Smokey Glen Farm Reviews

Smokey Glen Farm is the best!! Our event coordinator was Mark and he made sure everything was perfect on our big day. We will definitely continue to have all future events at Smokey Glen Farm.

Smokey Glen Farm was our first and only location that we visited for our wedding. The staff showed us around the grounds, went into depth on the details of the wedding/food/etc., and were overall amazing. Since booking a date, SGF has been responsive to all questions, emails, and comments. The food is also wonderful and being a bride with a food allergy, 90% of the menu I can enjoy! That is huge for me. I would highly recommend SGF if you are looking for a DIY, rustic, beautiful venue!

Smokey Glen Farm is a hidden gem in Gaithersburg. It is an amazing space with some fantastic BBQ. It is actually no charge for the rental space, you just need to use their BBQ for your event.

The Beef Brisket and Ribs are soooooo good. And their bar staff was so nice. Jim Green was the coordinator through Smokey Glen that worked with. He is very kind, sweet, caring and knowledgeable. He was instrumental in helping us make our day perfect.

We would highly recommend Smokey Glen Farm!!!

We were totally blown away by Smokey Glen's amazing service from start to finish and I just cannot believe the value we got for our money. The venue fee is less than $1000 and ultimately gets subtracted from your total contract amount, and for what you pay you also get to work with an event manager who will help you figure out all the logistics for your event. Our manager, Jim Green, was outstanding - very responsive, thought of every detail, extremely courteous, and very laid-back (despite being very detail oriented). Our guests loved the visual of seeing a whole hog being roasted in the courtyard before dinner, and people raved about the food (especially the roast pig and BBQ chicken). Also the setting was beautiful and fun, and every staff person who worked with us was extremely courteous and professional. I honestly cannot recommend Smokey Glen highly enough - HAVE YOUR WEDDING HERE. DO IT NOW.

We loved getting married at Smokey Glen. Ken Grundy was our event manager and did a great job helping us with details and giving us a realistic idea of what to expect. Our ceremony took place in the field behind the pavilion and the reception was in the pavilion. One of the best parts of Smokey Glen is that you can make your wedding as unique as you would like it to be or keep it simple and still have a great event. People loved the food, as well!

This is an unbelievable venue for a wedding! Over the past 14 months, we have been working with Smokey Glen Farm and Jim Green to plan a wedding. He and the staff have been nothing but exemplary to work with from start to finish. It all came together last weekend against all odds (rain, sleet and snow the weekend before) and turned out more beautiful and memorable than any of us even imagined.

The pavilions are "blank palettes" and with enough white Christmas lights and DIY table settings, the venue can be very intimate and magical at night and very unlike a traditional hotel or restaurant. Jim Green helped us make that happen by allowing us plenty of time to set up in advance and providing the ladders, etc. that we needed. The facilities were freshly painted, and everything looked great.

The outdoor settings for pictures are fantastic. It was too nippy to spend as much time as we have like outside, but the hills, the barn, the covered bridge, etc. provided great backdrops against a blue sky. Jim even set up a "bonfire" during cocktail hour per our prearranged request.

The other vendors for DJ and rentals which are coordinated through SGF were excellent and most accommodating. The food was delicious and piping hot throughout the buffet. The DJ was fantastic and kept the whole ceremony and reception on track--providing the mics in the upper pavilion for the ceremony, then setting up the sound system in the lower pavilion for the reception, and making announcements for each step of the reception.

The SGF staff was wonderful in helping us set up and clean up, as well as in packing up any extra food that guests wanted to take home. Thank you Jim and SGF staff for answering all our questions over the past many months, providing clear communication and guidance, doing everything you could to answer all our needs, and in short making a dream a reality.

My husband and I found Smokey Glen through a friend of a friend. He loves his barbecue and I love a good country feel (I'm from a small town!). As soon as we were engaged we set up a meeting with the owner who walked us through the property and talked about all of the amenities and services they would provide. Each event has their own coordinator, so thereafter I worked with one person from the farm. Ken was phenomenal, responsive, full of great ideas, flexible, and extremely professional.

