The Best Barn & Farm Wedding Venues in Soquel, CA

“We held our wedding reception at Saratoga Springs in the Cathedral Grove region of the venue on a Saturday in October. After visiting them for a walkthrough, we booked this venue about a year and a few months in advance. This was the first venue we visited and we fell in love! We felt a great family-like vibe from the staff, starting with Jennifer who coordinated our initial booking and tour. Throughout our time preparing for this event, Olivia and Sam were extraordinary in their communication, response time, and knowledge of these events. They did a wonderful job in helping us understand what we needed vs. what we wanted and good decisions to make. They never tried to upsell us on more expensive options, always letting us know the best value for what we wanted. Throughout this process, we knew we had made the right choice in terms of staff. Scenically, Saratoga Springs is stunning! An outdoor venue with several different species of large trees like oaks and redwoods, many small creeks that run through and around the venue, and several amenities included such as lights that wrap around the trees, a firepit, and artificial turf that you can actually wear high heels on! We were in love with the scenery immediately because our reception was LOTR/Legend of Zelda themed and this was perfect for us. Throughout the actual event, the Saratoga Springs staff was excellent. They assisted us and our own day of wedding coordinators in running the event and making sure we had everything that they could provide. Our reception was during a brutal heat wave in the Bay Area, but Cathedral Grove had so many large trees that the shade they provided meant the floor never got hot and it felt more like 75 degrees which was SO essential for the comfort of ourselves and our guests. Everything was great, and we give the venue and their staff a 10/10. There was one glaring issue we want to address. The DJ we booked, Paul Dominguez, was a very nice man. He seemed to be on top of it, being in constant communication with us leading up to the event. We felt that he was going to do a great job. Yet, when it came time for the event, he made SEVERAL mistakes in what we asked him to do that we felt the need to address this situation and performance. He is part of the approved vendor list for DJs but we honestly feel Saratoga Springs needs to either reevaluate him or discuss this with him because literally everything else about the night was perfect for us, except him. Again, he is a nice guy and even provided cold sparklers for us for free which we really appreciated, but the lack of attention to detail in several aspects of this night was something we felt we needed to address here. Overall, Saratoga Springs is an excellent venue choice for a big event like a wedding/reception and we are happy to recommend anyone looking for a venue. We had an amazing experience for our reception and we are very satisfied with the staff and scenery of this venue.”