Aberdeen Manor

I have had nothing but great experiences with Aberdeen Manor; I have attended a few weddings here to include my own. It’s very elegantly decorated; and they have a wide variety of décor options for your special wedding day or event. I can personally attest that not a single detail was overlooked, the staff was incredibly knowledgeable, friendly and always had solutions to my questions/​issues I needed addressed. Everyone raved about how amazing the food was, there were vegetarian options as well which Aberdeen Manor made sure to know who my vegetarian guests were. The photographer I used was also recommended by Denna– he was very talented and wonderful to spend my wedding day with. I have no regrets whatsoever that I had my wedding here, Aberdeen Manor is amazing and I highly recommend them!

I don’t understand why Unilocal has «filtered» all the good reviews and left this awful one. I had a wonderful experience at Aberdeen Manor. The owners and staff all genuinely care about making each bride’s day special. I have been a bridesmaid in several weddings at Aberdeen, as well as my own, and I have attended numerous functions (baby showers, bridal showers, community events, etc.). The food is always great, the staff professional and accommodating, and the venue is gorgeous. You can’t go wrong with Aberdeen as your venue.

Meh. I’ve experienced better. And I would recommend that you move right along and find something better yourself. I’m from Valpo and was getting married in California, so my parents wanted to have a second celebration in town after the wedding for family and friends who couldn’t make it to California.
In March, my mom and I attended a big tasting event that Aberdeen has twice a year so that couples can choose their entrees. I was disappointed that they did not offer any of the vegetarian entrees for tasting. There were four stations set up, each with 3 meats and 1 potato, so all I got to taste were the potatoes. As a vegetarian, I was probably the minority at our event, but having a few meatless options for us to try would have been really great. They gave us sheets to keep track of what we thought of each option, but then collected them at the end of the night, like we were little kids who couldn’t keep track of it. I didn’t appreciate that.
I found Aberdeen’s style of décor for the reception kind of cheesy and outdated. They like to put Christmas lights under the tablecloth on the head table. They’re so proud to show you all kinds of garish neon lighting they can do in lots of colors. I would have been really disappointed had we had our actual wedding here, as it feels like a generic hall, not anything special.
Lisa was the one assigned to our event and we had a chance to meet with her in October to make final decisions on the menu and décor. The week of the event, I found her to be a hot mess. There was one day that she and I emailed & talked on the phone a total of 13 times due to mistakes/​confusion on her part. She sent us a final invoice with the Saturday night rate– our event was on a Friday. We also were supposed to have half off because it was off-​season. Neither of these things were noted. Once I mentioned it, it still took her another two emails to fix it. We also had a problem with the table count. With the number of guests we had coming, we needed 13 tables. She kept trying to tell me that her math showed that we were only getting 12. It was extremely frustrating to explain it several times. I had enough to do in the week before the event and did not appreciate that I had to double check everything that she was telling me.
I would like to mention, though, that Trey, the son-​in-​law of the owners is excellent. Pretty much any question you have can be answered by him– he is very experienced and very on the ball. Definitely an asset to Aberdeen.
When we got to town a few days before the event, we brought in some of our décor items and the place cards for the guests. The checklist we were provided by Aberdeen in October stated that the guests meal choices needed to be indicated on their place cards using different colors (red for beef, green for veggie, etc), so I used the appropriate color markers to make a heart on each person’s place card. A confused Lisa called me to ask what the significance of the hearts was. I explained it was for the meal choices and she still didn’t seem to get it.
On the night of our event, we arrived about an hour early to take some family pictures. We had ordered corsages and boutonnieres for the special family members. It was especially important, since one set of my grandparents couldn’t make it to the actual wedding, so we wanted to recognize them at this event with the flowers. We started taking pictures and I realized I hadn’t seen the pin-​on flowers, so I asked Lisa. She said she hadn’t seen them and that our florist must have forgotten them. Okay, if that’s what happened, it’s not the biggest deal. At the end of the night, I asked Trey if, throughout the evening, they had ever come across the flowers. He said no.
A few days later, I mentioned the corsages/​boutonnieres to the florist, thinking she’d forgotten them. She was very upset and said that she’d placed them in the fridge at the Aberdeen and that Jim, one of the owners, had known about it. We contacted Denna and she became very combative. After a very tense phone call with my husband, I sent her an email trying to smooth things over. She sent me back a crappy email telling me that they don’t make mistakes! Excuse me, you may be on the ball, but EVERYONE makes mistakes once in awhile. That haughty attitude that they run a perfect show is ridiculous, especially given our experience with Inept Lisa.
They have this belief that they are the only show in town and that they get to make the rules. There are some pretty silly policies and rules, including the way they do their alcohol pricing– for an open bar, you pay for each guest, no matter their age. So if you have mostly 20-​something guests at your reception or mostly families with young kids, you are paying the same. We looked at 9 venues in California and not one of them did alcohol pricing this way. Get over yourselves, Aberdeen.