In the review written by David Jang, you can get a complete, chronological series of events from the planning of to the post-wedding shenanigans.

It’s funny how the Villa picks & chooses on what they respond to and completely disregard the facts of intentional acts of deceit & dishonesty.

2 weeks post-wedding - before David’s review was posted - we scheduled a call with one of our initial contacts throughout this whole process. Since Sunny was removed from the event and was not present during the later phases of the wedding, we thought we might be able to get a more humane, compassionate response from him. The conversation was strictly out of courtesy, as we felt that he has the right to know what is going on in his business and how his customers are being mistreated in his absence, because truly, at this point, there was nothing the Villa can offer us that could make our experience better. Still, we had hoped that he would attempt to restore our faith in them by at least trying. He didn’t.

Our conversation with Sunny was full of “I apologize for your experience” & “They should not be speaking with the customers like that”, but it ended there. No offers of returning our money for the items & services that we paid for but didn’t receive, no offers of compensation for the unnecessary stress & emotional trauma they caused, not even an apology from the individuals who made their most valiant efforts in trying to make the best day of our lives, the worst.

To save you from having to read all the gory details again, my review is going to be based on the facts that appalled me most; from the POV of a Bridezilla:

1. The menu tasting & food selection was delayed by the completion of the building; from Dec, to Jan, to Mar, then May, and finally when the date and time was scheduled (more efforts required on our part to coordinate since my then-fiancé lived out of town), we were rescheduled multiple times. First for game 7 of the Oilers game - but we get it, the Oilers made it that far! We’ve waited this long, and postponing our tasting to the next week for the last game of the Stanley Cup Finals isn’t something we were upset about. What was upsetting is the dishonesty in the correspondence. Instead of telling us up front that they cannot be working our 4pm tasting because they have to prepare for a watch party, they made it about us. “We want to be able to spend more time with our couples. Let’s move the tasting to Canada Day, so our couples won’t have to be rushed, since most people don’t work that day.” The bridezilla that I am stated my concern for him and his staff having to work on a stat. “Are you sure you want to work on Canada Day?”, I said. To which Sunny responded, “Absolutely.” Sunday evening I receive another call from a Villa team member, rescheduling our tasting yet again; informing me that they cannot get food delivered on a holiday, but not to worry, “your event is so far away”; we are just over 30 days from DDay. This is the first of many occasions where I am smacked in the face with the disorganization & lack of professionalism demonstrated by the Villa.

2. The designated Decor Company - Bash Decors, was a delight from the start. From 2-3 reschedules/failed attempts before we could even connect for the initial “consultation” call, to sending the quote to the “wrong Jenny” with lack of f/u, to leaving the design finalization to 5 days before our wedding, it is clear to me why the Decor company had to be designated; if I had a choice, I would not have chosen to have “a Bash event”. Throughout the 10 months of planning, I would send messages (often unanswered), and initiate calls to try and get on top of this planning, so as not to be slammed in the last couple weeks before the wedding, as many had warned us of. All the calls were dismissed with Tina’s reassurance. On the Sunday before our wedding, I finally received the updated invoice. Tina calls me on Monday and informs me that I have to get all the designs to her for the seating chart panel & the shadow box that night, oh, and don’t forget to pay the invoice. The seating chart is something we brought up last minute, so fine, I will do all the design & formatting and send you the ready to print file within the next 8hrs. But the Shadow Box- one of the elements I was most excited about- was decided on months ago, yet this is the first conversation we are having about what I want on it. 4days before the wedding. And I am now being told what I want cannot be done because “it has a separate cost, and we don’t have time to do that now.” In retrospect, I should have cancelled it and saved myself $2000. Hours before the ceremony, we see them setting up the Shadow Box and putting on the letters on the plexiglass. At the time, only 2 lines had been done, but it was like whomever stickering these words did not read English, as there were no spaces, so 3 words were combined to 1, and the line was crooked. I pointed it out, and asked for them to fix it. To which they agreed. At some point during the reception, I finally noticed that, not only was the first crooked, one-worded line not fixed, the following lines were all mostly crooked as well.

3. We had decided early on that we would not require a DJ for the ceremony, and we had confirmed with Sunny that we can use their sound system to play our 3-4 songs for walking down the aisle. The day before the wedding, the GM/AV company (Divinity DJs) owner tried to tell us that there would have been an additional fee to use their system, and since this was not part of our contract, we cannot. He quickly went back on this when we said that that is not what Sunny agreed to. Begrudgingly, Sam somehow managed to get the AV system set up on the patio minutes before our 3pm ceremony. Due to the time constraints, our videographer was only able to do one soundcheck, and the mic worked. However, we found later, that although the mic worked, it did not record any of the sound during our ceremony. Not the music, not the vows, not the crying, or the laughter. This is a moment we will not get back, all due to the lack of care and competence by Divinity DJs and The Villa.

