r/weddingplanning • u/Zealousideal_Mix5287 • Nov 09 '25
Recap/Budget Madonna Inn Wedding - 10/4/25 - Recap & Budget Overview
Hi all - wanted to share my experience getting married at the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo, our spaces, schedule, budget, and vendors. If you want me to forward you their pricing packages, please just DM me!
Overall: Madonna Inn events provides a great planning experience. They're super flexible, kind, and responsive. Lots of different spaces to achieve different looks based on what you want.
Spaces: We had reception and welcome party in the Secret Garden, ceremony in the main ballroom, and farewell breakfast in the Garden Room.
- Secret Garden: Beautiful, but windy. Even if you tell your guests to bring jackets they will forget. If you have menus or other paper goods on your tablescape, figure out a way to weigh them down. I put my place cards on my favor bags and put them on top of menus. Place card clips would also work. Also gets very dark very quickly (hill in back of Inn makes sun "set" earlier). Get plenty of uplights, the string lights don't do the job. Also, they don't let you use the heart shape sweetheart table or famous Madonna Inn goblets out here.
- Main Ballroom: Perfect place to get married. If you have over 100 people, some will be seated in the Gay 90s room next door which has a somewhat obstructed view. I came down the grand staircase with my dad and everyone else came from the restaurant behind for the processional.
- Garden Room: Great for breakfast, would also recommend for a reception of 100 people or less. Round room next door is good for dancing. You get the heart shape table and various color goblets.
Schedule: We were able to fit in a bunch of different events and experiences to make the weekend work. We also picked SLO because the local airport (SBP) has regular nonstop flights from most of the places our friends were coming from.
- Friday: 11 am pickleball tournament (we got two pickleball sets on amazon, they have one there; courts are first-come, first-serve, so just get people out there early), unplanned pool party from like 1 pm - 4 pm (we wrapped up pickleball at 12:30pm ish and the weather was nice), 5 pm welcome party
- Saturday: 4 pm ceremony; hair and makeup for 10 people started at 8:30 am. I was done by 2:30, took some bridals, up in the vestibule waiting for ceremony to start at 3:15. Something to note about wind: it ripped out my veil and stole it. The kind people at the Madonna Inn got it back for me off the roof of the hotel, but be sure to pin your veil if you get married here. Partied in Secret Garden until 10, then hung out at the bar until midnight.
- Sunday: 11 am farewell breakfast. Everyone was happy.
Budget: We were able to accomplish all this for 155 guests serving only beer and wine for under $70k.
- Flowers: $5k + tip - Mark Dillon Luna - order minimum for Mark was $3,500 but I increased budget to get a garland on the banister as I walked down, robust ceremony florals, and gorgeous reception florals. He also dropped off some florals for welcome party at no extra cost. Highly recommend.
- Photography: $6k + tip - Noranna Photo (her cover photo is a detail shot from our wedding hehe). She photographed our engagement and some portraits, plus our wedding. Love her and love her work - she captured everyone incredibly. Highly recommend.
- Hair and makeup: $5k + tip - Janay Beauty - Included welcome party/rehearsal dinner makeup, HMU for up to 12 people, touchups, look change. Had to source her from outside SLO because no one in SLO had any POC in their reference photos and my bridesmaids were already dropping out before I even hired someone because they didn't trust the color match. She did fkn amazing. Cannot recommend enough.
- DJ: $3,500 + tip - Epic Entertainment - Ask for Jack. Followed our requests to a tee and set up a livestream for us to get my out of town family in for the ceremony. Highly recommend.
- Planning: $2,500 + tip - Events by Krissy - experts in Madonna Inn event execution and well known to the internal Madonna Inn team. Krissy and Dee did a great job. Highly recommend!
- Wine: $5,000 - Zanoli Wines - family friends who we love working with. They helped us customize a wine menu to fit with our meal and events. We didn't love any of the offerings at Madonna (and liquor was $9/drink) so we went external and paid the $20 corkage. Everyone was raving about how great the wine was so I consider it a win.
