Shandelee Lake Inn

I attended a wedding at Shandelee Lake Inn over the Labor Day Weekend. From the minute we walked in it was a casual and cozy atmosphere, you could feel the excitement from the bride and groom as well as from everyone who attended.
The staff greeted us on the deck and offered us a drink as they brought us to our room (I brought my boyfriend along for this special day and he was equally as impressed by this space). There was no long winded check in process, just a walk down the hall to our room. The room wasn’t something out of a magazine, but it had a rustic charm to it that I found to be endearing. There were no TVs or Wifi, but somehow we survived. It was nice being able to unplug and enjoy the company of friends and family.
And did I mention that the guests for the wedding were the only ones at the Inn?! It certainly made us feel special knowing that we had this massive Inn to lounge around for the next three days. The entire weekend felt like one big party instead of some stuffy hotel.
And the food was incredible! On Friday evening we had a BBQ cooked right in front of us on the grill. On Saturday the Chef made a lovely brunch before the ceremony, and the food for the ceremony was on point as were the drinks. I would love to come back!

We loved our wedding here, but there were many things that went wrong. You can have a great time if your expectations are appropriate and/​or if you do a better job than we did in getting the accommodations you desire in writing.
I got married here last summer and we had a great time. We are a rather laid back couple and our friends and family are too, for the most part. The weekend was a success in spite of the problems we encountered. We knew (or thought we knew) what we were getting into as the Inn is rather rustic. We saw it a few weeks after Hurricane Sandy and it needed some touching up, so we had to visualize that when deciding whether or not to hold our wedding there. We appreciated the coziness and the quaintness enough to go ahead. Many of the needed touch ups never seemed to get done. We knew the rooms were nothing special, but we figured people wouldn’t be spending much time in there rooms. We didn’t look at every room and learned later that some were exceptionally small, in bad shape, or had awkward layouts. I would strongly urge you to do a thorough walk through as the rooms are not quite accurately portrayed in the layouts we were provided.
Positives about our experience:
1) We got to spend the weekend with everyone in one location
2) It was relatively inexpensive for a wedding in New York
3) Staff was friendly and accommodating
4) Do-​it-​yourself decorating made it easy to deal with
5) A second Inn was very close for the overflow of guests that were not able to fit in the Inn.
6) The food is of good quality.
7) The recommended photographer was reasonably priced and extremely pleasant to work with.
Negatives about our experience:
1) The business owner was not always easy to get a hold of and it was difficult to get specifics from him. Sometimes it would be two or three days before he’d return my email or phone calls and our minor requests were not always acknowledged. Some that were seemed to have been ignored.
2) Specific items that did not go according to plan:
(a) The pool had no water, so our nieces and nephews couldn’t use it as we had promised. You should be aware that it is not even close to Olympic sized as stated on their website. Also, the hot tub was not functional.
(b) We had several guests with dietary restrictions (Gluten allergies, vegetarians, etc), but their food was not specially prepared for the BBQ as promised. No veggie burgers were available as had been promised. We brought our own specially made desserts for some people (for the wedding night) that we asked to be set aside, but they were mixed in with the rest, so those people were unable to have dessert.
© We ran out of red wine early on during the dinner. Instead of getting more we were offered a dessert wine as a replacement. Just because it is red it doesn’t make it the same thing. This was most upsetting to my wife and her father, who had funded most of this event.
(d) On Sunday, our guests were woken up in the morning and told to shower early since they wanted to turn off the water. This was inconvenient to many people, not to mention we were told we could stay until noon or one on Sunday.
(e) We discussed the layout of the tables for the reception and the layout he gave is staff was different, which included too few tables. I happened to catch this while passing through before the ceremony and they fixed it, but that should not be something I have to concern myself with a few minutes before my wedding ceremony.
(f) For the ceremony, I had to insist on enough chairs being set out for our guests before it was done. Again, not a detail I feel I should have to worry about on such an occasion.
Part of the reason we had this many problems was because the owner left on Saturday afternoon and did not seem to properly inform his staff of the details we’d discussed. However, I’m not convinced that would have made a difference since he was so casual about many of the arrangements. When we’d discuss them he seemed to get tired of the discussion and say «yeah, yeah, yeah…» and pass it off like it was all a done deal. This became apparent when he stopped keeping track of which guests had paid for their rooms and who hadn’t. He didn’t seem to care anymore.
All in all, the place has the potential to be really great. We still had a fantastic time, but the number of minor headaches that arose throughout the weekend was rather disappointing. Because of this I cannot give a higher rating. In fairness, I’d give 2.5 stars, but 3 seemed too high.
***(Update)***
I wanted to address the owner’s question about why this review was written a full year after our event. It was our one year anniversary and we were reminiscing about our wedding weekend. There were many positives as well as negatives. This review is intended to address both.