The Edgewater House Reviews

The venue is absolutely gorgeous! We initially had our wedding scheduled for July of 2020. However, when the pandemic hit we had to postpone our wedding to June 2021. Johanna was extremely accommodating and made this process very easy. When communicating with with Johanna or Anna they always responded within 48 hours of us reaching out to them. On the day of our wedding, Anna was excellent about keeping us on schedule. The entire staff was warm, welcoming, and extremely attentive. As the evening began to cool off, staff provided blankets to guests. At no fault of the venue, there were a few hiccups with our wedding cakes and Anna was able to quickly come up with a solution. It has been a few weeks since we had our wedding at the Edgewater House and we continue to receive compliments about how excellent the food was and how beautiful the wedding was. We would highly recommend The Edgewater House if you are looking for a welcoming, picturesque venue. Thank you again Johanna, Anna, and friends!

Johanna was amazing and worked with us on what we envisioned. Everything went beautifully and there were no hiccups, even with last second changes! The venue was gorgeous and barely any decor was needed to make it fit with our colors and theme. Everyone still talks about! The staff was really helpful and nice to the guests, making the experience even better!

We had our wedding here in June 2017, and it was perfect! After finding the venue online, my fiance contacted them and secured a date, and we started planning. We live in Texas, but they were very accommodating and helped us plan almost everything over email and the phone. After putting down an initial deposit, they assigned Johanna to help us with coordinating everything, and she did an exceptional job. I was able to visit the location a few months before the wedding, and she showed me around the venue, and talked through everything. She helped provide us with an example timeline, answer questions about all the details, gave us a list of vendors they had used before, and helped answer all my questions. Close to the wedding, she helped wrangle in all the vendors that we had in our team. On the day of the wedding, everything went seamless, and it was a great event. We received numerous compliments from our guests on the venue.

The wedding team we assembled was:
Officiant: Lonnie Anderson
Cake: Celebrity Cake Studio
Photographer: Flourish Photography by Bree
Sound: Raines Media

I just wanted to let you know what a professional and fabulous job your staff did last weekend. I was the florist for the wedding on Sept 12th, 2015, I was super impressed by your venue and staff!!! GREAT JOB!!!

Johanna did an exceptional job working with my daughter and son-in-law for a memorable day. Marilyn was exceptionally gracious. The location was ideal, and the staff attention to detail great. Our guests had a truly wonderful time and the Edgewater is perfect for intimacy and charm. The only detail I would fix, if to do it over, was to arrange for more bar staff. The serving was too slow. Food was very good and the pace of the afternoon and evening perfect. The bridal party spent the night in the cottages and that added to the overall experience and celebration. Highly, highly recommend the Edgewater House.

We highly recommend The Edgewater House to all our friends and so does our families. From our wedding we have memories and memories that are deeply cherish by everyone. Every experience we had was perfect. We both absolutely loved our wedding!

Hi Brides and Grooms,
If you are still seeking for a waterfront beach wedding, The Edgewater House is going to be perfect. If your needs are romantic or you are having a large or small wedding, this is the perfect venue. We had our wedding here at this beautiful location. Everyone had so much fun and are still talking about it. I really wanted my family and friends to have the time of their lives as well. There was no awkward people just standing around.
That was one of my biggest fears. But until I found The Edgewater House, I know that this place would deal with all my worries. And it totally did. The day of the wedding. May gosh, when I showed up the tables and all the table settings were already being done and not by my family nor friends. Thanks to the amazing wedding planner that the venue offers, it was almost all done. I nor my wedding party had to do any of the set up. We renting the center pieces from the venue, which were so beautiful and way high end. The linens just sparkled in all the sunlight and in the evening everything was glowing! It took us a little less then a year to plan the wedding. me and my now HUSBAND really wanted it to be special and well thought out. We talked a lot about the wedding even down to the little details. Nothing was missed our planner was so organized and was so easy to contact. She set everything up for us. She had contacted all of the vendors and did all the hard work for us. She also had already worked with the vendors and had a good relationship with them. It made choosing vendors so easy. Because in the end you are not really sure who you are dealing with. But having a venue that has all the good ones already picked out is wonderful. I loved getting married and I LOVE being married.

