Located in Grand Bend, Ontario, Dark Horse Estate Winery is a venue that specializes in creating a fun and memorable experience for weddings and other special events. Since 2016, Dark Horse Estate Winery has been Ontario West Coast's wedding venue of choice. With a lush vineyard offering scenic views, great wine and fine services, your wedding celebration will be an amazing experience!
Facilities and capacity
The facilites found at this winery venue include 20-acres of stunning vineyards which will provide the perfect backdrop to your wedding photos. Their reception halls include:
Vineyard Ballroom - Max. capacity up to 300 guests
Barrel Cellar - Max. capacity up to 24 guests
VIP Room - Max. capacity up to 20 guests
Cellar Reception Hall- Max. capacity up to 60 guests
Services offered
Dark Horse Estate Winery offers couples the following wedding services:
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!
Sent on 28/08/2018
Dark Horse Estate Winery's reply:
Cailey,
We were so happy to host your wedding. We are glad that we could help make your wedding day as amazing as it should be!
All the best,
Dark Horse Estate Winery
Katie Dawson
· Married on 18/08/2018
5.0
Quality of service:
5.0
Responsiveness:
5.0
Value:
5.0
Flexibility:
5.0
Professionalism:
5.0
Dream wedding !
The Dark Horse Estate Winery was an absolute dream wedding. Stunning venue and vineyards. My husband and I loved the assistance & professionalism from the dark horse winery’s event planner, Katherine.
Sent on 19/09/2018
Dark Horse Estate Winery's reply:
Katie,
Thank you for sharing your big day with us! It was our pleasure to host your wedding
All the best,
Dark Horse Estate Winery
Dina
· Married on 28/07/2018
3.8
Quality of service:
4.0
Responsiveness:
4.0
Value:
4.0
Flexibility:
3.0
Professionalism:
4.0
Beautiful Venue
We instantly fell in love with the Dark Horse Estate Winery from the first time we visited while looking for our wedding venue. The property and building are stunning and it was the perfect fit for what we envisioned for our special day.
We were in communication with a few different coordinators throughout our planning, and dealt mainly with Katherine for the few months leading up to our wedding day. Katherine was friendly and professional, and did her best to communicate our requests to her management, and worked hard to make sure our day went smoothly.
Some concerns we had leading up to our wedding day was a slight lack of flexibility for certain things. Luckily, we were able to find some common ground, but it did initially cause some added stress.
This is a pricey venue, and understandably so as it really is gorgeous. In order to keep our costs in order, we had some requests that from what we understood, were on par with the Dark Horse Winery's policies as well. To be specific, this was regarding the bar. We were told that serving shots to our guests was not permitted, and that their bar staff would refuse any requests for shots -- this was something we agreed with, and were confident it would be enforced during our reception. Unfortunately, this was not the case on our wedding day, as shots were served to many of our guests, but were disguised using a "splash" of soda. This was disappointing to witness as we had confidence that a request like this would be honoured, and we ended up with a very large bar invoice in the end. It is difficult to say whether the serving of shots greatly affected the final invoice, but regardless, on a day as important as a wedding -- the couple's requests (and the venue's policies) should be considered and enforced when agreed upon by both parties.
There are some strange rules in place regarding wine on the tables, once the bar opens again after dinner, all wine bottles on the tables are removed. We had some complaints from our guests regarding this, and we understand their concerns, as the bottles were all paid for beforehand and should be available to our guests on their tables until they were empty. Our best advice to future couples is to ask lots of questions, make sure all of your requests are firmly enforced and speak up when you feel you need to.
We understand that all venues have certain rules, and respectfully so. We do however hope that the Dark Horse Winery can use these hiccups as a learning experience, as the wedding market is competitive and can often to difficult for new venues to succeed.
Other than this, our wedding day was perfect. Everything ran smoothly and the Dark Horse staff worked hard to keep the tables and event space clean. It is difficult to compare the beauty of this venue to others, it stands out and makes for the perfect rustic/natural setting -- with a beautiful Huron County sunset! The wine is very good and we had many compliments from our guests, some even purchased some from the retail store!
We will remember our wedding day fondly, and we wish the Dark Horse Winery a successful future for many happy couples to come.
Sent on 21/10/2018
Dark Horse Estate Winery's reply:
Dina,
Thanks again for letting us be a part of your special day!
We wish you all the best,
Dark Horse Estate Winery
Belinda Buchenthal
· Married on 16/06/2018
4.0
Quality of service:
4.0
Responsiveness:
4.0
Value:
4.0
Flexibility:
4.0
Professionalism:
4.0
Great venue
Awesome venue to host your wedding and beautiful vinyards. Great staff and the wedding coordinators promptly replied to my bombardment of emails. I found them easy to work with and the space was beautiful and picture worthy.
Sent on 19/06/2018
Dark Horse Estate Winery's reply:
Belinda,
It was really great working with you two, and it was an honour to host your wedding!
We wish you all the best,
Dark Horse Estate Winery
Leah Moore
· Married on 08/07/2017
4.4
Quality of service:
5.0
Responsiveness:
5.0
Value:
4.0
Flexibility:
3.0
Professionalism:
5.0
Beautiful venue for the perfect day!
My husband and I got married at Dark Horse Estate Winery in July 2017. The event coordinator at the Winery was amazing to deal with and gave us some great advise that helped us plan our perfect day. The venue does not disappoint with it's beautiful and peaceful views. However, I have a few complaints. First was how we were treated by a staff member who was working in the retail shop during our day. We were running behind from taking pictures and I needed to use the corporate room, which we booked, to take my veil off before the ceremony. I asked to be let into the room (it was locked if empty) and he was VERY rude to me and one of my bridesmaids, stating he would "help us when he had a chance". It took him 15 minutes to help us and he wasn't even that busy. For someone who is paying a rather large amount to be married there and was the bride, this was completely unacceptable. Second was the time we were allowed to be in the corporate VIP room. The earliest the venue would let us in is 9:00am and there was absolutely NO budging. Our ceremony was at 3:00pm and there was me, six bridesmaids, my mother and two mother-in-laws (one is my hubby's stepmother) that all needed to get hair and makeup done. This caused the morning to feel very rushed. A friend of mine got married there three months after me and had the same problem. Third and final minor complaint was the use of the VIP room. According to the winery event coordinator at the time, we weren't allowed to "hang out" in the room, which included me and my hubby not being able to have a moment to ourselves after the ceremony to just be calm and be happy we were finally married. No one was allowed to spend any time up there other than what was necessary. I didn't think this was fair considering we had booked the room (and it's gorgeous) and weren't able to fully enjoy it as much as we had hoped. If we were let into the room during any time after the ceremony or during the reception, we were supervised and on a time limit.
The above comments may sound negative, but honestly, in the end, we couldn't have been happier with the venue and the other services it provided. Perhaps things have changed since I believe not many weddings had happened there before ours. We highly recommend this place!
Sent on 10/07/2018
Dark Horse Estate Winery's reply:
Leah,
Thank you for sharing your beautiful day with us! We are happy you found the venue to your expectations. Unfortunately the retail and events are separate entities, so the retail staff probably didn't want to interfere with the events side of things. We have made our terms in the wedding packages a lot more clear, to minimize confusion, so that the bride and groom's day can be that much more enjoyable.
