Wedding venue
UnclaimedGreengate Ranch & Vineyard
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Primary Location
Amenities
Accessibility
Wheelchair accessible entranceWheelchair accessible parking lot
Planning
Appointment required
Payments
Debit cards
Gorgeous place with every imaginable amenity
Great wedding venue. Not super accessible for disabled folks, lots of stairs and hills
I discovered Greengate online while looking for wedding venues. I grew up riding horses so when I saw the pictures on their website of brides posing with gorgeous horses and sunset pictures of brides and grooms in the pastures and vineyards walking with horses by their side, my heart melted. I knew this had to be my wedding venue. When we visited the ranch to make our final decision, we were taken up to the barn where the horses resided and were shown where the photos are taken during an event. I was in love. To picture myself in a wedding dress next to a classically leather bridled beauty was going to be a perfect dream come true. This however, was not the case and none of that came to pass. A month before the wedding, we came up to do a final walk through of the venue (which they required) and when we got there, I asked, "where are the horses?" To which the events manager nonchalantly replied, "oh, the horses are gone." My heart dropped. "What do you mean 'the horses are gone', why??" She then began to casually explain that they decided to no longer be a working horse ranch and just be a wedding venue. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. That was why we chose this place to begin with! I was dumbfounded and heartbroken. When I expressed how disappointed I was and asked why we had not been notified, she simply replied, "what we decide to do with the horses is our prerogative." There was absolutely no remorse or sympathy for my disappointment. She then said we still have 2 horses on site that you can still use for photos. I thought, thank god! At least it's not a total loss. She suggested I arrange with her to have them put in the stable in the early part of the afternoon for pre-ceremony photos and then back into the pasture for post-ceremony sunset photos, which I did. The day of the wedding arrives, and the whole bridal party and our photographer went down to the stable to take the aforementioned photos and guess what?? NO HORSES. It was just an empty barn. Again, my heart sank. There was nothing that could be done at that point so we just took photos without the horses. After the reception, our photographer came to get us for the sunset photos in the pasture. The 2 horses that were in the pasture were so skittish they wouldn't let us get near them even for a moment. I tried to be calm and reach out to them and one of them kicked out with its back legs and almost kicked me in the face. It missed me by mere inches! At that point I quit. I just put my hands up and said forget it! I wasn't about to risk a head injury on my wedding day. Again, utterly disappointed. I wish I could say that was all that went wrong with the venue but alas there is more. When we checked into the ranch house on Friday afternoon, there were no paper towels or cleaning supplies for the kitchen or bathrooms. We had to go to the store to by dish soap and sponges, and basically everything else one would think would be in a rental. None of the TVs worked throughout the entire house and that night we tried to light the fireplace during our rehearsal dinner and that didn't work either. The owner called and apologized and said we were the first wedding of the season so they hadn't stocked the house yet and forgot to check the gas line. Unbelievable and so unacceptable! It doesn't matter that we were the first wedding. It should have been done. We paid almost $20,000 to be there for 2 days (Literally just to stay on the property - not including any vendors) They refused to refund any of the money. The only compensation we received was a $500 refund for the late check out time on Sunday afternoon. When the weekend was over, I couldn't help but wish we had gotten married somewhere else. The only saving graces were the outside vendors we hired for the event: catering, flowers, and photographer. They made our wedding lovely. However, the location was not worth the level of disappointment and disenchantment we felt. Certainly not worth the money. Bad form Greengate. Bad form.