Mr.and Mrs. Howard,
Thank The Edgewater House from the bottom of our hearts for such a beautiful memory. We could not have asked for a more beautiful life!

This was the PERFECT place for my husband and I to get married! Absolutely beautiful place overlooking the water over to Vashon Island. Marilyn and her staff were SO easy to work with and made us feel like roalty on our wedding day, making sure everything was taken care of! We even left the reception on a boat! :)

Our wedding was absolutely perfect!!! Johanna, our day of coordinator, was incredibly helpful throughout the entire planning process and was an amazing guide and advisor. The venue was absolutely breathtaking and set up perfectly. The food was delicious! People say you barely eat at your wedding but the staff brought us a plate of appetizers during the cocktail hour and brought our dinner to us so that we wouldn’t spill! We got to enjoy all the food that our guests raved about. The staff was helpful and professional from start to finish. Overall we can’t say enough good things about The Edgewater House! Thank you for making our wedding day everything we dreamed it could be.

Love the Edgewater House! All of my guests said that the venue was the perfect setting!

I could not have dreamt of a better wedding day! I imagined things would be crazy and hectic the day of. My experience was the complete opposite! I was 100% relaxed and Johanna was such a great help! Not to mention the breathe taking location! LOVE THIS PLACE!

This was the perfect place for my husband and myself. It was so beautiful, and perfect. The staff is amazing very helpful. It's not one of those heres the building will see you in 4 hrs.

The venue is a little pricey, but the location and service seemed worth it. we had a great time and the wedding went off without a hitch.

The setting of The Edgewater House is nothing short of phenomenal for a wedding. We had a lot of out of town guests who had never been to Washington before and they were blown away by the views, and a few guests said this was the most beautiful wedding venue they had ever seen. A huge plus for this venue is the privacy it offers. You have a private house, private yard, and private beach. Overall, I was thrilled with the venue and would choose it again in a heartbeat if I could.
There are a few drawbacks to consider before deciding. The layout doesn’t lend itself well to a rain plan. Ultimately, we had 98 guests, so our plan B was to hold the wedding and reception inside the house, but that’s not an option if you have 100+ guests. A tent is an option, but you need to rent it yourself. The transition from the parking lot at the top of the hill to the venue itself is a bit awkward. Guests have to be shuttled down in small groups, and I heard that it wasn’t seamless. Some parts of the contract were stricter than other venues we looked at (for example: 8 hrs are included with the base price, guest count due 30 days prior to event, large payments due 6 months in advance). One hiccup in our planning was the food tasting. I wanted/expected to have this happen early on, so we could nail down our food costs and include options in our invitation suite. We weren’t able to get a straight answer on the tasting before we designed our invitations, so decided to go with a buffet instead. To me, these were all minor quirks (nothing is completely perfect) and would absolutely recommend this venue to others. If you are looking for a private venue with a beautiful setting and view, this is it!

The Edgewater House is an absolutely beautiful place to get married and quite unique compared to the other options available in the Puget Sound area. Our wedding day went off without a hitch and we continue to hear from our guests how it was the most beautiful and fun wedding to which they've been. Marilyn and her team were professional and do a wonderful job keeping this looking beautiful during the busy wedding season.

With that said, there are a few things one should know if they're considering this venue. Like another reviewer mentioned, we were shocked at the jump in price from the verbal quote we received in June 2010 and the new quote we were given when we were finally able to book a date and put down our deposit 10 weeks later. By that time, our emotions were so invested in this venue that we decided to just splurge and cut back the budget for some of our other vendors. I don't regret our decision in the slightest, but the anxiety caused by the fact that we couldn't book a date until "sometime in August" and the price jump was very stressful and frustrating. Marilyn offered various other services that really completed the vision we had for our wedding (bonfire, fireworks, smores) but instead of including them in the already very expensive package, they were all extra. Just left me feeling kind of nickled and dimed.

Marilyn was responsive for the most part...calling her and leaving a message ended up being the best way to get a hold of her (versus the email tool on her website). Our other vendors didn't seem to have any major issues coordinating with her and from what I can tell she has good business relationships within the wedding industry. She seems to love what she does and clearly takes a lot of pride in her property. I would certainly recommend The Edgewater House to anyone looking for a beautiful, beach side wedding venue...just be sure you get a written quote and copy of the contract before you become emotionally invested.