4. You’ve already heard about the food in David’s post, but the juicy steak cooked to perfection that we had at the tasting was substituted with roast beef. The seafood linguini with palm-sized prawns was replaced with foodcourt-style chowmein, which was insulting to my Chinese family. Since the staff plated the food for the head table, we were not even aware of the noodle situation. All I knew was that I only had a few bites of the mashed potatoes that night, because we did not have any other carbs on our plates. Why did the Villa deliberately not give us any of the chowmein, if not intentional deceit, since they are clearly aware they had substituted our selections with obviously lower grade dishes.

Again, sparing you the repetition and gory details, but the mistreatment and unprofessionalism by the Villa certainly did not end here; staff member swearing at our guests, the GM Sam threatening to hit our best man, etc. Truly disappointed by the way they have chosen to conduct business and the lack of remorse and compassion demonstrated by the Villa by Nerval as a whole.

I’ve taken some time to write this review. My dealings with The Villa have left me feeling wronged in many ways. And I write this to caution others when dealing with this company.

If I was to summarize The Villa in a nutshell, and for those of you who do not want to read the full review, I would say that they over promise and under deliver.

It’s a beautiful venue with decent food, however they severely lack experience and expertise in the service and event planning department. As a new venue, I can sympathize with delays and a learning curve. However, their arrogant and unapologetic attitude would disappoint me time and again as it seemed they were more concerned about looking good rather than being good. Dealing with them was a nightmare and any extra effort on their part was overshadowed by their complete ineptness.

Welcome to the Villa by Nerval.

Pre wedding:

We booked the Villa in October of 2023 for our wedding to happen in August of 2024. They had told us they would be done construction in December, where we would be able to have a look at the place and plan the other components of our wedding. This would be the first of many claims that would prove false.

December turned into January, and January to February. As the months went by without the venue being complete, we were not worried as our event was so far away. Delays happen and we assumed they would be able to finish construction and iron out the kinks with their earlier events. We were sorely mistaken.

6 months later, July would eventually come where we had our first meeting and menu. We met the staff who were friendly, but they knew very little of us or our wedding. They asked us the same questions multiple times over as there had been no communication amongst them. They bragged about their combined years of experience, but we knew from the overly long first meeting (3 hours) and organization that they were novices.

The building was beautiful, but not complete. One of the most important parts was the patio. As we had booked the patio for our ceremony, we were concerned that it would not be finished in time for our wedding. Jocelyn, a newly hired event coordinator also expressed this concern. Sam, the AV and general manager reassured us that it would be complete and not to worry.

As our wedding date came closer and we started making more decisions, we dealt more with Jocelyn than with the original people that we had been dealing with. (Sunny and Sam)

Jocelyn was a pleasure to work with. She seemed to be the only one who was concerned with service and how our event would be executed. When we had concerns she would address them and find solutions. One example is when we were concerned our party size was too large for their one buffet line. She agreed and said that they would set up a second buffet line to reduce delays and increase flow.

As our wedding date drew near, we noticed that the venue had received some bad PR on their Google reviews. When asked about this, we found out that their earlier events had not gone so well. At this point the patio was still not complete and there had been quite a few issues in service.

Soon after, the Villa then mentioned that they would be taking away the second buffet line. We were shocked by this as we had heard the events previous had been chaotic with large delays. After speaking with Sam and Sunny, they assured us once again that the one buffet line would be sufficient.

Days before our event, the Villa decided to fire Jocelyn, the event coordinator. It was sad to see her leave as it felt like she was the only one who understood what it took to make an event like this work. She was also the point of contact who was privy to details that we would now have to go over with Sam again.

One of these details was the signature cocktails that the venue had promised to create for us from their bartenders. A detail that was left to the end, when asked about it I was given the suggestion of a “Mimosa.” I was disappointed by their lack of effort and creativity as this was one of their selling points to us. I decided to contact their bartending staff myself. They were an outsourced business called Pink Diamond Bartending. When I asked about my signature cocktails, I was given Amanda’s (the owner) contact. She was too busy for me as she was working her other job, which led me to creating my own cocktails.

Another detail was for payment. Concerned with the bad PR and the fact that the patio was not created yet, we had arranged for payment to be paid in full 2 days before the event. I also had e-transfer limits on my accounts and would need the invoice ahead of time to make full payment. Sam agreed to this and said the patio would be completed on Wednesday. (Our event was on the Saturday) I told them I would pay once they gave me word the patio was completed. However as Wednesday rolled around, the patio was still not finished. That did not stop Sam from asking for payment though. Although I was not against paying the majority of the invoice at this point, Sam unfortunately kept sending the invoice to an email I had no access to which delayed me making payment until Friday. Once received, I sent him the first e-transfer.

