Dark Horse Estate Winery

My fiancé and I have booked this venue via virtual tour by Holly. She did an amazing job showing us using face to face video seeing the grounds and the area in which would best suit our personal wedding come July 2021. The place is gorgeous beyond words, and that was clearly shown we didn't have to have a tour we fell in love via video!
Cheers
Jordan and Tawnya

Dark Horse is one of our favourite places to go and we are so glad we decided to have our wedding there. We had a Friday evening ceremony and the entire experience was exactly what we wanted. We can’t thank them enough for making our day perfect.

Absolutely beautiful scenery and very accommodating wedding/event coordinators! My COVID-19 wedding experience was a nightmare with having to reschedule my wedding two times; Dark Horse helped ease the stress of the chaos, and brainstormed options that complied with health and safety regulations (the best part: these options mirrored my wedding vision)! Although it seems like COVID-19 brides are limited, Dark Horse made the experience significantly better with their support and kindness! Side Note: The Rosé Slushie is to die for!!!

Dark Horse Winery was the perfect setting for our wedding. The venue was stunning and Holly the event coordinator helped made the day perfect. She was willing to help with anything we needed and couldn't have pulled it off without her. We would recommend this venue to everyone.

We had a very small wedding with our immediate family in attendance... only 24 people. We wanted a place that was classy but intimate. Dark Horse was able to provide the perfect location! The winery was decorated for the holidays and was absolutely stunning! It made our wedding very memorable. Our guests were very impressed!
The staff were extremely friendly and helpful and provided us with excellent service.
We would highly recommend the Dark Horse Estate Winery to anyone planning a wedding!
Glen and Kevin

An amazing venue! The service was excellent as well! We heard so many wonderful comments from our wedding guests and family about the venue being absolutely breathtaking (we already knew this and that's why Dark Horse was our first and only choice for a venue!). Our guests had a great experience in such a unique place. Our rehearsal dinner in the barrel cellar was so beautiful and special, and the experience of getting ready with my mom and bridesmaids in the Dark Horse VIP room was incredible! Dark Horse really catered to all of our needs! My only point about the wedding coordination was that there was a lot of back and forth and not all information was presented in a complete package up front, so I had to ask a lot of questions in order to understand how things would go at the venue. However, Dark Horse provided me with a great contingency plan when the weather was too wet outside for a vineyard ceremony and the wedding ended up still being very beautiful and intimate in their lower wine cellar room.
What a perfect and dreamy wedding day and I wish I could relive it again!

We booked our wedding during COVID times with Dark Horse. Holly, their venue coordinator was amazing to deal with she was able to guide us through some options, and we ended up postponing our wedding at Dark Horse as the uncertainty last year was unpredictable, so happy we did as we were able to have our day without restrictions. The staff were helpful and amazing to deal with. Thank you again for being patient and walking us through these times!

Holly walked us through every step of the way, from booking to recommending vendors to the day of. Although it was a COVID year, Ashley and Holly took the time to explain the restrictions and were able to tailor our day to reflect our vision while still adhering to the COVID Policies. Dark Horse Estate Winery is a beautiful venue and very well maintained, there was definitely attention to detail when building this venue. The bathrooms were stunning! Our guests had a great time and are still taking about it!

