Calamigos at the LA Equestrian Center

I got married at Calamigos on Sunday, May 18 and I can't even begin to tell you how wonderful they were.

I first met with them last September and booked them almost immediately. I went to a few other places to make sure that this was the place. I remember when the rep first took me over to The Little White House, I thought, this could work. Then she took me to the Grand Prix ballroom, and I had the thought that this wasn't what I had in mind. Then we went into the Polo Room and I thought, this is out of my price range because it was just so beautiful and perfect. Low & behold, it was within my budget, especially for their Sunday prices. I was beyond excited.

During the planning process they were great with me stopping by any time I had questions or needed to see how something would work. Annah was amazing to work with. She was very patient and helpful through all of the planning.

The tasting was absolutely amazing. The food was sooooo excellent. When I was first looking at Calamigos, my best friend had recently been to a wedding there, and I asked her how the food was, because I didn't want typical wedding food. She had said that it was probably in the top 2 of all weddings she has been too (and she has been to quite a few). She wasn't lying. I loved that they let us sample everything they offer on their menu, but it made it that much harder to make a decision. We ended up with the beef tenderloin and salmon with citrus ginger sauce.

Tana was our coordinator the day of the wedding and she did a superb job. She was there with us for the rehearsal and from the time we got there to the beginning of the reception. She even cried during the ceremony! She made sure DH and I had everything we needed or wanted. I can't say enough.

Steve, the kitchen captain, was amazing for the reception. And we got nothing but compliments about the bartender. After you ordered your drink once he knew what it was the rest of the night. If he saw you coming to the bar he already was pouring the drink.

The Little White House and Polo Room were absolutely perfect and gorgeous. Everything was in bloom. It made our day perfect. I couldn't have asked for anything better.

So far my experience with Calamigos Equestrian has been great! Annah has helped me out so much. My original wedding date was supposed to be last year September, but my little angel Jonas changed our plans and was born in September. Since our initial non-refundable deposits were paid, we had to postpone the wedding. Annah was able to let us move our date to May 16, 2008.

The rest of the staff is easy to talk to and work with. And the food tasting was fantastically set up for couples having their reception there.

We're having the ceremony and reception in the Equestrian Terrace and Ballroom. I'm in love with this location.

So far we are having a great experience with this venue. I will update after the wedding in April. But I love the place. The staff has been very accomodating and the The Little White House is a great place for our ceremony and reception.

My rating and review may change after March 22, 2008... cause that's the day I get married at Calamigos! But so far the location seems perfect. The staff seems great and have so far been very good. They respond to my questions almost immediately through email or over the phone. The food was also great at our tasting. The property itself is very beautiful, we're getting married at their Little White House which is a beautiful outdoor area and then moving into the Grand Prix Ballroom. It's a beautiful setting and room, we're so excited!

*** UPDATE Post Wedding *** Calamigos was great! The food was good, everything went smoothly. I would recommend making sure appetizers are brought to the bride and groom and wedding party, if you aren't in the reception hall for food already. You're paying per person for appetizers, including yourself and the wedding party, so make sure someone brings you some food! That's about it. Otherwise it was great!

We were so thrilled to find the L.A. Equestrian Center. Their "Equestrian Room" and its adjacent garden proved to be the perfect ceremony/reception site one-two punch. The staff was so incredibly gracious, the food was excellent (despite it being just okay when we went for our tasting. phew!). The room decor was classy and the ceremony area was just gorgeous. Highly recommended!

My sister had her wedding there last year on March 25th 2007. It was the Morales wedding. I say this so you can call and confirm everything I am saying , if you want to.

The site was nice. The service was horrible. I forget the names of the two coordinators there, but they are the rudest people I have ever met. I wish I could remember her name, but one was a tall blonde woman with short hair.

She policed the entire event, She walked around the room making sure that all people eating were people we paid for. She was counting plates, chairs etc. Our mariachi band sat down to eat (it was a buffet) and the coordinator decided that we had not paid for them (we had, but there was a miscommunication) she would take their food. She literally snatched plates from under their noses and dumped them in the trash. This was in front of our guests. This was only the tip of the iceberg.

We paid for open bar, paid for by the hour, they ran out of alcohol and were rude about it. One bartender actually swung an empty bottle in front of myself and a guest and said - "sorry no more" and laughed about it with the other bartender.