My daughter’s wedding at the Edgewater was nothing shy of spectacular. The venue itself is truly what makes it so special. It’s located on a private beach on the Puget Sound with breathtaking views all around. The lawn is spacious and inviting, and the catered food from the venue was excellent.
I would give a rating of 5 for the setting, the rehearsal, and the wedding itself, but am posting a 3 because of the issues that arose during the course of the day and in the months prior to the wedding.
Johanna, the daughter of the owner of Edgewater, is the overseer of the venue , so if you have any issues with her, there is no-one else to reach out to. While she was as helpful as she could be, there was a lot of miscommunication on a regular basis. Little things added up. Reminding the kids a week before the wedding that they needed to apply for a state liquor license to serve drinks, for example, but mostly the clarity of the costs of the wedding. When we decided to do the “family style” dinner we were never told that there was going to be an additional charge for all the serving pieces they would need to rent to provide that. There was a lot of this, so you need to ask questions and follow up on every charge. It can be very overwhelming. Lastly, we paid for “professional” bartenders. What we got were young, pleasant, people who knew very little about bar tending. First, no ice was available, after getting ice they put it in glasses with their bare hands. Their preparation of mixed drinks was atrocious. People returned their drinks because they were way too strong. Pouring wine and serving beer was fine.
Most importantly, it has come to my attention that the Edgewater has some permitting issues with Kitsap County. I would advise following up with them before signing a contract with Edgewater.
The potential of this place is endless, and I feel like Johanna is so close to getting it right. For all the things that were so off, there was a lot that was good. She did a stellar job with our rehearsal, and was otherwise very pleasant to work with.

I had to move my event to another location because there was a permitting issue at Edgewater. Be sure to ask whether this has been fully sorted out before you book for a date.

At first I was really upset that they booked me at all, but I have come to accept that the whole thing was just a big mess. It would have been a gorgeous location. Sometimes communication turn around was slow, but Johanna was nice to me throughout. Also, although some people have complained about historic LGBT discrimination and I can't speak to those people's experiences, I felt like I was treated normally the whole time I was planning my polyamorous commitment ceremony; other potential vendors sometimes tripped up on verbiage or would mysteriously go from fully available to suddenly "not having the date free" in the same phone call once I explained our ceremony situation, but Johanna never acted like that.

The Edgewater House has not kept up with maintaining their permits in order to legally host weddings. There hasn’t been one since 2018 and yet they’ve continued to hold weddings on their property and continue still. We only found this out when trying to book other local vendors and were even told the county shut down a wedding there in July 2021. DURING the middle of the wedding. Johanna, the main contact, never divulged this information about the permits until we directly asked. It was a long process fighting to get our money back and thankfully we did. They are actively trying to obtain a new permit, but after what we learned I wouldn't guarantee that happening. Even if they do get a permit approved at some point, they’ve completely lost our trust with their lack of communication and overall unprofessional and deceptive manner in which they run a business. Save yourself the trouble and don't pursue them as your venue. They've now taken down their website now, but still advertise through other websites like this.

Our wedding at The Edgewater House was beautiful- the venue itself is amazing, and our day went off fabulously. Our guests were amazed at the locale, and the venue was spotless. Food was wonderful!

We payed additional to use the venues event planning and floral services- this was our mistake. Johanna, the venues coordinator, whom we upgraded to a wedding planner by spending an additional $1000, and an additional $1,300 for floral services was honestly a little difficult to work with. Johanna has a great grasp on the "pretty things", but she truly lacks the ability to conduct concise detailed communication- there were 2 instances within 1 week of the wedding she "forgot to tell us about", both of which involved charges for over $1,000 (the Edgewater House did pay for a portion of one of those mistakes). There were also several items the day of that she simply did not do that we requested, and she agreed to take care of- my officiant did not have a microphone, the children's gifts were not put out, and the alcohol was delivered to her, but she signed without taking inventory, so our wedding had no red wine, nor do it have the ingredients necessary for our signature cocktails (they were dedicated to passed loved ones..this missing hurt our heart quite a bit!). As I said, beautiful venue, but there were certainly some mistakes that cannot be forgiven, that was disappointing.

