Wild Basin Lodge & Event Center

Our wedding was held there just a few days ago and everything superseded our expectations. So many people told me it was the most beautiful wedding they’ve ever been to. They are so accommodating and willing to help with any questions or concerns!!! The FOOD was outstanding. So amazing. They were even able to add a veg meal last minute. My family and friends even raved about the service and personalities.
Also, We didn’t even need to buy or worry about décor because they had everything for us… vases, wood slabs, candy bowls, candles… you name it! It was beautiful!
I highly, highly, HIGHLY recommend this venue. The price is reasonable, the food is delicious and the scenery is outstanding!!!
Thank you so much Wild Basin for being the greatest!

I would agree with previous review. We were booked during Sept flooding and after 3 days of no communication dues to phones — internet down they tried to say they were open for business for an event the next day. The National Guard and police even had check points going up to Estes Park. You tell me how you can claim to schedule a wedding in that situation. All paperwork and terms very legalistic with initials and signatures on every detail. Book at your own risk and read reviews on all sites.

I would NOT recommend this venue at all! The ONLY thing this place has going for it is the beauty of the landscape and thats IT!
From my personal experience, they nickel and dime you, the owners are manipulative and a total pain to deal with and they lack in accommodations. Save yourself the time and the headache and go elsewhere unless you want a legal battle.

My fiancé and I fell in love with the Wild Basin facility and were very excited to hold our wedding and reception their. The owner was extremely hospitable PRIOR to contract signing and portrayed herself and her facility as warmly accommodating, promising us an extended Classic menu options list. This extended menu list was a deal breaker for us as the representative menu in their brochure was very limited and we specifically asked the owner if there were additional options to choose from at the Classic rate for which we would be booking. She stated that she did indeed have an extended menu at the Classic rate available to us. Based on this promise, we were ready to sign the contract. When we called Wild Basin in order to contract with them, we reiterated that the contract was contingent upon this extended menu being provided with our contract. We were assured that the extended menu would accompany our «event plan» via email immediately AFTER we signed the contract and gave her the deposit. We signed the contract in good faith and gave Wild Basin our deposit. We were then emailed back the signed contract to us WITHOUT the extended menu after our payment/​deposit was processed. We emailed Wild Basin to let them know that the extended menu was not included with the email response and «event plan» as promised. After multiple email exchanges they admitted that they had not been «clear». My fiancé and I discussed our dismay with the botched communication but decided to give them the benefit of the doubt. We contacted the owner and again requested the extended Classic menu options. She informed us that she would have to go through years of menus to provide us this extended menu and that it could take weeks for her to come up with one. She also suggested that we think about what we order when we go out to eat and present it to her. The owner’s response indicated that this extended Classic Menu which had been promised to us appeared to be nonexistent. It also illustrates that she may be very resistant in accommodating clients, preferring to put the burden on the client. We were surprised by an email from her the next day in which she made sure to tell us that she had to come in hours early in order to provide us with a menu and attached it in the email. The tone of her email, which one might infer as passive-​aggressive, left us very discouraged. The attached menu contained items that we recalled seeing on the ENHANCED menu/​contract rate and which would cost us additional money. I emailed her and asked her if the items on the menu were ALL Classic menu options as agreed, to which she replied no. At that point, and within 48 hours of contract signing, we decided enough was enough, and cancelled the invalid contract with her as it was not a contract under state law due to the above (and below) mistakes and misunderstandings.
Additionally, the brochure she handed us prior to contract signing included a photo of the upstairs «Copeland Room» with round wood tables, and a descriptive statement above the photo which read, «Upstairs in the Copeland Room, elegant wooden tables and magnificent views highlight another reception area at the lodge.» The Copeland Room was the room we were booking for our reception. When we spoke with the owner about how excited we were about these beautiful round tables, she informed us that it would be $ 500 extra for the use of these tables. This despite the round tables being clearly depicted both in photo and description as native to the Copeland Room.
After cancelling the contract with her, the next step was to file a dispute with the credit card company, but before doing so we called her in an attempt to amicably resolve this matter. Our first call/​voicemail was not returned. So we tried again the next day, were able to get her on the phone, made certain that we calmly and cordially explained our situation, why we expected our deposit back, and how we must protect our interests and would like to give her the opportunity to make things right. She laughed at my fiancé and told him that we would never win a dispute. This woman, the owner of Wild Basin, who had been so warm and gracious before contract signing, was no longer so once the contract was signed.
We did everything we could to make it work, but we recognized that if there was this much confusion and miscommunication within MINUTES of contract signing, that things were not likely to improve. The owner’s follow up communication justified our impression of her, which propelled us to cancel our date with Wild Basin. Wedding planning is already a stressful time for any couple, and we were very disheartened by the behavior of this establishment. We are now forced to pursue every available option in order to recoup our significant losses from Wild Basin.
fyi: READ THE FILTERED REVIEWS at the bottom of the Unilocal page. Unfortunately, there are additional reviews which will confirm this behavior.

