“Ethereal gardens is a gorgeous venue and my wedding was stunning. That said, there are several things that Ethereal Gardens/Trademark Venues needs to improve on.
1- The contract includes additional costs (service fees, bar, additional guests, decor, etc) It becomes overwhelming and confusing to understand exactly how much your final cost will be. It needs to be better organized.
2- The invoice is the only location where you can see your cost breakdown, and they do not date any changes to the invoice. So one day your total cost is X, the next day it’s Y, and you have no idea what was added to the invoice. There is no record of changes. This is not a best practice for running a business and caused us extra stress.
3- The contract states that you cannot have a coordinator or a wedding planner because Trademark IS the wedding planner. This was frustrating because I did everything that a wedding planner should have done (creating the floor plan and seating chart, coordinating meetings, timeline, selecting/communicating with vendors…). Would have been nice to be able to have a planner to do those things like we were promised.
4- My planner tried to start my ceremony early, almost 20 minutes early! Even though most of my family wasn’t there yet! Luckily I said no and it went on as planned but that shouldn’t have even been suggested.
5- The security guards were VERY rude to guests who showed up late.
6- The venue set up my guest book upside down so the signatures are at the back of the book, welcome table was messy, and my gorgeous seating chart was set against an ugly brown wall so all photos of it are ruined.
7- Two full rows at the front during the ceremony were empty because people didn’t know they could sit there. This ruined certain photos because it’s very empty looking.
8- Getting-ready rooms are available at 11:30am (bride) and 2:30pm (groom) regardless of when your wedding starts. The venue does not accommodate based on your specific wedding timeline- unless you pay 1500 which only gets you an extra hour in the rooms. Wish we would have known that up front. Caused more stress and confusion.
9- A security guard snapped his fingers at one of my guests to tell them to leave when he was just waiting for his girlfriend to get out of the bathroom. And the staff started taking tables apart as our wedding was still going on! This led to one of our guests losing a jacket that was on the back of a chair someone took away.
Summary: Wedding was beautiful, food was great, venue was gorgeous. However Ethereal Garden’s processes are messy and very greedy/money focused, and some their staff is rude and made guests uncomfortable.”
