L'Escale Restaurant

First the good:
L'Escale is really close to my parents house, and it's sentimental for me that it was the old Showboat and was an old staple of growing up in Greenwich. When I called to ask if the dogs were allowed to be part of our ceremony, they were really accommodating. The entire initial visit made it seem like this was by and far the right choice. The location is unbeatable, the ability to have our dogs be part of the event, the water, the ceremony...it was great.

Now, the bad:
Mid-way through the planning process, they started dropping the ball. Truth be told, had we not given the non-refundable deposit, we would have bailed. The superior flexibility they promised fell by the wayside as they started charging us for every little thing. We wanted to have my parents join us for the tasting and they gave us a really hard time about this even though we didn't ask them to make any extra food. They tried to charge us $75 per person - ridiculous considering we could eat in the restaurant for cheaper than that. They finally relented and said they would allow them to join us and as it turned out, they threw a TON of food out anyway, because the cooked to show us portions, but didn't serve any of that - they just let it sit there to show us while we nibbled on the portions they put out.

All along the way they promised to send a vendor list which never arrived in either my email or my husbands. They got snippy with us and insisted they sent it - we were receiving other emails, but not the vendor list. We both have 2 different email servers, so it was hard to believe both our servers sent it to spam, but that's what they would have us believe. When my husband finally said, "Just fax it" they faxed it all right. They sent 2 blank pages through the fax machine. I was ready to just rip my hair out.

We wanted to offer our guests the filet mignon for the $8 upcharge. They said they could calculate how many filets were ordered and just charge $8 times that number. But they they called back and said that no matter who ordered what, for every single guest we would pay the additional $8. They also said that it would cost us additional to have a dance floor, and we just got really disgusted with the entire process.

They kept telling us we hadn't signed the contract when we in fact had, and I had a copy of it on my computer, and they kept asking us to sign it and sending earlier (wrong) versions. It was totally frustrating, and she tried to pin it on me and said, "You're stressed." No. I'm not. I'm dealing with someone who is late to meetings, totally incompetent, can't use a fax machine or email anything, can't accommodate my parents who encouraged us to select this venue and can't remember one day to the next. Lest you think I'm a bridezilla, let me tell you how I was with all the other vendors:

Photographer had free reign, we let her do whatever she wanted because we trusted her.
Cake / Bakery - we told them to do whatever they wanted for decorations and they did, and we totally trusted them.
Music - told the guys to wing it and they did.
Flowers - they showed up and asked what we wanted on the cake and I told her to do whatever she felt was best.

I had no preconceived ideas about anything other than throwing a nice dinner party style wedding for close friends and family. In fact, we had a bunch of kids jumping on us during our dance. I was so laid back about the whole wedding, and this was the one part that was a nightmare.

Then, 3 weeks before the wedding, she was adamant that I tell everyone they need to enter through the hotel side, and not the restaurant side. Um...this information would have been WAY MORE HELPFUL to know earlier so I could include with the invites. I had to email everyone last minute to tell them. Like I needed more crap to do.

During our ceremony on the deck, the bar on the other side of the wall was so loud, none of our guests could hear anything. It was embarrassing. I know the restaurant was in full swing, but I'm surprised they didn't account for this at all by putting up more walls or coming up with some other alternative so that our guests could hear the ceremony. Our officiant only took 4 minutes, literally, I would think if they said to the guests on the restaurant/bar side, "do you mind there's a wedding on the other side of the wall," that the people would have been more than happy to quiet down for a couple minutes.

The only thing that made up for this was the fact that the location is great, the food was fantastic and Chang, who ran our event, was amazing and the servers were great. Very detail oriented and on top of all of it.

But I wouldn't pick this place again.