The Carolina Inn

The Carolina Inn was a wonderful choice for our wedding site. The hotel and ballrooms are truly beautiful. Our catering manager, Jennifer, was very professional and very accommodating. They truly worked hard to make sure that it was a day to remember. From our guests accommodations to handling of all the vendors everything ran so smoothly. The food was amazing and the service was superb. We couldn’t have asked for anything more memorable.

I love Carolina Inn! It was my dream to have my wedding there and they did everything they can to make that a reality.When you have your wedding at the Carolina Inn, everything from A-Z will be taken care of. You just have to show up and enjoy your wedding.The only con is packing. There was two others wedding beside mine so a lot of my guests has to find an alternate parking arrangement.

We had our ceremony outdoors in the Bryan Courtyard and our reception in the Hill Ballroom of The Carolina Inn. We loved everything about the venue! We looked at dozens of venues online and went in person to at least 10 different venues, both around the Raleigh/Chapel Hill area as well as in the Asheville area. We are so glad we ended up going with The Carolina Inn and would highly recommend it to other couples planning their wedding. It is such a beautiful location, and the service can not be beat.

The Carolina Inn is known for being a popular wedding spot, well now I know why. First, the hotel and grounds are gorgeous. You will have no trouble getting beautiful photos and video here. Second, the staff and event planners are wonderful to work with. Every single detail was taken care of and I didn’t have to worry about a thing. I planned my wedding by myself, but felt like I had the benefit of having a wedding planner when working with Devon at the Inn. I enjoyed every experience, from the menu tasting, January wedding show, and details meeting, to the entire wedding weekend. My ceremony was held in the Bryan Courtyard and it was a romantic, intimate setting. The reception was in the Old Well Room, which is a gorgeous, elegant room. You will get a lot of value at the Inn, but it can be pricey during peak season and Saturdays. By having my wedding on a Sunday, I found the price very reasonable and I can’t compliment the Inn enough on its customer service, attention to detail, beautiful accommodations and delicious food.

The Carolina Inn facilitated the wedding of our dreams. In the beginning, we had serious problems with responsiveness, but the woman we had trouble reaching left the Inn a couple months before our wedding. We worked with Heidi, who was wonderful, although I understand that while Heidi is still there, she does not directly oversee weddings.The Carolina Inn is expensive, but we found it a much less expensive than other, comparable venues, and we definitely did not feel nickled and dimed, as I'd feared with other places. The prices were all clear in the brochures, and there were no surprise add ons.Our guests adored the Inn, which was decorated for the holidays beautifully, as always. The honeymoon suite was to die for. We had many requests for coordination, including piano delivery, programs on seats, and so on, and everything was executed perfectly.I owe Heidi a note for the wonderful work she did.

The Carolina Inn was so beautiful, the staff was so kind and professional....I couldn't imagine anywhere else we'd want to celebrate. I highly recommend this place, and it was fun too! The staff makes everyone feel like we're family. They are highly in tuned to your needs and responsive. We loved the Carolina Inn and are so happy we picked this venue!!! Thank You!!http://ariosostringsreviews.blogspot.com/2010/07/carolina-inn-for-jonathan-and-gails.htmlSome pics of the Bryan Courtyard & Reception room, Old Well Ballroom

We had our wedding reception in the evening in the Old Well Room. The staff the night of the event was extremely helpful. Things seemed to move along so quickly and effortlessly. There was one miscommunication between the coordinator at the Inn and the banquet captain, which was resolved very quickly. The planning process was also great. We worked with both Ashleigh and Julie at various parts of the planning and they were both excellent to work with. I highly recommend the Carolina Inn.

I was just smitten with the Carolina Inn the first time I ever saw it. It is a beautiful place and is great for a formal classic wedding. Parking is a little tough as it is right in the middle of campus, but there is parking on site. Staff was helpful and my pictures turned out great with this venue as the backdrop.

The Carolina Inn was the absolute perfect spot to have our wedding reception! We worked with a wonderful catering manager who bent over backwards to make us feel welcome and well served. The planning was easy - they did so much of the work for us - and they were willing to change every detail that we wanted to personalize. On the day of the ceremony, they greeted us when we arrived from the church with champagne and hors d'eurves and gave us a private sitting room in which to relax while our guests finished cocktail hour. It was magnificent!

They were awesome. Just wonderful.

