Eastland Suites Hotel & Conference Center

nly snag was the fella they put in charge of the event after dinner was a miserable person. he approached my bride, at the end of the night, stating there was a problem with payment, and we couldn't leave until the issue was resolved. mind you, we had paid in full, the director of events had told him that before she left, receipts were presented to him, and he still wasn't completely happy. so there we were, me, my bride, our planner/photographer, a groomsman and his wife, all trying (after a fantastic night of celebrating our wedding) to tell this guy and show him the cleared charges on our bank account, and he was not believing any of us. when he did finally come around and realize what happened, he didn't apologize, he didn't even turn around in his chair to tell us to have a good night, he basically dismissed us from his presence so we could get on with our evening. the issue is he went to my bride to explain how his mess up was now her problem. idc who you approach, idc if it's guests, obviously i would have preferred to handle his myself without adding stress to my bride, but you just don't go to the bride with any problems, especially this. maybe it just stands out because the rest of the event went so perfectly that this little issue turns into a big blemish, but it is the lone thing that prevents me from saying it was all perfect. if there is a handoff at your event to the same affect, please verify with both parties that this type of scenario will not happen to you.

perfect for the bridal party getting ready!) as well as a well-run catering team offering awesome service. Overall an excellent wedding venue in Bloomington, Illinois. Highly recommend.

ed me the wrong way. She fought back on even simple things like where I wanted to set up the gift table. In the weeks leading up to the wedding, we were trying to schedule a meeting. I said I could come in any day after 4:45. She said she leaves the office before then - didn't I have a lunch break I could come in on? Excuse me? You work in hospitality! Luckily I work in town and I was able to skip lunch that day to make this meeting, but my husband works 30 min away in Heyworth. He couldn't be there because he would have spent his whole lunch break driving. We also booked the 25 person shuttle bus through ES. On the wedding day, the driver called our suite to check if we still needed the ride at noon. I said yes, we were nearly ready, just running a few minutes behind. In the 20 min from that phone call to when we walked outside, the driver left. I was squeezed into a car in my big ballgown to get to the church and start the first look while my bridal party and parents waited outside in DECEMBER trying to get someone to send a bus. My photographer coudn't believe it. She said anyone in this business knows that sometimes weddings run a bit behind. Same thing happened after the ceremony. No shuttle. My groom and I had also expected to use the complimentary limo to get to the reception. Guess what else ever showed! For the 2nd time that day I was crammed into a car in my beautiful dress while my groom sat in back with our photographer. Our videographer drove us but we had lost so much time waiting we didn't have time to stop for a photo op in Uptown Normal like we had planned. When I got to ES, I found that some of my guests had still not found their seat because half of the escort cards had not been put out and the table numbers were mixed up. I had put all placecards in envelopes clearly labeled with table number, so how did half of table 8 guests end up at table 13? They spent most of cocktail hour searching for their placecard with their phone flashlight in the low light. Also, three tables didn't have favor bags. One of my guests had to ask a server about it. Server was great and found a box of them, but I worry that other guests didn't get theirs because they were too shy to ask. The next day the serving staff and Mike helped us load up all gifts and decor that they had packed up and stored for us overnight - so nice! But when we called later to ask about the top layer of our cake, the person at the front desk was very snippy with us. Said yeah, we had to come get all our stuff that we had just left here. We told her that we had been told we could leave it there, that we had already picked up our stuff, but no one had mentioned the cake so we had forgotten about it until now. When we went in to get it we mentioned the transportation situation, and were told that in order to use the complimentary limo we had to sign a contract, and it was our fault that we didn't because how were they supposed to know we intended to use it? The limo pick up time was clearly in the day-of timeline I provided to Alex, and she never said a word about it. Our day was great in spite of Eastland Suites, not because of it. Book with caution, and only if you can be organized enough to beat their chaos!! The serving staff and Mike in sales were great, the management not so much.