The food is fantastic, their wine list is really top notch and it has kind of a rustic Italian feeling to it and the price was within our budget! My only big concern was light wasn't great and I was worried for our photographer and as a result for our pictures, but I decided to get over it.
Let me preface this by saying that dispite my experience I would recommend this as a place for a romantic dinner for two. I would not however, recommend this as a reception location as I don't think they have much experience with private parties (despite what I was told) and I think they'd hosted maybe one wedding prior to our conversations.
To make a long (and frustrating) story short -- the owner of the restaurant sent us a written contract (we had a verbal agreement and were just waiting for her to send us something in writing) and when it arrived it was 100% more than what we'd discussed. Yup, you heard me right -- she doubled the price. She had no explanation and backed herself into many a corner. I put her on speaker phone and had the conversation with my mother and fiance in the room so they could hear how calm and reasonable I was vs. how unreasonable she was. I had detailed notes of our conversation and it was just icky.
After much discussion we decided to look for another option as she basically said "she couldn't work with me!" I am really the farthest thing from a "bridezilla" (although I hate that over used expression anyway) -- really!
So I popped on my trusty Vermont local board on the knot and got some recommendations from other Vermont brides. With their ideas I made some calls, asked some questions and left for Vermont a day later armed and ready to START AGAIN!
I am THRILLED with our "Plan B" where we will be hosting our reception. Enter Adrianas on the Church Street Marketplace.
We will use their outdoor "patio" you can see in this photo for our cocktail hour and then head upstairs to their second floor where we'll have the whole room for the rest of the evening.
The upstairs has vaulted ceilings and a floor to ceiling window overlooking the marketplace (show above).
There is also a beautiful dark wood bar which will be our "head table." My fiance (well then husband I guess) and I will sit on the end (on the right hand side of the photo above) and the wedding party and 20-somethings will join us. There will be 3 long tables of 16-19 (depending on who RSVP's yes) with white table clothes and a brown runner down the center from the Vermont Tent Company.
All in all -- I'd say we turned lemons into lemonade! The added bonus of "Plan B" is that we get to walk with all our guests from the church around the corner to the restaurant on the marketplace which will be great fun and also provide some great photo ops (not quite as set up as this image from our photographer, Daria Bishop, but you see the potential).
Also we'll get to enjoy our own cocktail hour and if we decide to take some more photos on the marketplace our guests will get to watch (if they like) WHILE enjoying their cocktails! Oh boy :)
Oh yeah -- AND there is a Ben & Jerry's right across the marketplace from the restaurant! Double score :)