The Carolina Inn exceeded my expectations. They were extremely flexible throughout the whole process and ensured that I received the value that we paid for on our special day.

I am so glad I got married at the Carolina Inn. It's very clear they know what they're doing. I worked with Jennifer Davis, who was cheerful and very responsible. She answered any questions I had within a day or two(and I probably had 4000 questions over the year of planning) and alleviated everyone's stresses. She was organized and timely, and had an answer ready whenever I wasn't sure of what I wanted. Plus, the space was just beautiful--my florist bill was substantially lower because the decor at the Inn is already so stunning. We got married in the Bryan Courtyard, which seats about 150, and then walked down the hall to the Old Well Room, where we had a gorgeous dance floor with chandeliers, a smaller room with a bar, and another room for quieter talking. They provide catering and the bar, and the food was really delicious, especially the shrimp and grits, the little lamp chops, and the flatbread with portabello and goat cheese.

I had my ceremony & reception at The Carolina Inn. Our ceremony was in Bryan Courtyard. We got married in October & the autumn leaves were at their peak. It was breath taking. Our reception was in The Old Well Room. The food was wonderful (I've been to weddings at great venues where the food was rather disappointing) & the service fantastic. I read a few of the other reviews on this site & was surprised at some of the complaints regarding the flexibility of the catering department. We were able to customize our entire menu & many of the changes were made last minute. Our contact was Julie McCay. She was friendly, accommodating & professional. We had some rather extreme changes occur last minute & she (along with Sally Herring) handled it all like Super Heros. She went above & beyond in accommodating all my last minute changes & requests. I was told by many guests that it was the most beautiful & elegant wedding they had ever been to. The only reason I did not give a full five stars was due to some mix ups regarding a few of our hotel rooms. But, the front desk took care of everything promptly & efficiently.

As a UNC-CH student (on a budget) who has known about the infamous and fabulous Carolina Inn weddings, I was both excited and apprehensive when I booked the Old Well Ballroom for my Saturday afternoon wedding. I wanted to make sure that my wedding was given the same attention to detail and support as the other big-ticket weddings I knew would and have taken place there. There were 5 other weddings the weekend of mine, but you would have never guessed it. I was treated like a queen, and the catering manager (Julie) was ever-present and attentive. From the minute I booked the room to the minute I left, everything went smoothly and the issues that arose were taken care of quickly and in a very professional and caring manner. Everyone that came loved the food, atmosphere, and service. My guests were in love with our bartender, who although not english-speaking, was as nice and accommodating as could be. A perfect experience, and well worth every dime.

We were married May 2010 and had our reception (along with a cocktail party on the lawn Friday evening) at the Carolina Inn. Ashleigh Collins was our catering manager. She was such a pleasure to work with, always professional and probably the most hardworking person I have seen in a long time. I was constantly asking her things from up here in New Jersey and she was always patient, never seemed to tire of my list of questions. I cannot imagine doing what she does! The food was FANTASTIC....Jimmy Reale is amazing and took care of us and our guests the entire weekend. A true gem!!! I would eat there any day, any time. My only small issue with The Carolina Inn was our room situation. We were told from the start we could reserve 80-100 rooms and this was never the case. Sure it was a big weekend in Chapel Hill...but we told the Carolina Inn from the get-go that we needed 80 to 100 rooms and this never occurred.It all worked out in the end, and the entire staff is SO attentive. No complaints about that! Our guests loved it. But the "not knowing" if our guests would all have rooms was a big deal to us.

The Carolina Inn was a great place to hold our wedding. They were the only venue that packaged all that we were looking for and the pricing was within our budget. The grounds are beautiful and went very well with the theme of our wedding.

I loved my wedding at the Carolina Inn. It was expensive and the workers are not willing to change much about the space or the menu planning. That said, if you go in and like the rooms, so much is done for you. Everything went smoothly once we received our actual catering manager Julie (who was awesome) and we were treated very nicely. We even were offered to have our meals reheated to make sure that my new husband and myself got something to eat. The food was fabulous, service during was wonderful and every vendor had worked at the Inn before so there were no obvious flubbs. Wonderful place.

sara was totally amazing, the inn was beautiful and the catering manager did a great job. not super flexible with their packages and food unless you raise a lot of hell but it was a great experience and beautiful.

Gorgeous and great to work with for our reception. Returned calls, clear guidelines and deadlines. Willing to work with us and our other vendors to create just what we wanted. Food was delicious.