With a fired event coordinator and an unfinished ceremony patio days before the event, we hoped for the best but did not have much faith in the Villa by this point.

Day before the wedding:

We had our rehearsal the day before the wedding. The patio was still not complete, and we had to rehearse around work crews. Emotions were high as they are days before any wedding, but the ownership at The Villa did not make it any easier. The owner Manjeet would pull me aside during rehearsal and essentially say that he would be canceling the wedding if we did not make full payment that day. Even though the patio wasn’t complete and even though I had made arrangements with his general manager Sam the day before, Manjeet decided to embarrass me in front of my friends and family by demanding full payment even though I was not able to do so with my e-transfer limits. I was shocked and infuriated by this man who had not been part of the process but who had the power to end our wedding at the tips of his fingers. This feeling of powerlessness is one of the main reasons I write this review, because I feel no wedding couple should have to feel this way.

Blessedly, a friend of mine was able to help cover the payment, and for our wedding sake I decided to save my anger for another day.


Day of the Wedding

Hours before the wedding, the Villa had miraculously constructed a working patio for the ceremony. It was not finished by any means, but it was functional. There were no planters or plants, no carpet to walk on and the AV had been haphazardly put together with grainy sound as there had been no time for a sound check.

One other thing that happened is that it began to rain hard outside. Although the patio was workable, it was not functional in regards to a rainy day. There exists a 10 - 20 foot uncovered gap between the building and the covered patio. I asked Sam if they had any contingency plans for my bride, or would she have to walk through the rain to the patio. There was no carpet, so she would also have to muddy her dress as she walked to the altar.

He replied emotionlessly, “You will have to buy umbrellas.”

I was shocked. They had no contingencies. Mind you, this was hours before our ceremony. I said to him, “I have to buy umbrellas? Shouldn’t you be buying umbrellas? How could you have not thought of this? He replied, “We aren’t responsible for that,” and walked away.

The lack of thought, preparation and compassion infuriated me. There was little that I could do knowing how little they cared. If left to their devices, my bride would have to walk through the rain, on the dirty concrete with her white dress because of their incompetence and lack of forethought.

Despite their worst efforts, my bride and I had a wonderful ceremony and reception. Earlier on we decided that whatever happened we were going to have an amazing time. We were also surrounded by the best of people and they all helped us remember the joyous occasion that we were celebrating.

The Villa would continue to disappoint as cocktail hour approached. On the day of, Pink Diamond Bartending came an hour late. You can imagine the chaos as we had hundreds of people during the first hour being served by an unqualified Villa staff member being completely overwhelmed. When the bartending staff finally arrived, they did not create any of the cocktails properly (I had given them the ingredient lists and instructions days before) and guests told me they did not check IDs and were serving to minors.

The food was decent but not what we had ordered. The seafood linguini we had eaten at our tasting was substituted for chicken chow mein and the quality of beef from the event was much lower than the tasting. The difference was the difference between steak compared to roast beef.

As my wife and I went up to cut our wedding cake, we were not given any utensils to cut with. We had to use a butter knife and a small plate procured from one of my groomsmen. Afterwards, our cake was taken away and served. We were a little disappointed by this as we had made 300 cup cakes for the guests to enjoy. The cake was more symbolic and had a customized cake topper on it. We were hoping to keep the cake topper and enjoy the cake on another occasion. We later found out that they had served out all of our wedding cake and lost our custom cake topper the next day.

Another fun fact was that the buffet line took an atrociously long time. Built more for aesthetics than functionality, it was not able to service the number of guests and Jocelyn’s recommendation of a second buffet line would have helped tremendously. Because of this our schedule was pushed back and caused issues with our itinerary.

To finish off the night, the AV company had sound issues during our slide show which spoiled a surprise piano piece for our guests, some of the decorations fell on our MC as he was making a speech to which none of the staff came to his aid and halfway through the night our DJ left because of an emergency at home. (He did come back though)

By the end of the night, my wife and I were completely exhausted. We had spent one of the most chaotic / glorious days of our lives and our relationship was stronger for it.

The week after I would speak with a friend who had had his wedding the same week, and he couldn’t help but rave at how well their venue had serviced his event. (Shout out to the Pine and Pond) My wife and I actually organized a second wedding reception in my hometown the weekend after and were overjoyed at how smoothly the event went working with vendors that we trusted.

It was at this moment I realized how important service is to a venue. Service combined with humility and accountability can offset many of a customer’s complaints or forgive inexperience. Unfortunately, we never experienced either at The Villa.

Beautiful on the outside, but lacking in depth and character, choose wisely your partner and venue on your special day.

this venue is absolutely stunning. It is by far the nicest indoor wedding venues that provides both indoor and outdoor spaces. The provided services and quality of those services is absolutely remarkable as well.