Couples slated to tie the knot at a popular New Jersey wedding venue are getting cold feet after sneaking a peek at the venue’s drastic renovation on social media.
The Madison Hotel in Morristown has long charmed locals with its enchanting gold and beige-hued ballroom, resplendent with shimmering chandeliers. Now, management is receiving fierce blowback from booked-in brides-to-be after swapping the classic look for a more modern, funereal black-and-navy blue scheme, revealed in a surprise announcement on the venue’s Instagram feed last week.
Betrotheds who’ve shelled out thousands on the venue appear to be less than thrilled, with some livid over what they see as an unforgivable deception, NJ.com reported.
“Please say this is a joke. No one mentioned black walls when I booked my wedding,” one bride commented on the Instagram post.
Another scoffed: “These colors are [not] for a wedding venue. I cannot comprehend how ownership would think this is a good move or look. I feel for all the brides that are already booked.”
Others inquired about whether or not the venue would refund brides and grooms who secured the space before the reviled renovation, to be completed early next year.
The Madison Hotel’s previous ballroom was light and bright with gold and neutral hues. The Madison Hotel Morristown, NJ
One bride, Victoria Tow, expressed how “extremely disappointing” it was to see the venue change from its gold and neutral hues to a midnight color scheme, taking to the venue’s Instagram to lash out.
“We booked the ballroom for its gorgeous gold accents … and loved the aesthetic when we saw it in person. We do not understand the move towards black, especially for weddings nor do we like the blue carpeting that will clash with our theme,” Tow said.
Jon Kline, the CEO of Clearview Hotel Capital, LLC, which purchased the hotel six months ago, told The Post that management has been in touch with the scheduled parties and is negotiating with them privately.
“We’re trying to make everyone happy. Not everybody loves everything. The majority of people we’ve shown the design, including people who are having events in the future, are hugely positive,” said Kline, “We bought this hotel in June from a family who built it and owned it for multiple generations.”
“We saw an exciting opportunity to honor and respect the tradition of the hotel and make it way nicer,” Kline said of the planned renovations.
The ballroom’s new, darker interior is slated to debut in 2023, to the dismay of many unhappy brides who booked the venue on the basis of its previous décor.The Madison Hotel Morristown, NJ
The new ownership will have their work cut out for them, judging by the number of miffed commenters expressing their feelings publicly.
One bride, Bethany Hanna, made the point that wedding parties had planned their wedding party color schemes around the ballroom’s previous colors and will now be left scrambling at the last minute to make it work.
“This is absolutely absurd,” Hanna wrote on the venue’s Instagram page.
Another bride who reportedly toured the venue earlier this year before signing a $30,000 contract said she felt deceived by the renovation, noting that a hotel staffer did mention changes to guest rooms but said there was no mention of the ballroom’s redesign, NJ.com reported.
“It’s super frustrating because it feels like I was fooled. I feel deceived. They are just literally ripping the carpet out from under us,” she complained.
Similarly, another bride-to-be reportedly shelled out $25,000 for a contract with the venue for her wedding that will occur after the renovations are complete, according to NJ.com.
The bride reached out to staffers, voicing her concerns about her décor clashing with the new room, but it’s unclear if she will be offered a refund.
“I have everything — the decorations, the colors — the new ballroom clashes completely with my theme,” she said, according to NJ.com. “We have been in contact with the managers the whole time. They could have let us know in enough time that I could have changed the colors of my wedding, but they didn’t.”
