Belle Mer

I just had my dream wedding at the belle mer last weekend. Everything went perfectly! Not one thing went wrong. The belle mer is very professional and the food is not your typical wedding food, it was amazing! Guests have been telling me it was the best wedding they ever went to. The view is breath taking, the staff is very professional, food is incredible, and the new renovations made to the island house make it the perfect wedding location!

My new dream wedding venue! (Maybe if I win the lottery!)
I was a guest at a wedding at the Belle Mer Island House this weekend and every aspect was perfect. It was extremely well organized starting with people in the parking area directing guests to the proper area. The ceremony was outside with the water being the perfect backdrop. After the ceremony we moved inside for cocktail hour with THE BEST appetizers you could imagine and top shelf liquor available. I’m talking an antipasto salad bar with fresh meats cheeses and marinated vegetables, lamb shanks with chutney, Tuscan chicken skewers, 3 kinds of flat bread pizzas, etc… and everything was amazing. Taste, presentation and service were all top notch. The servers’ trays were never empty for long, and people were constantly coming around collecting any empty plates, glasses or other misc trash. And the bartenders were quick, friendly and on point with their drinks. Great cosmos!
They stayed very organized and on schedule letting everyone know when the dinning room was open and shut the bar down temporarily so everyone would take their seats for the wedding party entrance. Even then we had an amazing young man waiting on our table bringing us drinks, confirmed our names and what meal we ordered and made sure we had everything we needed. The courses were brought out 1 table at a time with 5 servers all coordinating the timing of setting each plate down together then all walking away in a single line hands behind their backs. The little details that really made this venue leaps and bounds above other places I’ve been. And the beef dish I had, you could cut it with a spoon it was so tender! With fresh perfectly cooked vegetables on the side. I’ve been to plenty of Newport restaurants and this was one of the best dishes I’ve had.
Throughout the night we were able to enjoy the amazing views and impeccably manicured grounds outside watching boats sail by, a beautiful sunset and great view of the Newport Bridge. The dinning area had large glass doors which they opened after dinner letting the fresh sea air in and access to grass steps leading down to the water where you could sit on the wall and enjoy your drink or sit by the fire pit and smoke a cigar.
I could go on forever about all the details. It was the perfect summer wedding venue and I hope the bride and groom were just as thrilled about their experience as I was!

I got married in the water salon on 4÷25÷2015. My event specialist was Sara. Sara is amazing. Previously we had Jessica as our specialist and she just wasn’t the best fit for us. Sara went above and beyond. Top customer service skills and very professional. My special day was as flawless as it could be. Highly recommend the belle mer!

Belle Mer is truly an exquisite venue. We searched high and low for the perfect location for our wedding and once we saw Belle Mer it had our names written all over it. We are from NYC and have seen it all, but Belle Mer is one of a kind. Our wedding ceremony and reception were both in the Salon on ¹¹⁄₂₂ and it was nothing short of magical. The space is absolutely gorgeous and will take your breath away. I immediately fell in love with the all-​white room adorned with crystal chandeliers. We had a very unique event that wasn’t your typical cookie-​cutter wedding which was one of the main reasons why we choose them. The food and drinks are top notch, but like in anything in life you get what you pay for. The portions are small in size, but high in quality.
I hate to be negative in any way, but I feel like future brides can benefit from my honesty. Belle Mer has some very unique charges and they will constantly nickel and dime you. You like that table shape? It must be rented. You want a different type of alcohol? How about $ 160/​bottle. Oh and the bridal suite has an hourly rate and must be rented — it is not just given to you. It is VERY hard to negotiate things, but if you stick to it, some things they will honor (but very few). I wish they would work on their flexibility because it would make for a more pleasurable experience.
We experienced some bumps in the road, but our wedding was executed to perfection. The staff is hard working, but it did appear that they have a high turnover (and very young in age). Thank you Amanda, Abby, and Amanda’s new placement — I wish I remembered your name but you were fantastic. Is Belle Mer expensive — extremely, but worth every penny. I hope to use this review as a platform to reach out to future brides seeking this venue for their special day. I am happy to share more info on our menu, décor, rentals, the planning process and their notorious «administrative charge». Please feel free to contact me (email is
.), as I wish I had some inside info before going into this — I probably would have done some things a bit differently.
Overall, I was very pleased with our decision to choose Belle Mer as our venue. There are many moving parts throughout a wedding day and Belle Mer’s staff stayed on top of it all. They were able to quickly transform our room from the ceremony to reception and it was flawless. It truly is a one-​of-​a-​kind venue and we received endless compliments. If you are looking for a unique, upscale, and aesthetically pleasing wedding, this is the spot for you.

