Anthony Colarusso

Review of Abington Art Center

We had our wedding at AAC in September 2013. Over...

We had our wedding at AAC in September 2013. Overall our experience extremely stressful and although the outdoor venue could be beautiful we would never recommend it to anyone because the staff is unprofessional and grounds are not properly maintained.

We booked our date more than a year in advance and during this time our wedding coordinator contact changed three times. This should have been our first indicator of a poorly run organization.

Next during a visit to AAC a few months before the weeding we noticed that they installed a large, intrusive banner with their corporate sponsor s logo on it on the side of the outdoor stage. Who would want this visible during their wedding ceremony or in their wedding photos?? We asked and AAC was unwilling to take it down for the wedding. We had to settle for an alternative ceremony site within their campus.

Our next problem was discovered the week before the wedding during an onsite visit with the caterer. We found that a 3' x 40' strip of grass right in the middle of our alternative ceremony site was missing! Apparently there was a wedding there over a month prior and they laid a runner down to create an aisle way which killed the grass and turned the area into a mud pit. I immediately attempted to contact the Private Events Manager but her office was closed at the time. I was able to reach the Executive Director of AAC and she understood the situation completely and assured me that new sod would be installed before our wedding and that the Private Events Manager would see to it. The next day the Private Events Manager called me and informed me that they would be using a liquid seed on the area and installing sod would not be possible. This was on the Wednesday before our Saturday wedding and if you know anything about grass seed you know that it doesn't grow in three days. I told the Private Events Manager that I was able to source sod locally and was willing to also help find someone install it. She became very disgruntled with me and threatened to hang up on me! She also said that until she received our final payment, the problem would not be resolved. How unprofessional! They never even sent us an invoice for this payment! Later that day we went down to AAC and paid our balance in full and met face to face with the Private Events Manager. She never once apologized for the way she spoke to me on the phone but told us that they were attempting to find someone to install sod and if they couldn't get anyone they would remove the banner on the outdoor stage so we could have our ceremony there as we originally planned. If they would have just removed the banner in the first place, the whole mess could have been avoided!

It's a real shame because with some much needed maintenance and a professional events manager the center could really be a wonderful outdoor venue. In the end everything got resolved but it was definitely not worth the added stress.