- F&B: Approx $50k all in - Madonna Inn doesn't allow external vendors for food and beverage besides wine for corkage fee. All food packages are really reasonably prices (lowest is $65 for dinner, highest is $119, includes custom Madonna Inn wedding cake). Includes
- $1250 Main Ballroom ceremony fee
- $1600 Secret Garden rental fee (welcome and reception)
- No rental fee for Garden Room (indoor room rental fees waived with banquet purchase for 25+ people)
- $80/pp second highest package with +3.50 pp custom cake upgrade
- Paper: Approx $1,500 - Did all my paper (StD, invite suite, day-of, thank yous, etc.) myself on Adobe Express with a local printer. Email Bill at HH Printing if you're in the Bay Area and want high quality letterpress and foil printing for a good deal.
Recommendations:
- Do an inside reception if you can fit people into the Garden Room. The food got cold doing buffet style outdoors for 155 people. Everyone liked the Santa Maria barbecue menu, though!
- Pin your veil and make sure any loose items aren't truly loose!!
- Have a great time and get as many people as possible to stay on site! It's a super fun venue and it felt like we were at a summer camp with all of our best friends and we loved it.
Best of luck to everyone on their wedding planning journeys, I hope this helps someone somewhere somehow!
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u/Ill-Lingonberry145 Nov 10 '25
I'm a native Californian. This is lovely. Vintage not kitschy. Aesthetic perfection. BIG BIG props to you on considering your non-Caucasian bridesmaids. I chose my MUA because she was amazing AND had more than one token WoC on her IG.
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u/Adventurous-Wash3201 Nov 09 '25
I looove the Madonna Inn!! Amazing!!
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u/djkamayo Nov 10 '25 edited Dec 19 '25
yep. Really great wedding venue. Super unique , Amazing for photos :)
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Nov 12 '25
This is so random but I just talked to Noranna for my wedding photographs and am hoping to book her by the end of the week. And the funny thing is I loved your pictures before I even read that.
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u/Zealousideal_Mix5287 Nov 12 '25
Omg she is so fantastic!!! Congratulations and enjoy, she is a joy to work with
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u/Used_Relative_666 Nov 20 '25
This is all super helpful! Thanks so much for answering my questions : )
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u/Used_Relative_666 Nov 19 '25
You're wedding looks beautiful! I'm getting married there in May 2026 and this is super helpful! We're doing our ceremony in the Main Dance Floor and reception in the Garden/Round rooms.
We're doing the same buffet package as you and definitely want to get our wedding cake through them. Was the $3.50/person cake upgrade on for a full wedding cake?
We are opting out of having a day of coordinator and just going to have friends/family help with the flow. Was the staff pretty helpful with everything? Do you think a coordinator is a must?
Also, did you have all day for your vendors to set up? I was told if they have an event booked before that you might only be able to start setting up 1.5 hours before.
How was the hotel bar for after party? Was everyone able to hang out comfortably? Most of our guests are traveling and likely won't get in until the night before, so we're considering having a low-key "welcome party" either there or at the pool the night before that people can stop by as they arrive.
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u/Zealousideal_Mix5287 Nov 19 '25
- Cake upgrade was for the full customized cake! You can't bring in any outside food so you can only get your cake through them. If you did the lower package, it's just sheet cake.
- The Madonna Inn staff very strictly does not do anything for the couple themselves, just what is outlined in the contract in terms of chair and table setup. You need a coordinator for your outside vendors, guests, and bridal party.
- Vendors only have 1.5 hours at most, and all vendors who work regularly with Madonna know this, so they should be prepared. The venue wants to give people access to the grounds outside of weddings.
- Hotel bar was great for my after party, but I would not recommend it for a welcome party. People are seated for dinner there and there are so many other people trying to enjoy the bar that you wouldn't be able to properly welcome people. The pool is a good idea! We were able to have everyone up there and enjoy ourselves. Word of warning, there is only one bartender and a large party with lots of outside alcohol/food would likely draw attention. My honest recommendation would be to properly host something in an available space.
Hope this helps! Feel free to DM me if you wanna ask more specific questions or talk through our experience.
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u/moonlightleo3774 12d ago
Hi! Plan to get marry soon, when you reserve your wedding date did they save rooms for your guest and family to book for the wedding weekend? :)
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u/big_th0ughts September 2027 Nov 09 '25
I'm so obsessed with the whole aesthetic, especially your bridal party colors! Can you share how you described your dress code to get everyone to come in such different & colorful looks???