I was obsessed with Belle Mer and knew it was the place for my wedding the second I saw it online. Going to tour it only made me want it more. I would definitely recommend Belle Mer for anyone looking for a beautiful outdoor/​on the water venue. I loved so many things about this venue. I loved how they had two different sides that you could have your wedding in. The Water Salon is larger and definitely has a more fancy, classy feel to it and the newly renovated Island House which is more open/​laid-​back but still just as beautiful. My wedding day was 100% perfect and a huge part of it was because of the venue. My guests could not stop talking about how beautiful it was. They loved sitting outside on the lovely white wall overlooking the water. The staff was great — my wedding day consultants and Steven James who was my wedding coordinator were absolutely perfect. They understood what I wanted and listened to all my ideas and made it all happen. I didn’t want for anything on my wedding day because they truly treat you like royalty on your wedding day. Our food, drinks, cupcakes — everything was delivered to our tables without question.
Overall, I just can’t say enough about the absolute beauty of the place — it’s too perfect. Sure, it’s a little on the pricier side when comparing venues but 1) it’s in Newport, 2) it’s on the water and 3) they deliver and the money is well worth it. The staff is there to work with you and trim down areas to make your budget work. We knew we wouldn’t be able to afford a PM wedding at Belle Mer so we just did a Saturday AM/​early PM wedding and the event minimum was half that of the nighttime (and we easily hit it). The only one tiny complaint I would have would be about the bridal suite for AM weddings. You are not allowed in until 9:30 AM. We had 9 girls hair & makeup to get done and needed to start around 6:00 AM. When I asked about getting into the bridal suite early they said they would have to charge us and the hourly rate to rent the room is something like $ 1,500 per HOUR! They were going to offer us a discount rate since we already were using it at 9:30 but it was still a ridiculous amount, in my opinion, considering the amount of money we were already spending there.
Other than that I would definitely recommend Belle Mer to future brides. All my relatives want to know when we’re having our next party there — they all loved it so much.

Beautiful place… can’t imagine how nice it looks in the Summer.

My daughter got married here 9÷20÷14. We couldn’t have been more pleased. Steven and the girls treated us like royalty. They catered to our evey request. They consistently asked if there was anything we needed or wanted all day long. We didn’t have to think about a thing. You cannot beat the view. The food was delicious. It was the wedding my daughter dreamed of, and she got what she wanted. Steven called a couple of vendors for me when I started to get nervous about their late arrival. He kept me calm. Yes, it is expensive, but you get what you pay for. A huge thank you to them all.

