Casa de la Vista

I recently got married in the Treasure Island Chapel and had my reception at Casa de la Vista. I would NEVER recommend this vendor or have another event here, its simply not worth the trouble. Although the food and view were spectacular, the service of Wine Valley Catering's (exclusive Treasure Island caterer and site manager) staff was so horrible I can only give this one star. If you are planning on booking this venue, be prepared for an extremely frustrating planning process. I've been a corporate event planner for about 5 years and I've never experienced such terrible service (a shame since it was my wedding).

Steve Sarna, the Director of Sales (and head of the office) is not only very disorganized, he's incredibly dishonest. When I was initially booking the venue, there was a note on the rental contract that said the Chapel was unheated (important since my wedding was planned for 5pm in January), When I asked Steve about this, he said point blank, "Of course its heated, that is a mistake, it meant to say it's not air conditioned." Months later, after I signed the contract, paid my deposit and sent out save the dates, I found out he completely lied and the Chapel wasn't heated, he admitted to "misleading me" and offered to rent forced air to heat the place, which he also tried to deny several times after, but unfortunately for him this promise he made in front of about 6 people. Another deception of note, was that when I was looking at the place, one of his great selling points is that the venue is affordable because WVC provides everything and you don't have to pay for rentals. This is blatantly untrue. WVC provides plates, chairs and some of the tables. You are responsible for paying for the rentals (contracted by WVC who also charges you a 20% service charge for this "service") of pretty much anything else in the place (glasses, linens, coffee pot, dance floor, coat hangers, etc). Throughout the entire process, Steve pretty much lied at will, promising anything, regardless of whether or not it was true, from things as small as being able to store wine to things as big as Chapel heat.

Steve Sarna and Lynn Box (event manager) are both extremely disorganized and unresponsive. It was virtually impossible to get ahold of them directly and they returned phone calls and emails about 2% of the time, even if our inquiry was just to ask a simple one-line question (and we prob contacted them less than twice a month). Lynn actually stood my mom up for a meeting on 2 seperate occasions. When we would call to follow up on our emails or phone calls, the woman who answered the phone would always tell us very rudely that "Steve and Lynn were very very busy with some important event or another" and she would take a message, which they pretty much never returned. They didn't communicate with each other, and when we actually got hold of them and could make a decision about the event, we would find out later that they had never been put in the system. We had to triple check everything. I could go on and on with examples of poor responsiveness and miscommunication.

The proposal (which we were supposed to recieve within a week after booking), arrived about 6 months after booking the place (after months of hounding and calling), was full of mistakes and additional fees. I have never seen an event contract with so many superflous charges. I actually called a couple of the vendors I knew WVC was contracting with and found out that WVC was charging us more than the actual fee of the rentals (and this is in addition to their 20% booking service charge) and that the rules they had told us surrounded the rentals were not true. After much arguing, about $7000 of "suprise" charges were eventually taken off.

Day of wedding, when I arrived at the Chapel, no one was to be found (even though I had given everyone an hour-by-hour breakdown of when everyone was arriving). I had to wait outside about 30 minutes while I desperately called the grounds manager and other people to let me in. Everything was 30 minutes backed up and we had to rush through pictures. The interior of the Chapel was freezing cold and everyone was miserable. (There were about 2 small space heaters, that smelled horrible). Steve tried to make amends by telling my mom and that he was returning our Chapel fee, which he later denied saying and refused to do. During the reception, Steve walked around drinking Gin and Tonics (from the bar we paid a per person fee for) and creeped out the guests trying to schmooze with his sleezy car salesman demeanor.

All in all, the guests thought the food and view were amazing, and they were. Fortunately, the behind the scenes difficulty was not reflected in the event the guests saw (except for the cold Chapel and creepy Steve). But road to get there was probably the most frustrating experience of my life. I WOULD NEVER USE WINE VALLEY CATERING AGAIN. It's simply not worth the headache.