April 2020 we had a tour of Dark Horse and completely fell in love with the beautiful venue. Never would I have I thought that I would be wishing we didn’t book this venue due to the terrible management but fast-forward to September 25th, our wedding day and I can easily say
that despite how beautiful the venue is, I absolutely do NOT recommend booking it for your wedding. When you first walk through, you are greeted by Holly and for the most part you deal with her, which is mostly pleasant. Unfortunately, Holly is only the face you see and deal with BUT has absolutely no authority to make any management decisions. Of course planning a wedding during covid is not ideal but ultimately, the way the vendors treat you during this time makes or breaks it. When we booked the venue, we never thought for 2 seconds that we would still be where we were with covid over a year later so we booked all the rooms assuming my whole wedding party could get
ready in the VIP room and assuming we could have the cocktail hour in the cellar room. Unfortunately due to capacity limits that was not the case. We understand that capacity limits are outside of the venues control, however the way they dealt with this was extremely
disappointing. We first reached out to Holly about this and asked we could get ready in the cellar room (capacity 30) instead of the VIP room since we paid for both and the VIP room no longer had the capacity to hold everyone. She immediately said no, the owner wouldn’t allow that. We then asked, since we can’t use both additional rooms we paid for, are we entitled to a refund… answer
was easily no. This was a matter of $2500 for 2 rooms we were no longer able to use and absolutely NO accommodations were being made by the owner. When it was time to pay the host bar 1 week before the wedding, we were absolutely SHOCKED AT THE INCREASED ALCOHOL PRICES.
When we signed our contract, beer was 6$, wine was 7$, cocktails were 9$. We understood that “prices are subject to change” but they went from that to 10$/beer, $8/wine, $10/oz of liquor and $2 extra per bottle of wine which were already significantly increased from their retail prices. Their reason “their cost went up”… My father in law finally got in touch with the owner after Holly said it was out of her hands just to be hung up on. My father in law immediately texted them back and asked what happened and Craig (the owner) mentioned the call had dropped and Ashley (his wife) would be in touch with me in 2 days instead of calling my father in law back). 2 weeks had gone by and I never heard a thing. As you can imagine, I was extremely frustrated with the poor customer service but Holly reassured us that Ashley would not be here on the wedding day so to just drop the frustration and she would make sure we had a good day…we decided to move ahead and we would make that work and rotate people in the VIP room (even though we had paid for a bigger room that they were refusing to let us use now). And we just paid the bar because at that point, what else were we going to do… we were 1 week away from our wedding day. Fast forward to the wedding day, to my absolute surprise a lady dressed extremely unprofessionally was hovering all over us ALL DAY. I later found out she was Ashley, the owner. I truly couldn’t believe it. In my opinion, she was extremely rude and unprofessional. She walked around all morning dictating and making everyone feel uncomfortable, locked the door to the VIP room so that we could no longer go up and down as we pleased, which made the morning very difficult because we e had to rotate people to respect the capacity limit? We were very respectful of the capacity limits and ensured we only had 10 people up
there BUT we also had my 6 week old niece sleeping in her stroller which we never for 2 seconds thought to count in this capacity limit. Instead of coming up to us and asking us nicely to consider her, she locked us out and REFUSED to let my sister go upstairs to get her baby when she was screaming… her reply “there’s already 10 people, you can’t go up”. Despite her simply asking to go up and grab the baby and come right back down. I approached her about this because I
was extremely frustrated with the way she was treating us and she walked away from me and continue mumbling comments below her breath. After the ceremony, we were trying to take family photos in front of the doors. We kept in mind that people still needed to use the doors
and gladly moved anytime someone was there. But we had the pleasure of having Ashley once again HOVER, arms crossed, absolutely miserable, dressed extremely unprofessionally, standing RIGHT in front of us while we were taking pictures. She continued to go up to the photographers telling them that’s enough. She made comments like “oh they must think they’re the only people here”.
Ashley finally left, but of course, she has no faith in her staff because just as she did all day,
questioning them and micromanaging them, she did the same from her home. At exactly 11pm when the outdoor music was to be turned off, she called her staff and had them turn it off immediately. We asked to move the music inside since the rule was capacity of 75, we were WAY UNDER 75 people at 11 pm AND WE PAID FOR THE VENUE UNTIL MIDNIGHT (the outdoor time limit for music was 11 but as per our contract the indoor portion was open until midnight). She refused and told her staff to turn on all the lights. Again, we paid for the venue until midnight and they were essentially kicking us out at 11. The next morning, my husband and I had to go pick up some stuff and Ashley approached me initially apologizing for her behaviour and offering us money back for the cellar because we had not used it. Unfortunately, at this point it was too late to rectify the situation.I am thankful for the refund but it does not dismiss the way she acted on my wedding day and the fact that she refused to return calls and deal with issues before hand. To me, trying to give us money back AT THAT POINT is just a way to try to not get a bad review. In the same breath of apologizing she also added “I’m just really confused why you’re upset with me”. I explained that if she thinks this kind of behaviour is ok, she should stay away from customers and get out of customer service. Her reply: “I’m not in customer service”. I was very surprised to hear this kind of comment from a business owner. I certainly recommend management classes to both of them. On a better note, unfortunately the owners completely ruined our opinion about this place but I will point out, that their staff deserve an award, 1) for having to deal with Ashley and her micromanaging 2) they were all phenomenal all day. Christy & Holly were great to deal with and brought light on our day despite all of the frustrations Ashley caused. The bartenders were also amazing all evening! Throughout our whole wedding planning, honestly the owners of Dark Horse were the only issues we had to deal with.

Had an awesome experience with my engagement proposal! Staff were all amazing and Holly helped coordinated and organized everything so it all went smoothly. Dark Horse is a beautiful spot for any event. Super accommodating and helpful.