House of Broel

Beautiful Venue, Poor Experience with Owner

The staff and experience deserve five stars. Denise was fantastic and guided us through the entire process. The food and venue were excellent, and our guests could not stop raving about the evening. Unfortunately, our experience with Ms. Broel was extremely disappointing and overshadowed what should have been a perfect day. Because we live out of state, we booked the venue online without seeing it in person or meeting Ms. Broel. We reserved nearly two years in advance because my fiancée, now wife, was set on a Halloween night wedding, knowing it would be a highly sought-after date in New Orleans. About a year before the wedding, we visited NOLA with our moms to see the venue and meet Ms. Broel in person. The very first thing she said to us was, “How committed are we to the date?” which was surprising, given that securing Halloween night was the entire reason we booked so early. The tour itself felt more focused on Ms. Broel’s personal stories and her collection of dolls than on helping us understand the logistics of our wedding day. She also made unnecessary comments about it being a smaller wedding and how we had her “old prices,” even though we had already paid for more guests than expected and at her then-current rates. We also found her inflexibility frustrating. Although the venue’s own wedding website states, “Other options are available, and we are happy to accommodate special requests” regarding the menu, she flat out refused our request to make any adjustments to accommodate some of my wife’s pescatarian family members. The interaction left us feeling unwelcome and uncomfortable. If it had not been too late to find another venue, we would have canceled. We also encountered several issues surrounding the wedding itself: No rehearsal for the bride. My wife was never given a chance to walk through the ceremony, which led to confusion on the day of. She kept bumping into objects walking onto the stage, and our photographer struggled to capture key moments because no one communicated where she should stand. Unprofessional handling of cleanup. The venue enforces a strict 10:30 p.m. cutoff to remove all personal items. We had asked in advance whether we should hire a service like TaskRabbit since we had a second line parade back to the hotel after the reception. We were told venue staff would handle everything. They did not. Instead, the bridesmaids were just told to get everything out immediately, and several missed the second line because of it. While the staff, other than Ms. Broel, and the event itself were wonderful, Ms. Broel’s attitude, lack of professionalism, and poor communication made an otherwise beautiful experience far more frustrating than it needed to be.