The Willow Room

I read through some of the reviews prior to my wedding date, and I must admit, that there are things that I find myself agreeing and disagreeing with. I wasn’t going to review, because I’m not one to really do that. But I want to assure newly engaged couples who are just starting the search that things at The Willow Room are so much smoother than they may seem. At first, I must agree with some of the brides before me and say, the sales manager Kim, wasn’t very helpful, and at times, wasn’t very interested in any questions we had. Things were not properly explained and we found out some things later on that weren’t told to us in the beginning. HOWEVER, there is a NEW sales manager named Nicole Garritano-Meloy, who is a blessing in disguise, she comes with a lot of experience and personality of gold. She is fantastic to work with! I wish I had her the whole time. She fixed the problems that we had encountered due to lack of explanations. She really made our wedding turn out to be a dream come true. I can not begin to thank her, John, and the rest of the staff enough for all of their hard work to make my day flawless, and beautiful. We had our ceremony and our reception at The Willow Room. We did have the whole ballroom for our event, and in our package we selected, the bridal suite was included. There is a ceremony fee (which wasn’t explained at the beginning). But it’s worth it. No place could have done it better. Nicole, John the banquet manager, and his staff ran things so smoothly from the transition between ceremony and reception, my guests didn’t even notice the wall came down and the whole ballroom was revealed. Our bridal butler Renee, was fantastic and there wasn’t a single moment that my bridal party wasn’t taken care of from beginning to end. John checked on us the whole night, and he too was there with us from arrival until departure. The entire wait staff was extremely professional. Chef Robert and his crew were amazing, and the food was out of this world. All of our guests were very pleased. My husband, and our families and friends had an incredible experience with our wedding at The Willow Room; I HIGHLY recommend it to anyone who is looking for something extra special for their big day. I feel horrible for anyone who didn’t have a good experience at The Willow Room, but trust in Nicole, she is incredible to work with and I am very lucky to have her come along when she did.

I cannot say enough about my experience with the Willow Room! Planning a wedding can be so stressful, but the sales manager Nicole and her staff took care of every little detail and were so fun to work with My family and friends were absolutely blown away by how beautiful this venue was...the marble floor when you walk in is stunning and the candeliers are absolutely breathtaking! Plus the service and food was fabulous...I have to thank every single person down to the wait staff for ensuring that we had an amazing night....I would definitely recommend this venue to any bride out there.

The Willow Room is absolutely gorgeous! I had a great experience overall, although the Bridal Butler was not very responsive. There were several times when the bridal party including myself had to get our own drinks.

I was initially paired up with Kim (sales) as my 'coordinator.' Kim was sort of unwilling to compromise when it came to anything. When one person said we (the bride and groom) could customize our menu for just the two of us, and the rest of the wedding could eat the standard meal, she disagreed and said we could not. When someone said tablecloths (black - white and ivory are included in the price) were $2 per table, she said they were $3. Certain things that should have been in a contract (i.e. pricing for EVERYTHING) were not. They wait until the last minute for a lot of things - you're not doing your seating chart until 2 weeks before the wedding (oh, and you MUST use place cards - that is their policy). HOWEVER, among all the negatives (including the price - which went up by an additional $4,000 ON A SUNDAY in a two month time frame from our first meeting to our next), our day was amazing. John, the day-of coordinator, is FANTASTIC and I will rave about him until the cows come home. He is a saint and I would recommend him to anyone. The day was seamless and everything went according to plan. You do not have to set up, clean up, or do ANYTHING...just get ready and spend time with your friends and family! Oh, and EAT. John will remind you of that, too! I suggest that, should you book the Willow Room, splurge on the Bridal Suite. We used the hell out of that room (our ceremony and reception were both held there, and I would also suggest doing that, as well - the ceremony was only an additional $250, I believe)...the hors d'oeuvres and alcohol are in the bridal suite waiting for you after your ceremony so you have time to just breathe and get something to munch on without having to be swarmed by everyone! It was stressful planning, but we loved it. I would suggest using someone other than Kim, however, if you do love the room itself.

The Willow Room is an absolutely breathtaking venue. The food was delicious, and our wedding party was catered to completely with basically our own personal servers. The bar lines moved a bit slow at our wedding, but we heard lots of compliments.

The willow room is a very beautiful venue but it is not worth dealing with the staff. In the matter of a 3 month period we had 2 different wedding planners. Neither was willing to compromise. The second was new so every question we had she had to get back to us on. After we signed a contract for a minimum the prices were increased nearly 4 dollars a person. I understand we didnt sign a contract based on price per person but not once were we told the prices would change after we signed the contract. We just felt it was bad business. There are many hidden fees such as fees to try your cookies, fees to place your place cards in alphabetical order. The prices on the linens from the Willow room are very expensive, I suggest using an outside company. Also your total payment is due a week before the event. I really had a problem paying for it in full before the event but that is their policy. The day of the event we had 10 people not show up and 4 had to leave due to emergency. NONE of the food was packed up eventhough it was paid for. You dont think of these little things during the event. With a place like the Willow room I figured I had nothing to worry about the day of our wedding, well we were wrong. When I did call the willow room the next day they were only willling to comp 60 dollars. I believe this is insane. I was very very diasppointed, I would not recommend the Willow Room to my worst enemy. They made the already stressful process of wedding planning even more stressful.