Heather Crossley

Review of An Enchanted Evening

We had our wedding here in August 2016. We loved i...

We had our wedding here in August 2016. We loved it immediately. Here's a rundown of goods-- and not so goods-- that I came up with. Overall, we thought it was wonderful!!

CEREMONY AREA:
The scenery was great, although I think some of the trees should be trimmed because it blocks a lot of the beautiful scenery. It allowed for great pictures. We had the wedding at 7pm, and the sun set behind the house, but the sun put beautiful colors on the clouds behind us during the ceremony. One thing that we didn't like was that they keep the ceremony chairs outside. Although they are covered, they were incredibly dirty when we arrived. It took a lot of time to clean those, when we could have been doing more decorating. I don't think we should have to do any cleaning when we rent a wedding venue.
We made the ceremony area our dance floor as well. This wound up not working out well because it was on a completely different level as the bar and dining areas. It was difficult to get people to dance with this setup from what we noticed. And to answer your question...we had a lot of dancers that came to our wedding, but just seemed to be inconvenient.

INSIDE ROOM and BRIDE'S QUARTERS:
We loved having access to the room inside for showers and getting ready. That was very handy for my friends that helped with setup, so they didn't have to go all the way back home to get ready. We also liked that there was an alternate place to put the cake so that it wouldn't melt in the summer heat. There was a lot of space to decorate and put your own touch. I did get a little freaked out that they had an entire large glass case dedicated to creepy humpty dumpty stuff. We just covered it with a tablecloth and that's where we put our cake. The sound system was fine, but we had to provide our own batteries for the microphone. We were initially concerned about it being loud enough, but it definitely was!

BAR/RECEPTION AREA:
The first thing I noticed when we were dropping off all of our stuff, was that there were cob webs and wasp nests a few places in the bar area. Its a wedding venue, I guess my expectations are a little higher. They did have folding tables available for us to put our food on, so that was handy. The bar area worked out well. The countertops are not very practical for serving drinks because its made of larger rocks. Very bumpy! We brought a large cutting board and that fixed the issue. We loved that there was a large refrigerator down there! Was super handy! The coke machine is a nice addition, as that kept us from having to get sodas, but it only made a small amount of ice. It would have been great if they had a larger ice maker. One of my friends had to make the 20 min (ONE WAY!) drive to a gas station to get bags of ice to make it through the night.
The landscaping is pretty, and makes decorating not as necessary, which I'm always a fan of.

HONEYMOON CABIN:
I LOVED,LOVED,LOVED this!!! It was so nice not to have to drive anywhere after a long day. It had a beautiful view of Pinnacle as well. They were so kind and filled the refrigerator with sodas, water, champagne, wine, and fresh strawberries. They also had snacks available for us as well. They provided pancake mix, which was such a good idea, even though we didn't get to use it. We loved that there was the tub in the main area so we could look out the window while soaking. The shower was really cool with the unique shower head. I did have a difficult time getting temperature control right, but it could have been just me.

OVERALL: We loved it! The owners were very friendly, and quick to get back with us in emails.
One big thing I would change- We were not allowed to come the day before to do any setup, rehearsal, etc. There was no mention of a wedding or event the day prior, so not sure why we couldn't have come. This caused A LOT of work on the day of the wedding, which was even worse since we couldn't show up until 10am.

Without a doubt, this venue is both economical and beautiful. We are proud to support this family operated business in central Arkansas.