The Notary Hotel, Philadelphia, Autograph Collection

We used this location as the hotel block. The hotel rooms were fine, everything else about it was horrible. The bride couldn't check in without putting down a credit card. The bride of a 30 room block booked in both of our names couldn't check in the night before her wedding with her wedding dress in hand despite the fact that it was paid for. My mother, my father, my brother, my best man, my sister all had to call me to get their hotel room booked because the front desk put them on hold and never picked up. My mother called the front desk the day of my wedding to ask if she could come in early because she had several things that needed to be at the wedding. They put her on hold and never picked up. I called for her, and guess what? I was put on hold and they never picked up. I then called our event coordinator and things got fixed extremely quickly. I can't tell you why the FOH is so hard to work with, but they are. At my wedding, my brother made fun of me for giving them a stingy guest bag.... it was because we told the FOH that they should give one guest bag to each guest, and instead they gave one bag per room. We put one bottle of water, one pack of advil and a bunch of snacks in each bag. One bottle of water and one packet of advil makes no sense for a room of 3 people. In addition, my mother's room was never cleaned (which I found out 2 days ago, a full month after the wedding). Needless to say, I was mortified and ended up apologizing to a lot of guests because of the poor service from this hotel, and these were only the issues that we heard of. I guarantee more of our guests had issues that they didn't want to bother us with. I am writing this review 1 month after our wedding because I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt and speak with management. I was given an apology, a reassurance that this doesn't happen in "99.9%" of cases (despite me having to call on the behalf of most of my family and personally experiencing it) and a stipend of points that never ended up in my Marriott account. My last correspondence with the hotel was telling them that I already apologized to my guests, I don't care about the points, it's been a month, and I don't want to deal with this any more. I suggest any other hotel in the area who may take your event more seriously.

We chose to have our wedding here in June and we cannot express just how happy we were with this choice. While everything was fantastic and beyond our expectations, the MVP of this event was definitely Angela, our wedding coordinator at the Courtyard. She was the most organized coordinator one could hope for and *always* on top of everything. She emailed us questions when necessary and chased us when we forgot to answer one. She was in 20 places at once and made sure everything went according to plan. If Marvel makes a movie about a super hero whose ability is freakishly on point wedding coordination, Angela will star. That said a few other points worth noting: 1) The chef is phenomenal – the food was delicious far beyond what I expected from a hotel kitchen. He was super fun to work with at the tasting and everyone raved about the food at the wedding. Tip – go for the lamb and sea bass. 2) This is unlike other Courtyards and feels more like a well renovated historic hotel. The rooms and hallways are elegant and the bridal suite was gorgeous – we hosted a bridal party there with 15 and it easily could have fit more. The room and hallways decorations are REALLY nice and give this hotel a very classy vibe. 3) You really get your money’s worth here – it’s Courtyard prices (lower than the high end Marriott brands) but because of the nature of this specific Courtyard, you get quality a lot closer to the J.W. Marriott brand in quality and décor. 4) The staff that supported our wedding behind the scenes were all extremely competent and pleasant. Whenever we needed anything, from a suggestion of where to get a cheese platter to some muscle to move boxes around, they were immediately on hand to help out, with a smile. Frankly I don’t know if I’ve ever dealt with a more friendly hotel staff. City of Brotherly Love! Honestly, we chose this venue based on value and we got a beautiful hotel and venue with the best support and coordination (and food) we could have imagined. We don’t write tons of reviews on here but felt the need to let others know how lucky we were to have chosen this Courtyard for our wedding.

The Marriott was a nice place to have our wedding Ceremony. The environment is intimate and beautiful.

Let me first state that I only used this hotel as our preferred room block. Although the hotel aesthetically was very pretty the experience at the hotel was pretty horrific. We arrived on Saturday to the longest valet line. I was in my car for well over 60 mins before anyone even came to collect my keys. Once in the building I was informed by main reception that the my suite wasn't available. I was waiting at the kiosk for a a good 20 mins so they could fix my situation. In the end I ended up getting a larger room for the same price as my original but it had a Murphy bed which is not the most comfortable. In the end, I am very much grateful for the extra space the room provided. Me and my bridal party did need it, but all of the delays made me late to our rehearsal dinner. The morning of the wedding went along fine. They called me in the AM to set a clean up time so they didn't disturb us getting ready. At the end of the night we were ready to get back to our hotel room. My husband opened up the door and we immediately got hit with a sour/garbage smell. We looked into the room and it was apparent that they never cleaned. I mean they didn't event attempt. There was food laying open, trash was all over, and the towels were used up. So at 1:00 am I walked down in my wedding gown completely exhausted to inform the hotel that are room was a mess and it smelled horrible and we needed someone to come up and address the situation immediately. By the time the cleaner arrived my husband and I rounded up a majority of the trash (in our expensive wedding attire) and placed the left open spoiled food outside our room. The cleaner on call just switched the sheets and gave us new towels and went on her way. In the end they gave us the suite for free but really they should have comped the groom's room as well. We still ended up paying when we had a horrible experience. Outside of the weekend I have to say I am not fond of their event coordinator. I had to sent her multiple communications to get a single response. She is probably the worst vendor I worked with throughout the whole process. If she would have know that in advance she would have gone another route. Another issue we had was our welcome bags. I asked main reception to give 2 bags to each room. I learned early that gift bags weren't even being distributed at all. I had to actually reach out to main reception to get this addressed. In the end they still tried to give one bag to the guests. We made a number of them and they included some very nice accommodations. We fully expected them to be delivered accordingly. I had to address them in the main lobby again when they almost failed to deliver our bags to our guests for the 4th time. What really frustrates me is the event coordinators poor customer service. She was not available for me during any part of my stay. No one checked up on us. Additionally after all the issues it took her multiple weeks to reach out to us and when I responded to her communication it took her 2 months to finally get back to me. To be candid her initial letter was pretty poor. She really didn't even address a number of the issues we had. The letter did not seem genuine at all.

Just make sure front desk knows room blocks and checks with guests because my hotel bags were given to wrong guests that weren't on my block. Brunch tickets were a little confusing!