BR Cohn Winery

What should have been a beautiful day, started off with an unexpected incident in the bridal suite on the winery’s property. The venue claims to be “pet friendly,” (not to mention kid friendly) for a wedding, but it’s false. The morning of my special day, my dog found “exposed” rat bait in the bridal suite and ate two pieces. My two-year old nephew was even walking around in the bridal suite, and he could have been poisoned too. Obviously this would have never crossed our minds, since we assumed the bridal suite was “safe for kids and dogs.” But it wasn’t. Long story short, after my dog was poisoned, she had to be rushed to the hospital and we couldn’t pick her up until midnight after the wedding. We didn’t get back to our hotel until 2am on our wedding night. The whole process involved poison control, various trips to the vet, and we couldn’t even enjoy the day after since we rushed her back to the hospital to get further testing since we hadn’t identified the poison type yet and what specific treatment was needed. After all of this chaos, the venue never formally apologized or “formally offered” any type of courtesy. At minimum, it was a blame game between the wedding/events director at the winery and the maintenance staff since somehow the exposed rat bait was “unknowingly” placed in the bridal suite and apparently no one checked or gave us any warning. We also received an “informal offer” for them to cover the vet bills. I’m writing this review months later, and we still have not received payment for the vet bills like the events/wedding director at the venue kept promising (which by the way, the vet bill amount doesn’t even make a dent in comparison to how much we spent on BR Cohn for our venue and the emotional trauma that occurred at the risk of my dog potentially dying). And after following up with the events/wedding director at BR Cohn, I received no response. I gave up for a few of months thinking I was over the emotional trauma, and after digesting the events I realized I wasn’t fine with the situation because nothing had been resolved. Then my husband and I revisited the venue to talk to management. No tangible results. I even asked my wedding coordinator to reach out to the events/wedding director at the winery as a last resort, and she responded to her almost right away, but not to me. The events/wedding director acted as if I hadn’t tried to follow up and thought the matter was resolved, but due to “new ownership” the situation is “complicated.” Whether it is old or new ownership, she is still a representative and employee of BR Cohn, and at this point it isn’t even about the check, but simply empathy and acknowledgement that this awful incident happened. Based on this situation, I honestly cannot recommend working with her or whoever “management” is in this case, if you are considering booking this venue for your wedding. And after the incident, the treatment was nothing but unprofessional. I cannot seem to find closure, and I forewarn couples who are dog parents, to ask questions and make sure there isn’t exposed rat bait in the bridal suite on their special day. All of this said, it’s unfortunate because I still love the beauty of this property, but the treatment from the staff after the incident and how it was handled was extremely unprofessional. The situation could have been handled differently with acknowledgment and responsiveness, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case, and we’re still dealing with processing the emotional trauma months later.