There was no DOC that day, so I was the point of contact throughout the day. They definitely tried to make myself and our guests feel like we didn't belong.

We had our wedding at Calamigos on June 21st... it was fiendishly hot, but the experience was wonderful anyway. The property was beautifully cleaned and everything was set up exactly as we had planned it with the coordinator. The rehearsal went off without a hitch as well, although it would have been nice to go over the whole thing one more time. Either way, the actual ceremony went beautifully. All my vendors had someone to guide them in... at least everything got put were it was supposed to. I was hiding in the Little White House to avoid seeing my future husband. :-)

The only issue was that I needed to have someone looking out for tiny details... my silver and crystal initials for my cake never got put on it. A relative could have done it, but I had been told that I would have a day-of coordinator and she would take care of things like that. Apparently, she was too busy shepherding my wayward relatives and future relatives to their correct locations.

The reception at the Polo Room went off really well. The food was even better than the tasting and the service was timely and professional. They have since made the food choices and appetizer set-up easier to understand and work out, but we did fine as it was. The other really nice thing is that they have not only a vegetarian option, but a VEGAN plate as well! So cool for my vegan friends.

All in all, I'm very glad we chose Calamigos at the Equestrian Center. If you're getting married during the summer months, keep in mind that Burbank is boiling hot, even in the evening. :-)

I was married March 27th and I have to say that this place was absolutely Gorgeous & my dream wedding come true! When we first drove over to Burbank to take a look, we met with Virginia and we thought for sure this venue was way out of our price range. We took the packet home Virginia provided us and set it aside. Laura followed up almost immediately via phone call & email. She advised me of a "Winter Special" and also of a break in the rate per person if event was on a Friday or Sunday. Perfect!!! I booked it immediately.

The Food Tasting Calamigos does twice a year for the soon to be newlyweds is amazing. They literally have every single item on the menu for you to taste. They even set the reception area like it was a wedding; they had a few vendors on site to promote their work. It was very nice of Calamigos to do and I loved that they were there to answer all your questions.

The day of my wedding Virginia was amazing and eased my nerves by completely keeping everything VERY detailed, organized, warm/friendly, & extremely patient. I felt she was literally on her toes at all times of the evening and I felt much catered to, taken care of. Both of us were very happy that Virginia was our event coordinator that day. Our wedding couldn't have been more perfect.

Bottom line, I would HIGHLY recommend Virginia as the event coordinator for your wedding.

We had our ceremony at the Little White House and our reception at the Polo Room. As far as location, we couldn't have been more pleased. We also loved working with Deirdre and Annah during the booking and planning process - they were both top notch.

We were a little worried becuase our rehearsal was a little rocky (read: disorganized), but the ceremony went off without a hitch and it was just fantastic. The food at the reception was very good (especially for banquet food), but there was no one at Calamigos responsible for releasing the tables for the buffet, so that got a little hectic. If I had known in advance that no one was going to be in charge at the reception, I would have made a plan for doing so instead of leaving it up to the band (who knew zilch about the seating arrangement).

Note to brides: when they say "day of coordinator", they mean "ceremony coordinator". There is no point of contact at the reception. This would not have been a problem except for the temperature in the Polo Room, which got really hot after dinner when the dancing started. My MOH tried to talk to someone about it, and was told that they "TURNED THE AIR CONDITIONING OFF because one our guests opened up a door to the patio". She told him to turn it back on, and we had the band make an announcement to please keep the doors closed, but the room never really got comfortable again. Many of our guests left early becuase of the heat, which was very disappointing. Given the cost per head, I would have expected the AC to have been on full blast all night long. We were also disappointed that the kitchen cut the "spare" sheet cake first instead of our tiered wedding cake, leaving most of our large bottom layer left over at the end of the night, which was awkward.

I don't mean to suggest that we had a bad experience; we didn't. I look back on our ceremony and reception fondly and would recommend Calamigos. I just wanted to share some parts of our experience so that other brides could be mindful of these issues & make requests in advance accordingly (i.e. keep the AC on no matter what, unlock the doors to the patio so guests don't have to prop them open, cut my wedding cake first, release the tables in this order, get the information about the major players before the day of the rehearsal, etc.) Good luck everyone!

