The Hollywood Schoolhouse

The good - the schoolhouse is a beautiful venue that hardly requires any decoration and the food was delicious. Prior to the wedding, my experience with Lori Reeder with the schoolhouse and Frank with The Collectors Café was great. Lori was very responsive, allowing us to visit several times and Frank was easy to work with including within our budget and he allowed us to semi-customize the menu. Also, we received the deposit back very quickly and the caterers put to-go boxes of food and dessert in our limo which was a nice touch.

The bad - Unfortunately there were issues just before the wedding and on the wedding day. At the rehearsal, we saw that several Christmas trees and garland were still up (Jan 16 wedding). We requested it be taken down and were told no and that we would have to move the trees ourselves if we wanted but that the garland had to stay up no matter what. Sometime between the rehearsal and wedding the trees were at least removed.

On the wedding day, I paid for an extra hour to give time to decorate but at the scheduled time, not only was nothing setup for us to decorate (tables, chairs for the ceremony, tablecloths on tables, etc…), none of the Hollywood workers were around and did not make their presence known until well after. I was later told they were likely downstairs getting dishes ready but the things we needed setup in order to decorate were not done. Frank had stated his crew would place my tablecloths out but did not and none of the workers knew where the tablecloths were. There was no one who indicated they were the liaison to help us get the things we needed. I was later told there was someone in charge but she never made herself known.

The really bad – There was a bag leftover of decorations from the party the night/day before that we had to move a screen to hide. It did not appear they had cleaned up fully from the previous party. We had a cocktail hour while they turned the space over from ceremony to reception and we went with bottles of beer (more expensive) rather than kegs so that beer would be served in addition to wine since the cocktail hour was upstairs from the reception. However, there was only wine made available, which was unattended after the initial pouring in plastic cups, although we paid for a bartender, which forced us to run out of wine early. We had to order more which totaled over $200 more than our original bar bill was supposed to be.

Lastly, we paid for water glasses to be set on the reception tables and they were not. We wanted them to help give the illusion of a place setting to go with the napkin since silverware and plates would not be on the tables. I was later told the water glasses were placed somewhere else but I only wanted them for on the tables.

After the wedding I notified Lori of my issues and she expressed over and over that her team indicated the event went great. I told her I wanted my money back for half the extra hour I paid, half of the extra bar bill because beer wasn’t obviously made available, and all of my money back for the water glasses. After several back and forth emails she finally returned the money for the water glasses after threatening legal action. Her responses otherwise were only to defend her team for what they usually do despite me telling her what they actually did.

The Hollywood Schoolhouse was a wonderful place for the reception. The staff were wonderful and easy to work with. It had an elegant charm - from the beautiful Grand Ballroom to the wonderfully green lawn and gardens - that was perfect and fitting of our wedding celebration.

We booked the the Hollywood Schoolhouse on a Saturday morning, which cost us half as much as an evening event. It was a great value. They required that we use their catering but were very very flexible on what we could choose as our menu. We wanted a brunch reception with crepes and mimosas and they were happy to make that happen. I also loved that they did all of the table/chair set up for the both the ceremony and reception and all of the clean up. This saved our friends and family from a lot of unnecessary stress. Our guests were able to go outside or upstairs for drinks during the reception set up so everyone was happy during the transition. The place also had so much character and natural light that we barely spent any money on decorations. It didn't need anything! I would highly recommend this venue to anyone!

This vintage schoolhouse is the perfect setting for both ceremony and reception. the charm of this venue is that you get the entire site, and are not sharing it with others during your event. the grounds are beautiful and a perfect setting for amazing photographs. it was a very special and romantic place to say i do.