After reading many positive reviews on www.theknot.com for the Carolina Inn, I booked them as my wedding ceremony and reception venue. The sprinklers in the courtyard went off as guests were being seated which delayed the ceremony for more than 30 minutes, the guest book was misplaced until about an hour before the reception ended, so only about 15% of my guests were able to sign it, my signature picture glass was broken, some of the bartenders left their stations, etc....The coordinator provided by the Carolina Inn did a very disappointing job. I hope nobody else has to experience such chaos and disorganization as I did on my wedding day.

I was not happy at all with the service of the Carolina Inn on the day of the wedding. The wedding planner disappeared during the reception, the food service was incredibly slow and lasted an hour longer than it was supposed to, and they were not responsive at all to my requests to speed up to stay on the schedule they had outlined for me. It was beautiful, but far too expensive considering the services that were provided.

I went to the Carolina Inn because it was close to the church we got married in, and we didn't want to bother with renting tables, catering, etc. all the different vendors. We thought it would be easier because it was one source and everything would be managed by them. They turned out to be very inflexible. The catering manager (Jennifer) was very unresponsive as we got closer to the wedding, and we realized it was because she was getting married the next weekend at the Carolina Inn, so she was more wrapped up in her wedding than ours. Needless to say, too far gone down that path to turn around by the time we realized this. The week of the wedding, we met with her and her "reception manager" (who did not speak English, as least that anyone could understand) and we provided her with table cards, menus, seating charts, favors, cake topper, cake knife, table decorations etc. and went through detail where everything went. We even mailed her an excel spreadsheet by table where people were sitting. When we got to the reception, we found that the seating was a disaster. She sorted the spreadsheet column alphabetically, but didn't sort it with table numbers. My new husband and I ended up being seated across the ballroom from each other, as with many other couples that were supposed to sit together. My parents ran through the ballroom during the cocktail hour sorting out the table cards that were haphazardly placed due to the screw up. Then, when we finally sat down, we saw that the "leaves" we asked to scattered on top of the table for our fall theme, were just plopped down in their original packaging on the tables, no opened and scattered.The final shame was that our Catering Manager was no where to be found during all these problems (trust me, there are many more!) and she never responded to my phone calls and requests for compensation. To add final insult to injury, they misspelled my name on every sign directing guests to our wedding! We spent a ton of money on the reception and to make sure our guests had a great time, and honestly, I wish we hadn't had it there.

I booked the Carolina Inn for an afternoon reception in their Old Well Room. What started out as a very receptive catering department soon became what I would call frigid and unrepsonsive as the wedding got closer and closer. I was planning my wedding from out of state, so I thought that having it at the Carolina Inn, where they are supposedly known for amazing weddings, would have helped. We met with the catering staff the Thursday before my Saturday wedding. Gave them individual table seatings, name cards, and menu selections and color coding, since we had three en trees, gave them the favors, menu cards, and discussed how everything was to go once again. It seemed like everything was going to be great.Let me first say, that the Carolina Inn lost our wedding parties' and my bouquet before the mass. I was 30 minutes late to my wedding because they couldn't figure out where they put the flowers. After the mass at the Newman Center across the street, we came back, and well...it was a mess!I have an ethnic last name, and they mispelled it on the sign pointing people to the reception- nice touch. The waitstaff, which I was assured would know what they were doing, be plentiful, and speak ENGLISH, we few and far between. Oh, and they didn't speak English. Big problem when you're trying to explain what the color coding on your place cards meant while trying to relax and be happy just being married! When my guests got to the ballroom before myself and my husband, my mother found out that the idiots in the catering department completely messed the seating of our 13 tables up. Instead of laying out the name cards from the table specific and sorted ziplock baggies I made for them, it was like they just dumped them on the floor and threw them anywhere! When my mother talked to the catering "manager" for our reception, she exclaimed to my mother "well, what do you want me to do about it?" My father and mother went around and changed the seating around as fast as they could to what they thought was appropriate...families sitting together, couples not sitting across the room, children sitting with their parents, myself and my new husband sitting at the same table... It was a mess.It all got sorted and people were happy. More or less. We gave them leaves to put on the tables to spread about...instead they just dropped the packages of the leaves on the tables, with the POTTERY BARN labels for everyone to see! In the end, we also had extra favors of Godiva truffles, and the 20 of those also disappeared, never to be seen again. We think the incompetent waitstaff ate them, but who knows?