Let me start off by saying that Calamigos is a beautiful property. We had looked at a lot of places in our price range, but Calamigos is the one that had the look that we liked. It has a big park/garden feel to it. We had our ceremony at the Little White House and had our reception at the Grand Prix Ballroom. We had about 160 guests. Annah and Robin were the two people we talked with the most when renting the place and they were professional. Although they provide a coordinator for you when you rent the facility, we hired our own coordinators and they dealt with Calamigos for us after the intial renting process.

The only thing that was frustrating was that there were a lot of surprises on the day of the wedding. My coordinators had sent them a lot of information on the schedule that we wanted, but on the wedding day, we were told that the ceremony had to start at 6:30p, even though, IN OUR CONTRACT, we had the Little White House starting at 6:00p and had sent out all of the invitations SAYING that the wedding would be at 6:00p because that is what the contract said. I still don't really understand why we had to start at 6:30p. It had something to do with our reception having to start at 7:00p and them not wanting the guests at the ballroom a second before 7:00p. They have a certain way they do things (that they don't disclose until the actual day, in contravention of the language of the contract) and they are not compromising or accommodating. I would highly recommend getting a coordinator of your own to help look over the contract and make sure that things get done the way you want them.

The venue itself was actually very nice. The food was delicious, the service was great. It really is a night I will always remember.

The Equestrian Center is a great place to have a wedding! We just had our ceremony and reception there at the Little White House and Polo Room. They are very reasonably priced and the location is beautiful! The staff is very professional and accomodating. The food was phenomenal.

We were asked to rate Calamigos in each of the following areas:

1. Quality of Food: We had a BLAST at our menu tasting, and all of the food was absolutely delicious. My husband is a Chef, so I was a bit worried that he would be very finicky, but at the end of the evening, we had some very difficult decisions to make. We were extremely happy with our menu selections, and many of our guests were extremely complimentary of the cuisine for the evening!

2. Beverage Service: I wish that we would have had more opportunity to sample more of the beverage service, but we did get excellent feedback from many of our guests.

3. Event Space: The Little White House and The Grand Prix Room were absolutely beautiful and I only use the word “perfect” when I mean it. The venue was indeed, perfect.

4. Wedding Coordinator(s) : Robin met with us and showed us the facilities on our initial tour of the facilities, and going into our appointment, we really didn’t expect to make our decision so quickly. Robin was such a professional in her mannerism and her showing of the various wedding sites. She made our decision very easy, and I really appreciated her no-pressure style. Tannah, as my Bridal Assistant was an absolute pleasure to work with. She was impeccably helpful during our rehearsal and even though our rehearsal was running late (due to the rehearsal before us having half their wedding party held up with multiple cancelled airline flights) she handled the situation like a pro in directing and keeping our wedding party informed as she worked between two different parties.

5. Sales Directors Annah was always very responsive to my many questions during our planning stages, and although we played a lot of phone tag, I appreciated that she always left very detailed and explicit phone messages so that I didn’t have any question after listening to her message!

Overall Rating of Event: We would not have done anything differently!! Our Wedding was absolutely amazing and we have the staff at Calamigos to thank for an exquisite evening. Annah, Robin, Tannah, and Roselle, were all so friendly and easy to work with. They all helped to make our dream wedding flow like we could never even imagine

I know I am VERY late in posting this, as my wedding was back in January. But I was helping someone else with their wedding, and realized how helpful this website had been, so here goes.

Overall, our experience with the Calamigos was wonderful. We were thrilled with our wedding, and highly recommend the location. We had an awesome experience from the very beginning in dealing with Robin, who is extremely organized and competent. She answered every email, and every question, no matter how small or annoying. I am a little on the anal side, so having a point person was important to me.

The food was AMAZING - we had some special requests, and they were handled with ease. The room also looked incredible, and was EXACTLY how I had envisioned it. We had our ceremony outside on the grassy area, and our reception in the Equestrian Ballroom.

The reason for the four stars is this (and I would have given another half if I could have): being the super-organized person that I am, not being able to meet our "event liason" until the night of our rehearsal was horrible. The rehearsal was extremely disorganized. It wasn't that I didn't like our liason (I can't even remember her name - but it wasn't someone who worked there during the day), I was just upset that she came in completely cold, with no sense of who I was or what I wanted. I spent most of the rehearsal going over the schedule that I had labored over that she had just received. I had begged the location to allow me to use Robin, but they said she didn't do that. It also bothered me that the liason left after the ceremony, and that we were left with virtually no one to go to if there was an issue. Thankfully, our food captain, Bruce, was fantastic and dealt with the other minor issues we had.

