Grayson Teague
If you’re thinking about booking Carolina Grace for a wedding or any major event, please read this. I wish someone had written a review like this before we booked, because it would have saved us from an experience we can never redo. To start with what went right: the bar staff and the inside chef were fantastic. These are third-party vendors that Carolina Grace requires you to use, and they were the only truly professional part of the night. They were kind, organized, and did their jobs exactly the way you’d hope. They are not the problem here. Everything that Carolina Grace themselves were responsible for was a completely different story. After paying our non-refundable deposit, we started discovering things we were never told upfront - like the additional 18–20 percent service charge that gets added on top of everything, and the fact that the bar menus on their website were completely outdated, with real prices almost double what was shown. At that point we were locked in, so we tried to stay positive. But our wedding day was where the real issues began. When we boarded, nothing was set up. No tables. No chairs. We had been told the boat had 12 tables, and we even paid for an additional one. When we got there, there were only 6. Our own coordinator and our family ended up setting up the tables and chairs because no one from the Carolina Grace team was doing it. The crew even had to run to the warehouse during our wedding to grab more tables. We sat at the dock for almost 40 minutes while the captain worked on generator problems they had been dealing with earlier in the day. When we finally left, part of the boat lost power. Most of the crew vanished because they were working on the boat instead of working the event. None of the promised setup, breakdown, or cocktail-hour reset ever happened. The entire event staff from Carolina Grace was basically unavailable the whole night. At the end of the charter, the captain apologized and told us not to stress about gathering our things. He assured us that our belongings would be kept together and safe, and we could call anytime to pick them up. After the chaos of the night, we really appreciated that - or at least we thought we did. When we arrived the next day to pick everything up, we were shocked. All of the leftover food we paid for was gone - taken home by staff. On top of that, our wedding flowers in glass vases had been left sitting on the bar, and several had blown over and shattered across the deck. Seeing that the day after our wedding was genuinely heartbreaking. After everything that went wrong, instead of taking responsibility or offering any real solution, Carolina Grace told us they would only even talk about what happened after we paid the remaining charges in full. No acknowledgment. No accountability. Just pressure to send more money first. This wasn’t one small mistake or miscommunication. This was a complete collapse of preparation, coordination, and professionalism. And based on what we were told by their own crew, these issues were happening long before we stepped onto the boat. The bar staff and inside chef deserve praise. They were wonderful. But the rest of our experience with Carolina Grace was one of the biggest letdowns of our lives. Please, for your own peace of mind, do not risk your wedding or any important event here. A wedding is something you can’t get back, and the level of disorganization we experienced was shocking. There are plenty of reliable venues - you don’t need to gamble your once-in-a-lifetime day on this one.