So the thing about Wild Basin was that I felt like the front end of their customer services was great… the weeks leading up the wedding and the execution of the wedding left much to be desired. We really felt like the staff was trying to court us into hosting our wedding with them in the beginning of the process, telling us how stress free they would make it and how easy it would be to plan a wedding with them, and then we were pretty disappointed when the day of our wedding actually came and they were disorganized and pretty disinterested in doing what they promised they would.
One thing that we felt was a little difficult to deal with was that during the billing and invoicing process. When we received the first invoice there was a charge for a vendor meal, which we hadn’t requested, so we emailed to let them know. When the new invoice came it still had the vendor meal, so we emailed again. The third time the vendor meal showed up on the invoice, I called. Meanwhile our date to make the final payment was coming close, and since there were still some mistakes on the latest invoice, we didn’t quite know how much to pay, so I decided to overpay just to be sure. I explained via email why I was overpaying and got a reply from the owner asking pretty irately why we were overpaying the amount on our latest invoice– which was a little bit stressful for me because it felt like the organizer really didn’t take the time to read what I was trying to communicate. It added a lot of stress for me two weeks before the wedding.
During our tour and when discussing with Wild Basin’s Wedding Coordinator it was explained to us that the wedding captain’s job would be to make sure everyone would be where they needed to be at the right times and be our «line backer» so that we don’t get mobbed before or after the ceremony. This is far from what happened. After the wedding pictures I couldn’t find the wedding captain, and I was a little disappointed because we found ourselves having to do a lot of last minute herding of guests and bridal party. We didn’t know where to go, and kept getting mobbed by guests bothering us before the ceremony. As a result, right before the ceremony I couldn’t quite find everyone in the bridal party or get them to stand inside instead of lining up outside where the guests could see them all chatting and slumming with one another. When I finally found the wedding captain, she told me, «Well, they should already know where to congregate from the rehearsal.» This really upset me because we had set up a rehearsal on paper, which she should have known or at least she could have made herself available instead of just sitting in her office the entire time. By that time though it was time to do the ceremony so it was kind of too late. After the ceremony, our captain was again nowhere to be found, and we had to be mean to many guests and tell them it was our off limits time, as everyone was trying to stop us right after the ceremony to talk on our way up to the room for our private time. I couldn’t help feeling like if we were having a bigger wedding on a weekend when rates are higher, maybe they would have made good on their promises.
The reception hall was nice, except that there were some aspen arrangements they placed without conferring with us on the dividers between the eating area and the dance floor which made it really hard to see the people who were speaking. Our guests ended up moving these to the ground because it was kind of annoying trying to look beyond them. It was really weird and unprofessional.
So the honeymoon suite in the morning gave us probably the most discomfort. The skylight above the bed didn’t have a blind to close, so the light started shinning in above the bed I think around 6:30 or 7, so we really couldn’t sleep in. When we woke up the room was really cold. We tried to turn on the heat and discovered it was broken. Unfortunately my maid of honor couldn’t bring us our clothes after the wedding because the lodge locked at 8:30pm, so we couldn’t get up and walk around the grounds in the morning until people were up enough in the cabins that my husband could put on his tux pants and shirt and find our clothes without waking anyone. Meanwhile, we discovered the TV wasn’t working, so we sat for a few hours kind of cold and very tired without anything to do.
It wasn’t all bad. Our food was great and the bar tender was really friendly to guests. And of course the grounds are lovely. To top off our bad feelings about our experience though, they sent us an email offering us a gift card if we gave them five good reviews online. We took the opportunity instead to tell them about our negative experience and then they offered to pay us if we signed an agreement not to write any negative reviews (of course we didn’t take the offer) but it sort of made me realize maybe that may be part of the reason they get good reviews.

We got married there last weekend and everything was PERFECT! It was a totally stress free day for me. They had everything so under control that there wasn’t anything for me to worry about. They were so helpful and responsive to anything we needed. My grandfather (who is in a wheelchair) was very thankful to their staff. They made sure that everything was easy for him and my grandmother. In the months leading up to the wedding they were wonderful too. They always responded to my e-​mails within 24 hours, usually by the end of the day. They were so flexible and helpful. I could not imagine a more beautiful or professionally run facility.