempt to ruin our wedding, they did not succeed and it was a beautiful day. That being said, it is a little sad that we spent the first few days after our wedding having to think about the astonishing lengths they were willing to go to ruin our wedding, apparently in retaliation of our (valid, imo) complaints.

DO NOT BOOK HERE!! This was the venue of my dreams. It was perfect up until the day of. For starters our reserved parking spaces were covered so we were not able to park in them making bringing things into the hotel very difficult. The hotel manager who stated over and over again that she has nothing to do with the wedding side of things let us know that there was an event the night before and all the workers proceeded to then go out after the late party so they would be sleeping in before coming to work. One of the coordinators for A-Vent and who I had been working with up to my wedding day was no help at all. If I could redo it I would go with the other coordinator and not allow this one to be apart of my day. She was rude, belittling, and every time I looked at her constantly on her phone. I had called her a little after noon the day of because I assumed she was already at the venue and other vendors were asking where the coordinator for the space was and she sent me to voicemail then proceeded to call me back hours later. When walking into the reception space on the day of there was a large (ugly) white fireplace with a small (cheap looking) television on it. I kindly asked for it to be removed from the venue space because I had never seen it before and it was not going to go with our aesthetic at all. After asking the coordinator multiple times her only reply was "we're working on it" then one hour before my ceremony was supposed to start she let me know it could not be moved. When I asked her why and told her I should have been informed of changes in the space her response was "well that did not happen" AND THEN SHE SMILED. Long story short my DJ and family members moved it in and out of the space with no help from anyone working at A-Vent. The whole situation was very upsetting and the coordinator made it ten times worse. Our contract stated that curtains needed to be hung so when the sun was setting it wasn't blinding people. As the sun started setting I quickly realized there were not any curtains up therefore, you could not even look into the direction of the sun because it was so bright. When bringing this to one of the coordinators attention the only solution was to put up the curtains then and there while everyone was watching and it would look horrible. Upon checking out of the hotel the next morning we were charged for things that should have been with the wedding package. When I brought this to the attention of a hotel staffer all the front desk lady could say was "this is what Miss. X said" and stating that she has nothing to do with the wedding venue. Overall the venue is so pretty but the workers are a complete mess. The hotel and the venue do not communicate at all leading to a lot of very confusing and frustrating situations. The contract is an even bigger mess. I had it looked over by a professional and they were appalled at how poorly it is written. Plus they did not even follow through and hold up their parts of it (I.e. the curtains, breakfast in bed). Overall it is so pretty and you really only have to deal with the employees for a few days but it makes your big day a little less perfect because of it. UPDATE: 6 months later we still did not receive our security deposit. We had to have a lawyer contact AVENT in order to get a check sent. They had so many reasons as to why it had not been refunded examples were that their portal was messed up, the owner has been out of town, etc. DO NOT BOOK HERE!!