San Ysidro Ranch

AMAZING AMAZING AMAZING!!! Words cannot describe how perfect SYR is for a intimate private wedding.

We had our dinner in the wine room at San Ysidro Ranch and our family was stunned when they walked in. One of them said this is something you would see only on the Bachelor.

Location and decor- Breathtaking and really needs minimal extras to make it stunning. We only added votives and flowers to our table and otherwise it was the simple beauty of SYR.

Event Staff- Working with Dodie to book our event and finalize our contract was so effortless and took all the stress out of the wedding dinner. I am a very OCD type person and I was put at ease knowing they would do a spectacular job. I finalized the day of details with Maxine and she was so sweet and easy to work with. She made sure no detail was overlooked and made sure everything stayed on schedule the day of our wedding.

Food- my brother described it as "I have never had anything so heavenly in my mouth." Everyone loved their meals and the staff accommodated all of the dietary needs of our group. The food was so spectacular there are not even words to describe how great it was. The sea bass was melt in your mouth delicious.

Wait Staff- Jamie and Velanya were our servers and were BEYOND AWESOME. They accommodated our groups dietary needs and kept everything running smoothly. I catered weddings for 15 years and I would say they are the best of the best. Thank you for making our event perfect.

San Ysidro Ranch is gorgeous and full of history, but planning our reception with them was not the best experience. Basically, you can rent the entire place out starting at $10K or you can rent one of their smaller areas which seat from 2-36 people. Only one wedding is allowed at a time, which I understand.

When we began our search and visited the SYR, we fell in love with it and wanted to put down a deposit right away. The wine cellar was the perfect size and had the feel we wanted for our 35 guests since we were hosting a formal dinner. Once we put down the deposit, we called our rep with a lot of questions and "no" was not in her vocabulary.

About 6 months prior to our wedding, I called to arrange another visit and was informed that our rep no longer worked there. We were then assigned a new rep who just didn't do it for us. She was very "nice" but she wasn't very good at the details. For instance, we had the SYR make our wedding cake, grooms cake and additional desserts that were to be placed on the cake table to create a dessert buffet. It didn't happen, the additional desserts were unimpressive, in small amount, and were not placed on the table until the very end of the cake cutting. Boo. I was also told that take away boxes would be provided for our guests to take cake home, and they were not. There were a lot of mistakes made on our invoice that we felt we had to fight for her to correct. We also told them we would like to pay the full balance of our reception by check, which was due 7 days prior to our event, and were told we could do that. When I contacted her to tell her we were sending a check via FED EX, she said she had already run our cc! We could not believe that she didn't call us for authorization! She barely apologized, and would not reverse the charge and honor our check as originally discussed.

Another situation we encountered was with set up on the day of. We told her our ceremony was at 3:30 pm, at another location, and that our coordinator would like tables set up, etc. by 1 pm so she could decorate and tweak the space. Our rep told us the SYR crew would not set tables any earlier than 2 pm, and if we wanted to pay the staff their hourly rate, that was our only option.

The food was great, and our guest thought it was beautiful and had a great time. As a customer, we were not impressed by their service. It's funny, at the time of our planning they were noted as one of the best hotels in the world but it didn't feel like it with the event planner we were assigned.

This was the most spectacular place to have our wedding! Extremely pricey, but you get what you pay for! Unbelievable service, accommodations, food, cake, etc. It was a day I will never forget!

We stayed at the Lilac Cottage and held our ceremony there. It was better than we could have imagined, the service was fabulous, they assisted in finding our officiant, they catered, recommened our bakery and florist, and we had our dinner afterward at the restaurant-also incredible.
They provided us with a great wedding story; while we were at dinner, the staff tried to light a fire in the fireplace for us, but previous staff had closed the flue. We returned to a smokin' cottage. They immediately moved us to the The Kennedy Cottage at no cost to us, took all our sutff there, even scattered our rose petals on the bed for us! It was unforgettable!!