Grace Estate Winery

Grace Estate Winery is definitely a "hidden gem" in the greater Charlottesville area! It has the most spectacular views of the Blue Ridge, a gorgeous (and large!) tent for guests, and a great space indoors in which the wedding party can get ready. Plus, it's at a much lower price than many other equally beautiful winery venues in the area! The staff at Grace Estate is willing to let you create your own space, and Linda (with Ben and others who worked there in June) coordinated with us on every detail to help us have the perfect, "picturesque" wedding - even to the point of helping us fit our many guests' cars in the parking area! Linda was very responsive over email, and the staff there allowed us to do site visits MANY times with all of our vendors and family members - which we really appreciated! Plus, Grace Estate is not far from Charlottesville and is easy to access (no gravel roads!), which is a huge plus for guests. Our guests raved about the venue, and we couldn't recommend it more!

Let me first say that the sheer beauty of Grace Estate may still make everything else worth it. It requires more work than most venues as you have to rent a restroom trailer, tables, chairs, kitchen items in addition to lighting for under the tent and the potential for an additional tent if there is inclement weather. Due to county ordinance music must be stopped at 10pm, which is rather early, but we overlooked all that when booking because this was our dream venue. Linda the event manager is pretty helpful although somewhat difficult to get a hold of at times. On the day of the wedding our relationship with the on-site staff Anya was not great. She was not very pleasant and spent the majority of her time on her laptop. When we arrived, nothing had been cleaned. There were dead bugs and dust everywhere. Anya did some minor sweeping and cleaning, but most of the areas where we wanted to take pictures were littered with dead bugs which inevitably ended up in the tulle of my dress. We even had our photographers and day-of-coordinator sweeping areas to try to help. The inside of the tasting room was unbearably hot and there was no way to get it any cooler as the AC had been turned up as high as it could go. Additionally, I was advised that all items could be placed outside of the building, under the tent for pick up the following day, which was even written into our contract. However, the night of the wedding we were told by Anya that was incorrect and that we needed to have everything off of the property entirely, which resulted in a lot of unnecessary stress and chaos at the end of the night to shove things into cars. We are still trying to sort out what happened to some of the stuff and the rest was just lost because we had not planned for that. We did get a lot of compliments on the venue and wine, but there are definitely some negatives to this property. If you can overlook those then this is a great place for some unforgettable views and pictures!

Grace Estate has the most beautiful mountain view in the Charlottesville area - hands down! The estate is on the top of a big hill, with a permanent 40x80 tent with permanent flooring set off the back. Guests have access to a large indoor tasting room as well as the gorgeous upper level patio. All of our guests remarked on how beautiful the view and setting were! Grace Estate is new to the wedding scene, and the good thing for couples is that they allow you to customize in pretty much every way. You can bring in your own catering, rentals, decor, etc -- and open flames (candles) and sparklers are permitted! (The only restrictions are that tent add-ons have to come from a specific company, and they have some rules about music too.) We were able to access the venue (even though its generally closed to the public) as much as we wanted for walk throughs and to test out ideas, which was really nice. Their wine is also delicious (and they offer a sparkling option!) which is good because as with most vineyards you do need to order wine through them. Grace Estate is also a REALLY good value for this area. The rental fee is lower than most vineyards (but keep in mind that it doesn't include rentals or kitchen, and you will need to rent a restroom trailer) but it still ends up netting out at a very affordable level. Ben is the tasting room manager and was so helpful at every step of the process. Grace Estate was the site of our dream wedding and we absolutely loved it as our venue!

I cannot express enough how grateful I am to Grace Estates and their staff for making my wedding so perfect. Every one we worked with at this venue was more than helpful and understanding. I could not have imagined having a more perfect venue the view in itself was spectacular and worth everything, but then to also have such a flexible and hospitable venue who truly caters to their clients just made everything so much better and so worth it.