Take it from an industry professional – don’t waste your money here. They have serious customer service problems.
I’m not sure what their clients typically experience, but the way they treat their vendors is horrible. I’m a musician from Boston who was hired to play for a wedding there this weekend, and the experience was one of the worst I’ve had in my 10+ years of playing for weddings. The two stars are out of fairness to the venue, because most of the problems we had were with Em Devaud, the wedding coordinator, who I understand used to work at Belle Mer. My colleague and I got set up in the place where the staff instructed us to go for the ceremony, and Em interrupted our rehearsal with one of the wedding party to insist that we move about 50 yards away, despite the fact that we had been asked to accompany one of the bridesmaids while she sang a song during the ceremony. When I raised concerns about the large physical separation between us and the singer, Em informed me that we’d just «have to make the best of it» because it was «unacceptable» for us to be closer to the ceremony. Right after the ceremony began, it started to rain, and the whole wedding party (about 100 guests) moved inside. While trying to figure out where to set up, we were repeatedly and brusquely ordered to move and set up in another place, because Em and a member of the Belle Mer staff apparently had different ideas about where we should be located, and both were hostile and defensive when we asked them where we should go. We moved our equipment twice, and finally were able to set up for the ceremony. After the ceremony we played for the cocktail hour, voluntarily staying half an hour later than we had originally been contracted for due to the «rain delay» in the ceremony. As we were trying to pack up and leave, Em informed us that the parents of the bride had «forgotten» to write us our checks, but they’d pay us «tomorrow»; we politely asked her if she could approach the parents and ask them to write us the checks before we left, as they had agreed in the contract. We waited for over an hour for Em to talk to us again, during which time I mentioned our situation to two different Belle Mer employees who told me that they couldn’t help us, with one of them stating «Sorry, but that’s not my job.» (a.k.a the Phrase You Should Never Utter In A Customer Service Situation). After ignoring us for almost an hour and 20 minutes, Em approached us, once again hostile and defensive, whined about how difficult this wedding had been for her (I have a feeling she got paid, at least!) and told us that the parents who had just paid for a $ 50,000+ wedding «didn’t have any money with them» and that they’d have to pay us tomorrow. When I expressed my disappointment with what I felt was the irresponsible nature of this response, Em actually yelled at me, saying «Would it make you happy if I make them leave the wedding reception and go back to their hotel room to get their checkbook right now? Is that what you want?». At this point we finally gave up and left.
I understand that a wedding venue’s first responsibility must be to their clients, but the way they treat their vendors, and oversee the people who they trust to put on events in their space, is very important too. While I place a good portion of the blame on the bride’s parents (they were the ones who had signed a contract agreeing to pay us on the day of the wedding), the treatment that we received from both Em Devaud and the Belle Mer staff in a difficult situation was completely beyond the pale – I’ve never in my life had a wedding planner actually yell at me, and the general attitude of both Em and the Belle Mer staff members with whom we dealt was that we were somehow asking them to do something unreasonable, instead of actually fulfilling the responsibilities of the job they were paid to do (although it was the responsibility of the bride’s parents to actually pay us, I seriously question the professionalism of any wedding planner who doesn’t make sure that her clients remember to pay their vendors). All in all, my impression was that the staff at Belle Mer were unprofessional, unpolished, and unprepared, and that Em Devaud was even more so – I’ve never met a wedding planner who was so difficult to work with, from a vendor’s perspective, and I’ve played for hundreds of weddings.

A big thank you to Samantha, Renee and the rest of the Belle Mer staff for an extremely professional, well-​organized wedding on Saturday August 9, 2014. The top things our guests talked about were the view and venue, the weather and how good the food was. Everyone was courteous, polite and very accommodating. If you want a wedding venue and staff that has every detail organized down to the last detail and makes sure everything goes according to plan, use Belle Mer. They made a great impression on us and our family and guests.

The place is beautiful, the food horrible, drinks way to expensive AND the bartender stole 500 dollar’s from my debit card

I attended a wedding reception here last night and I thought the venue was alright. My first impression was not good considering I had to dodge mad geese landmines in my heels… not a pleasant sight before you go eat. The inside of the hall was what I expected, a typical atmosphere. I wish they had some more seating in the waiting area because not everyone wants to stand around for an hour. I liked the lighting it was nice, the food was OK. it wasn’t bad but it didn’t blow me away either. Overall I think it was an average spot…

Attended a wedding here — super pretty. Not sure how the bride felt after, but know they place extended their hours to meet the minimum fee

This location is gorgeous! I went to an event, Give ad Glam, there last week and fell in love! If I wasn’t already married, I would book this place for a wedding! The views and the décor inside are to die for. I love the all white.

