My husband and I were recently married at the Old Clarendon Inn, and while I would love to give a glowing review, unfortunately I can't. The Inn definitely had some great points. The setting was beautiful, we can't fault that. The food was great as well. Generous serves and tasted good. Our bar tender for the night, Aaron, was amazing. He deserves a mention just for his service, made the whole night run smoothly on that end. The wedding coordinators service, Emily, was also good, most of the time. She was helpful on the day in the final touches, and was great with our guests.
Unfortunately there were a fair few down sides to our experience at the Inn too. Communication was a major issue. I rarely had contact made with myself from anyone from the Clarendon, I was always chasing up things to do with our wedding. When there in person, the staff was friendly and on the ball, but just trying to get answers either via email or return phones calls was a struggle.
We also had major issues 48hrs before our wedding. We found out 2 days before our wedding that the wedding coordinator was on leave, no one had told us this would happen or given us an alternative contact. It meant that we had to deal with the owner of the Clarendon, this was not a good experience. I can only guess that he was not used to having to deal with the ins and outs of planning a wedding. It made the last 2 days extremely stressful. Our issues were things like just trying to get in to the room to decorate, in making sure the lights in the room were working, and confirming what was written on our agreement would actually happen, as the owner seemed to have no idea, and struggled to meet the terms that the wedding coordinator had already agreed to. We found him to be quite rude at times and very hard to find compromises with when trying to work out what we could actually do now that things had changed. From what we can gather he was short staffed, but really, that's not mine or my husbands problem at the end of the day, we shouldn't have to allow for that 2 days our from our wedding.
While the food was great, we had one other issue on the night. We had paid extra to not have alternate meals, but found when it came to dessert there wasn't enough of 1 option for everyone. When paying the extra to not have this happen, I find that very poor. And offering my 70 year old father ice cream as an alternative doesn't cut it.
The Old Clarendon Inn does have its good points, but I don't think I could honestly recommend this venue for functions. Maybe just the use of the restaurant when it's open as the food is good, but for functions it is just way too stressful and very unorganised. read more