Dark Horse Estate Winery

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.

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!

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.

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

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.

The venue is beautiful, stunning actually for a December wedding, but I can assure you that it is not worth the hassle, attitude or exhaustion you will face when dealing with Ashley and Craig. If there is any advice that I can give, is to ask around to different vendors. I actually heard horror stories from vendors regarding previous experiences they had with Dark Horse, namely Ashley and Craig and after all my experiences I am not surprised at all.


Rude doesn't even begin to describe it. From my very first meeting with Ashley to the
dealings with Craig, they are nothing but unprofessional. In fact, it is shocking for the amount of money that you spend there on a wedding that they would be as unprofessional and disrespectful as they are.


Now fast forward to the day before the wedding and setting up. We had the entire wedding party and family come to help as we were doing all of the setup on our own to try to save money (because of the exorbitant fees that they charge), and NOWHERE prior to this were we told a maximum number that were allowed to come and help, or that we weren’t allowed to bring a coffee with us, or that my two grandchildren could not be there, or that we weren’t allowed to track in any dirt from outside, even though it was December, snowing/slushy outside. Not sure how we were supposed to get the decorations from the vehicles into the venue. Regardless, instead of speaking with us like most adults and professionals would have done, they proceeded to talk negatively about us to anyone and everyone behind our backs. In fact, I had several people come up and tell me that they heard both Ashley and Craig putting us down, calling us disasters behind our backs. IF these were their rules, then why wouldn’t they be professional about enforcing them, instead of being unprofessional bullies, with zero respect for anyone but themselves. When confronted with all of this after the wedding they retaliated with more blame. Apparently, their behavior was justified because we didn’t follow the rules of ‘setup’, which we never received. Nobody wanted or intended to ‘break their rules’, and if a Tim Hortons coffee was a problem then all they had to do was point that out. Again, for the amount of money you pay for a wedding you would expect a certain level of respect and professionalism. You won’t find it at this place! There were several other instances of this bullying behavior but I won’t post it all as it is the same theme as the example above. I have never felt so judged and disrespected in my life.


Also, keep in mind all of the 'rules' this venue has. We paid extra for the bridal suite to get ready in. Late morning on the wedding day, we were informed that we had to ensure that we cleared out all of our personal belongings from the room. When we paid extra for the room we didn’t realize that it was for a certain number of hours. This just added stress and chaos when it wasn’t needed. Communication would have also alleviated this. Also, the bar service has last call at midnight, which we did know about, but there was no last call for our guests, and also if you are lucky enough to get a drink before it closes, don't put that drink down, as the bar staff walk around and take the drinks away. Seriously. And after dinner, when the bar opens, they remove all wine from the tables, which is their policy. What I didn't account for was them actually taking my glass of wine that I was drinking.  So essentially, since I paid for all of the wine, I paid for the glass they took and then had to get another glass at the bar because they took it from me. I assume in an effort to increase the bar bill. I also had to fight with them to get the actual invoice for the bar, to which I am sure fabricated to inflate the invoice, unfortunately this isn’t something that you can prove, With all of their other lies, it wouldn’t surprise me.


Lastly, be prepared for the cleanup. They have very specific times to clean up, ours was between 10 and 11am the following day. So we all waited around to be at the venue for 10am, and there was nobody there. nice.  Again, the height of professionalism. To deal with this company you really need thick skin and a big check book. I truly believe they hate people, hate communicating and the failure to do their job is what led to them attacking and laying blame on us, the people paying them. They should just stay as a winery and not be involved in weddings, as professionalism, human decency and respect are all major parts of the wedding experience.



Overall, we had a terrible experience. I was warned of this before deciding to have the wedding at this venue but I decided that I could deal with it based on how beautiful the venue was. In retrospect, I wish I hadn't, as the attitude, constant negative comments and bullying behaviour (eye rolling), talking behind our backs, blatant lying, which occurs long after the wedding is over, is honestly not worth it. I am sure the Dark Horse will read this and make up reasons for all of these points, but please spend time reading other reviews on other sites, and you will see a common theme to these comments. Also, ask different vendors of their experience at this venue and you will quickly see that there is no defense to any of this as it is just how they operate.

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!

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.