Everyone is still raving over the food! I recommend this farm to anyone who wants that laid-back, farm type wedding with amazing food and service!

Smokey Glen Farm is an amazing location for a wedding. It sits on around 20 acres of beautiful, hilly woodland and used to be a working farm, so it has a lot of character - yet it's right in Gaithersburg and super convenient to the entire DC metro area. My husband and I were paying for our wedding ourselves and did not have an enormous budget, but wanted to avoid a generic hotel wedding - and fell in love with Smokey Glen. We needed to book 16 months out because it was so busy, but by having a November wedding we were able to get the entire 20-acre property to ourselves for the day.

The pavilion reception facility is indoors, heated, and has beautiful picture windows. NOTE: It is a complete blank canvas, so on the one hand, you can really make it your own - on the other hand, you really HAVE to decorate. Also, you will probably need to rent linens, table settings, etc., unless you want plastic chairs, tablecloths, knives and spoons. Not an issue, just a cost to factor in.

For the ceremony, we could choose ANYWHERE on the property the day of and they would just set up chairs there. This meant that if it was rainy (it was not - it was gorgeous) we had a build-in backup plan that did not cost any extra. Our ceremony site was magical.

There is mini-golf. At your wedding. Just THINK of the photo ops!

Jim Green, our event coordinator, is one of the nicest, most considerate, most detail-oriented people I have ever met. He worked very closely with us on all details (even/especially ones that didn't occur to us) to make sure that everything was seamless the day of. He stayed onsite the whole day to manage the staff, and he even made extra sure that my mother, who has trouble walking, was transported around the venue and had extra-comfortable seating so that she could be as pain-free as possible the whole day. He also gave us his honest opinions on which upgrades were and weren't worth it. I can't say enough good things about him.

The staff at Smokey Glen Farm is amazing. Their customer service is amazing. I absolutely loved this venue and I hope I can come up with a reason to use them again. The food is also really good and the pies are to die for.

I could not say enough positive things about Smokey Glen Farm and my event coordinator, Ken Grundy. Ken was so helpful and organized. He was willing to exchange as many emails as it would take to make sure we were on the same page and I was happy. We held our ceremony in Smokey Glen's Barn and the reception at their Pavilion. He allowed me and my family to visit the farm multiple times beforehand. He was so helpful. I even was able to go through him for all of my rentals (he was in contact with Smokey Glen's preferred vendor), but I appreciated that because it was one less contact I had to keep up with. If you are looking for a venue that will allow to you create a completely memorable experience, customize it in a way you want, and have absolutely fabulous BBQ, Smokey Glen is for you! Everyone had a great time and said it was the best wedding they've ever been to! Thank you Smokey Glen & Ken - I would not have changed A THING!

We were beyond happy with our experience at Smokey Glen Farm. Ken, our coordinator, was amazingly supportive. We were two vegetarians who had chosen a BBQ place, but the whole team at Smokey Glen worked with us to find a menu that left no one hungry. Working with Ken leading up to the big day was so easy--he had everything taken care of and was thinking about things we had completely overlooked. And for the big day, even with Hurricane Sandy making landfall, it was wonderful! The food was amazing--my biggest regret was not going for seconds on the baked beans. The staff was incredible--we hardly noticed them and yet tables were cleaned up immediately, chairs were brought out and taken down, etc. The view was beautiful--before the rain started we had a family of deer mulling about the open field.

And everything was unbelievably affordable! More brides and grooms need to know about this place! Before we found Smokey Glen we were genuinely wondering if we could afford the wedding we had hoped for and Smokey Glen really made it happen for us!

The staff at Smokey Glen is fantastic. They're incredibly responsive, pleasant, and are really a great resource. Our day was a resounding success and I give the staff at Smokey Glen a lot of the credit for that. Our event contact was really helpful, offering up suggestions and recommendations when we needed them (even when we didn't realize we needed them) and really putting my mind at ease every step of the way.

