Loblolly Pines Village

So this is where we held our wedding reception. It’s an interesting place, a small compound of «meeting, recreation, and lodging facilities» according to the website. Kind of a hotel/​motel, kind of out in the country, that also rents out u-​hauls, and has a small café open on the weekends, and now even has the «Live Oak Bar,» which we have yet to visit.
Our reception was held in the «town hall» building that is now the bar. We basically picked it because it was by far the cheapest option of all that we researched. The owner, John (I believe, again, bad with names), was good to work with and was easy to get in touch with when we needed to.
In addition to renting the hall, we also paid for a bit of catering from the venue (don’t let the website pictures fool you, they do not make wedding cakes, but they can do simpler stuff). They provided bottled water, tea, coffee, and lemonade, as well as let us rent some white tablecloths (no, we didn’t have a «dry» wedding, it’s just that we bought our alcohol at Specs). All of that was at reasonable prices and worked out well, though the cups they provided for the tea and lemonade were kinda small. I was impressed that they supplied Aquafina water rather than some cheaper off-​brand. We used an outside vendor for food, and they were okay with that as long as we brought the food in and didn’t actually have other caterers on-​site.
The town hall was nothing fancy of course, we knew that for the price. We were using their tables and chairs, and some of the tables weren’t in the greatest of shape, but they were fine once we covered them with tablecloths. We were able to decorate prettymuch how we wanted, they just wanted us to use the hooks that were already on the ceiling rather than attach anything new, which was fine.
The whole story of how the reception went would take a long time, but what’s pertinent is that there were no problems with the venue or the catering. Everyone enjoyed themselves and there were no complaints about the facilities.
We did agree to clean up after the reception and that wasn’t so bad since we had friends and family to help us. The next day the owner thanked us for doing such a good job and said that we didn’t have to be so thorough. Cool, cool.
Okay, okay, so why am I leaving off a star? Well, as mentioned in a previous review, we didn’t live in Bastrop at the time. We weren’t really keen on staying at my mom’s place on our wedding night, so we decided to rent one of the two suites at the lodge for the night. This was of course discussed with the proprietors in advance just like all of our other plans.
When we got to the suite in the early afternoon, just after getting married at the courthouse, the AC units (one window unit type-​thing for the livingroom part of the suite and one for the bedroom part) were not on and it was really, really hot in there (remember, summer ’09 had a bunch of 100+ degree days around this time). They knew we were coming, and I’m guessing they knew what suite we were getting (they only have 2 and then like 20 regular rooms), and of course they also knew we were spending a bunch more money than most of their guests (I don’t think this place gets many wedding receptions these days), so maybe they could spend the extra dollar or so and have the room cool when we arrived?
We needed to get to work setting up for the reception, so we just quickly put our stuff down, and turned on the AC units so that it would at least be cool by the time that we came in for the night.
When we came back a few hours later to put on our Indian outfits for the reception, the rooms still weren’t completely cooled off, especially the bedroom (the ACs weren’t the newest, so we chalked it up to that). We sweated through our clothing preparations.
Then the reception happened, obviously.
So after we got done cleaning up we went back to the room. The living room part of it was nice and cool. The bedroom part of it was still hot and stuffy. We couldn’t figure it out at first since the AC was obviously running, but then when we put our hands up to it we realized that it was blowing outside-​temperature air. Yes, it was set to AC, it was just broken.
It was late at night, we were exhausted and wanted to be alone to process the day, and we didn’t feel like moving all of our stuff to a different room (we also didn’t know if another suite was even available, or if we’d be able to reach anyone to move us). So yeah, we ended up opening the fold-​out couch in the living room, and sleeping very uncomfortably on that. Not a great end to our wedding day. It really seems like they should’ve made sure that our suite would be ready for us, given the circumstances. I mean, I wasn’t expecting rose petals and champagne, but a working AC would be nice.