Garre Winery

This review is for the Oak Tree and Pavilion area.

We just had our wedding here on May 23, and everything went beautifully!

When we first booked, the person dealing with us was not clear with some things and there turned out to be a lot of confusion with our contract. Then after we learned she would no longer be working there, we were switched to Jacqueline. She was a godsend! She and Garre worked with us with every step and also personalized everything to us. They were very adamant about making us happy which was perfect for an already stressful planning bride. I can not say enough good about Jackie. We were so, so happy to end up with Jackie and highly recommend her. She emailed us consistently, she fixed any problem that started to come up, and she took down pages of notes for herself to make sure the set up was perfect. She even went out and bought us sparking cider for our guests who don't drink - free of charge!

The service during the wedding was amazing. Before the ceremony we were served food in the adorable cottage/dressing room. After the ceremony, my bridal party and I were immediately found and served delicious hor devours while we were waiting to take photos. And during the reception, it seemed like the moment I thought of something, a server would immediately appear and ask if I would like anything - without me having to ask. They were really on it and my husband and I truly appreciated it. We heard really great things from our guests as well about them.

The setting was gorgeous (which our guests loved). The food was delicious. The service was superb. They turned on the heat when it got chilly. They worked with our time-line to the 't' and even gave us leeway when things were running behind. Everything felt custom to us. They really came through and we are so happy with the end result.

I got married here last October and I have to say overall I was really happy with the venue since the cost was pretty reasonable and the day was beautiful.

-location: the landscape and the pictures you will get are amazing and gorgeous and the weather was perfect (but due check Farmer's almanac ahead of time, since it drastically changed weeks later in October--ie much colder and extremely windy)

-the food--we had filet mignon, cornish hen and stuffed zucchini and it was amazing, everyone commented how great it was. I wanted MORE!

-the wine--if you expect Napa quality wines, forget it! Garre suffers from trying to make too many varietals and so quality suffers on some if not most of the types they make. After many many trips to their tasting room, we settled on an '04 Cab and an '07 Pinot Grigio--if you do plan to marry there, they dont tell you this, but def buy all of the wine you think you will need WELL in advance, not only do they have case discounts and sales but they sold out of almost all of their whites before we got married so I was glad we bought ours in the summer.
I was very surprised that they don't keep cases off to the sides for their weddings but they are a very small producer, so if you like it, buy it! And don't waste your money doing their drink package--to make it worthwhile guests would have to drink more than 4 bottles PER person!

-the tent for the reception...was less than ideal, its pretty dirty and not maintained, same goes for their sad excuse for portable bathrooms on the side of the tent (almost the size of airplane bathrooms) but if you turn all of the lights off and forget to look down at the stained poured concrete floor you'll be ok (fyi they have super low wattage to begin with + old wiring so our lights/fuse blew out mid-reception oh well)

-ceremony site is the large oak tree--its amazing on its own and really didnt need much in the sense of flowers and other decor, i just added some simple pomanders and hung lots of satin ribbons from the trees flanking our aisle

-event planning staff was horrifically bad (hence minus 1 star)---we had to get switched to another planner halfway through since our first planner was completely incompetent and disorganized
If you want professionals who will respond to your questions/emails within 10 business days or if you want a straight answer on simple questions and they don't change the answer 6 months into planning it--go somewhere else. For ex. we were told we could use a specific beverage distributor to provide hard alcohol and then were told 5 months later that hard alcohol cannot be served on the premises? There was a lot of verbal things told to us that were not honored or were complete lies and that was the most frustrating. On top of that we paid extra to have a coordinator do setup/strike for us and she was still setting up when guests arrived 20 minutes before the ceremony began (talk about seeing the man behind the curtain!) and she did not pick up any of our items after wards as she left before our event ended and expected us to leave over 5k in rentals unattended overnight--the staff also damaged a rented linen (we now own a 9x6ft choc. brown linen!!). Suffice it to say we ended up doing the breakdown ourselves (in a wedding gown nonetheless!)

-Also ignore their photos online because almost all of those photos are from brides who rented everything--they put nothing down on the table except glasses and napkins and silverware!

I planned a wedding for my clients and everything was great. The staff at this location is extrememly friendly and helpful.Highly reccommended.