The food was outstanding, the venue is gorgeous, staff on the day of the event were friendly, helpful, and really a joy to have around. Truly an outstanding experience.

We were married in the barn at Smokey Glen Farm after we saw photos of the venue on a wedding blog. The ambiance was perfect, the staff was attentive, responsive, and professional, and the food was out-of-this-world good. Many of our guests said it was the best food they'd ever had at a wedding, and they all said it was the most fun they had ever had at a wedding. C'mon, what wedding has tetherball, mini golf, and horseshoes?! We worked with Ken as our event planner, and he was 100% responsive and flexible. I highly recommend Smokey Glen!

We had a wonderful experience with Smokey Glen and would highly recommend them as a wedding site and caterer! They provided so many amazing elements that made our wedding day exactly what we wanted:
- Venue: it was a beautiful pastoral setting for our ceremony, and the barn provided the perfect informal, non-pretentious ambience that we were looking for for our reception
- Food: the barbeque chicken and pulled pork as well as all of the side dishes, and pies for dessert were delicious, and all of our guests said how good everything tasted.
- Value: we tried to stay within a fairly strict budget for our wedding, and Smokey Glen fit the bill.

But the best quality of Smokey Glen was all of the event staff. We worked with Ken Grundy, and he made wedding planning so easy. He was always very responsive with all of our questions, went out of his way to meet with us in person multiple times, and was extremely organized and thought about every important detail along the way.

On the day of our wedding, Ken and the staff were so professional and made all of our guests feel welcome. They made my husband and I feel so much calmer throughout the day, and there was always someone checking up on each of us to make sure that we were comfortable and being taken care of - either with food, drinks, or even just a glass of water. Our wedding day was unseasonably hot, and at one point, one of the staff members pulled my husband into the back refrigerator to give him a few minutes of relief from the heat.

We love Smokey Glen and thank them so much for helping us have our perfect wedding!

Our wedding at Smokey Glen Farm was like a dream. Incredibly beautiful scenery, space galore and unforgettably delicious food that we still would like more of (nearly a year later!) at the most reasonable prices we could find anywhere in the DC area. We worked with Jim Green, which was a wonderful experience. He is professional, kind, knowledgeable and made every interaction easy and fun. Everyone was so impressed with him and the venue. We had a beautiful wedding and reception at SGF and couldn't have been happier with the location, food and service. Their BBQ is so delicious, and the pies were such a fun add on. People still talk about the food to this day.

This is a fun location to have a reception! The staff is warm and friendly and the food is delicious!! They are flexible and let decorate the way you'd like. Highly recommend!

We LOVED working with Smokey Glen and our guests all said they had a fantastic time. It is a fun atmosphere with delicious food at a great price. The staff were wonderful and so friendly. Couldn't have been a better choice for us!

We absolutely loved our wedding at Smokey Glen and couldn't have imagined doing it anywhere else. It was gorgeous, we had a lot of flexibility to do what we wanted and everything came together better than we could have hoped for.

The food was basic (as you expect at a BBQ venue) but very tasty, and guests seemed happy with it. Like another reviewer said, we signed a contract in 2013 and were warned prices would go up slightly, and were upset when we found out the bar prices had increased by A LOT. But when we brought this up, they were very understanding and gave us the price from the year before.

I would highly recommend this venue to others, with a few conditions - you need to really understand that it's a DIY space, and need to be prepared to do a fair bit of work to decorate it (or pay someone to do that, although in my mind that defeats the purpose of having a wedding at a site like this). You also need to know that although it's a great deal in terms of food/ booze/ facility rental costs (there is no facility rental, which is a great deal), you will spend way more in rental costs than you expect. I freaked out about that a few times. If you are on a budget, on top of the obvious things (food and booze) be sure to budget for chairs (two sets, one for ceremony, one for reception), plates, flatware, glassware, napkins, tablecloths, etc when comparing venue. They do have tables that we used, but the chairs they had available weren't photogenic and we didn't want to use disposable plates and cups. It added a lot to our budget and they only work with one vendor, so there's no wiggle room on rental rates. I wish I'd realized some of those costs up front to save me the stress later, but like I said, in the end we had an absolutely gorgeous day and an unforgettable wedding that so many of our guests complimented us on, including the venue specifically (so beautiful/ fun/ relaxed/ unique). We also loved that we had access to the site all day for set up.