Went here for a big company shindig.
Pretty enough place, with great views of the water and Newport Harbor. Grounds are pristine.
The menu was salad with goat cheese; biscuits; fish (sea-​bass? I don’t recall)); and lava cake with ice cream. I can’t argue with presentation – everything looked really pretty on the plate. Food was only okay though. The «lava» cake was noticeably lacking in lava-​ness and was actually a touch dry.
Slight deduction of points for running out of Sam Adams at two of your bar stations, Belle Mer. By the time somebody pointed out to me that it was available at the others, I’d already soiled my palate with Bud Light. Let’s see a little better planning here, people.
Can’t comment on bang for the buck as this was all on the company tab.

I recently attended a wedding here– the venue was absolutely gorgeous! The ceremony was held outside, while the reception took place at the Island House. The staff was incredibly friendly and accommodating. The food was of good quality; the best I’ve had at a wedding. Overall, great wedding!

Went to a wedding here on Saturday and it was just amazing. I plan events in NYC for a living and this place blew me away.
The space is gorgeous — clean, white, modern.
The food was the highest quality I have ever been served at a catered event.
If you are planning to wed in the area I can’t imagine a better venue.

My sister had her wedding here this weekend. It was absolutely breath taking!
The Bell Mer is gorgeous. High ceilings, beautiful chandeliers, a grand staircase, floor to ceiling glass doors that open up to the outdoor area (right on the water with a view of the bridge), and everything is pure white.
I know they recently revamped the space and it is spectacular. Everything is white and bright — really trendy and refreshing. The outdoor area is beautiful too. It is green grass with other areas of crushed shells. There is a white stone wall that then looks over the water.
The food was good too. I loved the salad we had. It was a spinach salad with strawberries and a poppy seed dressing. The chicken dish was deelish too. It came on the bone but was really well seasoned and moist. It came over some type of cooked chick pea concoction that was great!
Absolutely gorgeous venue for an unforgettable wedding!

I attended a friends wedding here recently. Unfortunately the weather sucked. It was so foggy you couldn’t see the water at all. Obviously not their fault. It just would have been nice to see the boats, bridge, etc.
It’s very white inside. The ceilings are very high and it’s pretty wide open which was nice. The grounds were very nice and they had a cool gas fire pit in the back. I can imagine the views on a clear day/​night are amazing. Plenty of parking outside which was convenient.
The food kind of blew. I’m guessing from the other reviews on here you have to use their in-​house catering. The only thing I loved was the chocolate covered bacon for dessert. How can you go wrong with that?
No idea how much it costs since I was just a guest. The staff were all super friendly and helpful.

My brother held his wedding here and it was beautiful! The interior is stark white but you add color with lighting and table settings. Plenty of parking out front and the ceremony was held out back with a beautiful view of the water, bridge and sailing boats.
The rehearsal and day after the wedding were gorgeous but the day of was windy and overcast/​foggy. We made the best of it though! After a short ceremony, cocktail hour began and so did the drinking. It was open including top shelf and the bartenders did a fabulous job of letting the drinks flow… Lets put it this way — everyone started drinking at 5pm and was pretty much done by the end at 10pm. Yup — DUNZO!
One of the previous reviewers complained about the food but I had the opposite experience. The appetizers were pretty good and my entrée of fish was soooo moist and delish! The app to the entrée was scallops and everyone raved about that. Unfortunately I was too busy dancing to realize that the desert was outside of the reception area so I never got a chance to try the cake or the sundaes!!!
This is a great place if you’re looking for a modern, minimalist place where you can add a lot of your personality through colors and other accessories.

We recently attended a friends wedding here. Although the views are beautiful and it’s located right on the water, the food and service left us very disapointed. It became obvious they cut corners on quality.
Don’t be fooled by the view. The only way I would host a function here is If I could bring in my own caterer. My friend and her family did not feel they got what they paid for.