The venue is beautiful, but they do have some work to do with standard practices...it's a family owned venue, and is ran like one.

Neighbors for miles despise this venue. They are disruptive and cause significant noise issues weekly. Please don’t support a business that is this rude to their community - noise heard even across the water in another county.

This was a beautiful location. I booked the venue and signed the contract without my fiancé. I was told we could bring in our own catering and was given a quote. I sent my save the dates and paid the deposit. A couple months later I went to meet with the event planner (Who was an hr late) and received a bill that was twice the price of the original quote. It turned out I was mislead about the catering and you have to use their in house catering. After discussing how upset I was for being mislead, the vendor refused to refund my $2500 deposit. I would recommend going over every detail and price before signing.

We loved the wedding site but I should have realized from day one what we were getting into. We found the site via word of mouth and it is absolutely stunning. We went to visit April 2010 and fell in love with the site we were told at that time that she was not going to take reservations until the end of the summer being sept 1st because she wanted to get through her busy summer of weddings in 2010. At this time she had also told us the cost for the venue and had also said that she should have tables and chairs that would be apart of the price she quoted us by mouth. So when september came we called to go take another look at the venue and we decided this is the place. That night we asked what days she had open, she only had three Saturday's left in the summer of 2011, which I forgot to mentioned we called/emailed many times leading up to sept asking if we could put a deposit down. So it was frustrating to see she only had three days left. Out of the three days we really only had two days that would work so we decided on a certain day with her and then left. We spoke to her a few times on the phone and headed back out to give the deposit, when we went out she had given the date away and said someone had already given her the deposit for that day. Should ave been a huge red flag. So we decided we would pretty much go with the only day she had left and we gave her our deposit. The price she had quoted us almost doubled by this time as well nothing was in a contract form so we just went with it. About a month later we were on vacation and I get a call from Marilyn asking if we paid the deposit, I said yes (remember it's the only way you would save our date) she had cashed it a week after. Then it comes to the guest house she has two adorable guest cottages that all the bridesmaid were going to stay at the night before the wedding we rented one for the nigh before. I asked if we could have a certain one because I liked it better and we had already paid for one the night before the wedding, she told us she could not guarantee what house we would stay at. Which makes no sense at At all because we had already paid and our wedding was the next day. She also mentioned that the night of the wedding other people could be staying at the houses ( maybe people from the wedding that would be on Sunday) which does not seem right because she advertises you have free range of the property when you stay their. So long story short we ended renting both of them the night before and the night of the wedding even though we truly only wanted one for the night before. About a week before the wedding we had heard she had bought tables and chairs through a party rental store that does weddings at her place all the time. So my husband called to ask her and she said no that's not true. So we called party store to make sure our tables and chairs would be there and they said mariyln has them. So we call again and she said no (was this because she originally told us they would be included in the price). So we headed out to meet with her pay our final bill three days before the wedding, she was so unorganized had about 10 different papers with different quotes from the party rental store and another quote with just tables an chairs, with a lot of confusion we figured out and she finally old us the tables and chairs are coming from her and everything else linens and glasses etc will come from party rental store. So we pretty much just ucked it up wrote her a check and another to th party rental store. She then asked if we wanted the bonfire lite and the wedding and we said yes of course and she goes on to say that cost....she never told us this would cost to light the fire. It was one thing after another with her first time we went there she made it sound like we would have venue as late as we wanted, that guest houses were included with the price, that fireworks were included in price, that tables and chairs were included and that the cost was half of what it was. The final straw was that she requested that we be out of the guest houses sunday by 9am we didn't even want to rent them but did so we did not have random people in them the night of our wedding. In the sum of all of this the wedding was beautiful the site is truly amazing. She needs someone to run her business for her, I would not recommend the edgewaterhouse unless you want a huge headache

This place misrepresents itself and everything you get for the price. Was very surprised to get a bill for 4 times what we discussed. We cancelled and felt very taken advantage of. Make sure you read the contract very thoroughly and do not expect what they say they will deliver. Very disappointed in this place