PROS: Smokey glen provided us with a wonderful rustic atmosphere for our outdoor wedding. They cater tasty BBQ on site which helped to provide us with a very affordable wedding on their grounds. Their grounds are also well kept with plenty of areas to take photos. We had our ceremony and reception in the barn pavilion and we were able to pretty much decorate and furnish it any way we wanted. They communicated and responded within a reasonable time frame when needed. We got so many compliments from friends and family about the amazing time they had here - from the food to the games.

CONS: The only major issues we had was when we upgraded the side food items, it is described as a per person charge. The food is served buffet style and when they ran out of the upgraded food item, they did not provide us with anymore. They said that we were already given a certain amount that they estimated we would need based on the number of guests. We were a little bummed because we (the bride and groom) did not even get any :( The second issue is you have to order some items through their preferred vendors. Of the items we ordered through their vendor, they ran out of the silverware we wanted and gave us rusted white chairs for the ceremony.

Overall we had a wonderful wedding at Smokey Glen. The pros definitely outweighed the cons. We had the wedding we always wanted.

Overall, we were thrilled with our wedding at Smokey Glen. The grounds are gorgeous and it was the perfect setting for the rustic, laid-back wedding we were planning! Our event planner, Ken, was incredibly helpful and accommodating with our many many requests for updates and personal touches. Our guests were very impressed with the food (still raving about it!) and overall, we found it to be a great value in the otherwise incredibly expensive wedding industry. We would gladly recommend the venue for others! Worth mentioning- the venue is a blank canvas and with some creativity and decor, it can really be transformed into something special! Weddings are not their primary business and I did feel there were several times I was bringing up issues or following up on questions that a wedding/event planner should have been on top of or alerted us to. In the end, those things didn't matter much to us on our wedding day!

Honestly, I dont know how to say how impressed I am. (And I heard the same from several guests.) The Smokey Glen team, especially Ken Grundy, went out of their way to make the day special for us. The staff kept the place clean all night long. I expected us to do a lot of the clean up that night, but the staff did quite a bit.

If you like BBQ, comfort food, and an informal wedding, I'd highly recommend checking out Smokey Glen Farms in Gaithersburg.

I am very torn as to how to write this review but here it goes:
I signed the contract in January of 2013 for my wedding in April of 2014. I was told I would be subject to 2014 pricing. I was dumb and agreed to this. I was in love with the venue. Overall prices increased $6/person. I was shocked. I called them to fight this saying they had priced me out where I couldn't afford my wedding anymore. However, with the 2014 prices, I was outside of the cancellation window (which they had increased for 2014...before they needed 90 days notice and now it was 120 days) and I was told "You will have to pay us $18/person to cancel" Obviously having to pay $18/person would completely mess up any budget I would have to move my wedding to another venue. Every time I asked for a new quote there was some new charge on it that I had to fight them about. They charged me $75 to pour water in glasses. Their rental prices are outrageously high and it is sole source. They charge $22 a tablecloth. I specifically asked to have tables ready that Friday before; after asking the girls 6 times (I am not exaggerating) my family finally put 90% of the table clothes out. Then on the WEDDING DAY my husband asked 4 times to have the row of chairs (that would make the aisle) set up early. After waiting over 2 hours my parents and friends took it upon themselves to do it. Oh, and my older brother had to personally clear the aisle of any goose poop. Now, I will say the day of I couldn't believe all the compliments we got from guests and had quite a few say this was the best wedding they had ever been to. The grounds are beautiful and if you are looking for a casual, no frills country wedding...this is a perfect place. The food is phenomenal and I think the smell of it cooking helps set the mood as well. If I had it to do over again would I go there? No. But I have also talked to other brides who got married there and they all said it was a great experience.