One other thing that bothered me was that when we booked our date, we were told there were no horse shows that day. Well, when we got there on the big day was a HUGE show going on. It still would have been ok except that just as my husband and I were saying our "I dos" we could hear the announcer on the loud speaker in the arena loud and clear. What a distraction!!!

Other than that, though, we had a truly lovely experience and would highly recommend the Equestrian Center!!

While Calamigos is a very beautiful place to get married, the incompetence of certain members of the staff adds way too much stress for the bride and groom to enjoy their day.

I was married at Calamigos on April 11, 2009. I originally toured the facility with Robin, who was delightful. When I came to make my first deposit, I sat down with Mina (the manager of the facility)and expressed concern in that Calamigos wanted payment in full for everything 10 days prior to the event. I asked what kind of recourse we would have if they didn't come through and perform to our standards. Mina replied that they do numerous weddings a week, they are booked every weekend of the year and that they have loads of glowing reviews and we should have no problem.

We had our final meeting with Annah, who was also wonderful.We went over all the details of our wedding. Our day of coordinator was going to be Virginia and we were assured by Annah that she'd do a great job.

Our wedding ceremony was at the Little White House and was gorgeous. We did not have any problems until we entered the reception. Upon entering, we realized that our seating chart (one we had toiled over for days, as I'm sure all brides do) was entirely skewed. The Day of Coordinator Virginia had been in charge of placing the table numbers on the tables. Sounds like a menial task, but not to Virgina! She had messed up and reversed our table numbers, resulting in our parents, siblings and grandparents and other family members being seated at the opposite end of the room. We couldn't even see our parents from the head table. At this point, everyone had already been seated so there was no easy fix. We had to provide a solution to her, as Virginia was too inept to figure out what to do. Therefore two more tables had to be brought in to move our part of our family closer to the head table. I must point out that this was done rather quickly and efficently.

I had paid $15 a table to upgrade to the chocolate brown linens. I was told there was no way to waive this fee and that I would be so happy with the nice linens. I walked in and there were Ivory linens on my table. Their answer to what went wrong with that is as follows:

"In your original meeting with Annah, Ivory overlays with the sandalwood napkin were ordered. The order was changed after your phone call with the chocolate linen request and we are still trying to find the source of this error. At this time, we cannot determine whether a computer error with our linen inventory occurred or if it was a human error. We have refunded you for the cost of the rentals. We are still investigating this matter and I would like to assure you that severe disciplinary action has be taken on our end with our team due to the errors in set up and coordination of this detail as well as the layout issue."

In summation, they have no idea how this happened, which is ridiculous. They managed to put the linen cost on my final invoice, so there was no error in making sure that I paid for it. I feel like they're acting like they're huge company, rather than the mom and pop location that they are. (I was refunded my money that I paid for the linens by the end of the evening).

As far as the open bar, we had requested that only the drinks that we paid for be offered at the bar and that no cash was to be brought out at the bar. We were hosting for House brands of alcohol and domestic beer. There was to be no option to purchase premium liquor. Yet when I walked by the bar, there was a huge tacky sign stating prices for purchasing of liquor. We had to go out of our way to find Virgina AGAIN (she kept disappearing)and tell her of yet another screw up. She had the sign taken down and we told her we wanted the entire bar to be free, including premium drinks and she agreed that it was the least they could do. That actually worked out nicely in our favor, yet still embarrassing asking guests to pay for drinks.

I understand that errors are going to happen at events. Yet, the amount of errors and the severity of the errors are unforgivable. We asked for the refund of the 20% service charge and were told that since we had been given a bar upgrade (because of their errors) that this should serve as payment. Oh, and they also extended our room time for an extra half hour, which was a nice gesture, but still doesn't change the fact that I had to spend a half our at my own wedding pointing out and fixing their mistakes.

If you do decide to go with Calamigos be very wary that you are giving them your money ahead of time and their remedy to fix their mistakes is to give you an extra half hour of room time. It did serve as a nice way to get a bar upgrade. Also make sure to request Annah as your event coordinator. She seemed very capable. I would not recommend Virgina. I felt like it was her first wedding and she had no clue how to fix her mistakes. They really ought to hire people with better management skills. Had I screwed up like this at my job, I would no longer be employed.