HAMMOND CASTLE MUSEUM

have floral decorations and musicians play at the ceremony. The workers there were very kind and helpful with keeping us on track of time. One downside to this is that they do not offer a rehearsal day or time. But with a small wedding it wasn’t really needed so it did not impact our day at all.  We love this castle and the area and recommend it to anyone looking for a small wedding venue 

- We were reassured that guests would not be barred from the venue before 5pm. We even made sure to clarify this; our wedding coordinator/us was assured that guests would be allowed to enter the castle if they arrive early. That was not true and all guests were barred from entering until 5pm. 2 - We were told we could unload wedding decor the day prior, on the wedding day from 8am-1pm. When we came to do that at 10am, it took a long time for staff to figure out if we were actually allowed to come down to drop stuff off. At one point we were even told we couldn’t because the tent vendor was setting up and it was too many people according to the venue. The venue did not tell us that we could not come when other vendors were there or we would have coordinated a specific time without other vendors there. After a debate, the venue would only allow one car/person at a time (there was room for more than one car at a time) resulting in unloading taking much longer than it should have. We were not informed of this one car/person rule in advance. They also then told us that we should come back after 1pm because traffic from the museum goers slows down at that time. So we ended up coming around 2:30pm with all out supplies and ready for the wedding but once again staff did not communicate with each other because a different security guard this time (than the one who talked to us earlier) told us we could not unload more stuff then because the venue was still open. The lack of proper communication between staff was atrocious, had devastating effects on our wedding, and wasted so much of what little time you have on your wedding day. 3 - We have numerous guests who come up to us after our wedding to tell us how rude the staff was towards them. One example, numerous guests would be told they could come down to the venue, then another worker would stop them and yell at them (when they got permission from the previous worker). (We had a Halloween themed wedding.) Staff also tried to bar one of guests from entering, who wearing a samurai costume, stating this is a private event (once again showing how poor communication was among staff for them not to know the wedding theme.) 4 - Per our contract, vendors were supposed to be able to unload at 3pm (but not set up until 3:30pm). Our DJ was barred from unloading until 3:30pm resulting in him finishing setting up late causing our ceremony to start 20 minutes late. This (and staff) also didnt allow him to back up his car and unload his equipment so he had to bring each piece of equipment down one by one. All of this caused our wedding to start late. 5 - In our contract, we had a rehearsal as part of our contract. Originally the venue did not want to honor the contract - it took our coordinator speaking with them, us calling numerous times and speaking with different staff for it to be honored. They did end up giving us a rehearsal and even let us practice our first dance. However, we should not have had to fight to have our contract honored properly. 6 - When we booked this venue, we were told the price we were getting was the typical price for all weekend weddings. The verbiage in our contract also made it seem that way as well. However, we learned after the fact that the venue charged extra for it being labor day weekend.