Summer Series - Reserve At Cottonwood Creek

Transcript

Welcome to Coffee Talk Summer Series, all about local venues.

I'm Sarah. And I'm T.J.

Happy Talk.

Summer Series is a podcast about venues in the Bryan, Texas, area.

Our onsite visits will give you a visual look at the venues

along with meeting the staff member,

hearing about what they can offer and information on how to book them.

Each venue offers a unique aspect to any event you might be hosting.

Each week, we're here to share, educate

and enlighten with what is available to you in your area.

Welcome

Today we're at the reserve

at Cottonwood Creek with Rosa.

Nice to meet you.

That's it.

That's it. That's all I got. Okay. Okay.

We're here.

The outside of the property.

Tell us a little bit about

your property.

Well, we're just under nine acres We've been open just a year in May.

And we have a nice little outdoor chapel which is behind me

where some people choose to have their wedding ceremony.

And this beautiful fountain for pictures you can drive in with on a car

through this little alleyway and be dropped off, like in an antique car.

Or possible horse and carriage.

And it's just nestled in this nice, shady trees

that, you know, it's never been developed prior to to us.

And so how many if somebody was going

to have a ceremony out here, how many seats we can seat up to?

250, possibly a little more if we tear down a tree.

But we don't want to do that.

Relocate the tree.

Absolutely. Yeah.

That's awesome.

It's really pretty.

We're all about trying to keep things as natural as possible and but still

giving show and its beauty, you know, here in the middle of downtown. So.

So as far as the acreage goes, how much of this did you guys start with?

Did you start with the building that's up front and then expand upon here?

We started with just the land by itself, and that was around close to seven acres.

So what we started out with was just land.

It was the parking lot area which was already cleared and then this wooded area.

And initially we were going to build something

from scratch but then we were presented

with the opportunity to purchase the building next door

and the little cottage and the cottage we used as a bridal cottage.

So it's an entire house that the bride and her party gets for the entire day.

So it's really nice because they can keep their things in there.

They have a kitchen,

a living room, a little breakfast area where they can have brunch and just relax.

And then there's of course, there's a dressing room with seven vanities.

So it's really nice for them. Vanities.

Yeah, it's

really nice for them to hang out and just have the whole place to themselves.

So I'm sure I know seven people to be a bridesmaid at.

You know, sometimes it's not enough.

Why it gets it gets busy in there.

And it's not just bridesmaids.

But, you know, the mother of the bride,

mother of the groom, friends, makeup artists, hairdressers come in there.

It's it's crazy in there, but it's fun to be

put in a keycode lock on the door, make sure nobody can get.

Yeah, exactly.

So and then the ballroom was just an industrial metal warehouse.

It was very, very primitive.

And my husband had this amazing vision and got with an architect,

and we made something a lot more beautiful. So.

So that was going to be my next question.

So why did you guys decide to do a venue?

You know, I really don't know.

This idea was it was probably my husband's.

We know nothing about the wedding business.

We didn't. We have learned a whole lot. Yeah.

But you know, you know, now I was a nurse.

I'm still a nurse.

And my husband, we own a four covering company right down the street.

And the school I worked out was less than a mile from here.

And he's less than a mile from here.

So we thought, oh, that's easy, you know?

And we love to host people.

It's it's amazing to be able to be a part of it.

Plus, watch it.

I mean, it gives you a lot of joy,

you know?

So I don't know, we just really wanted something

in the middle of downtown Brian that had parking and had space

and a place for not just weddings, but we have Christmas parties,

we have retirement parties, sorority events,

political things, just a place in downtown, Brian, where people can,

you know, gather and celebrate and with space

and parking and and enjoy this natural beauty.

I like that. It's in downtown brand.

It's so close to everything, but it doesn't feel so.

You can't let me down.

I was just thinking that, like, what you do from a train

to downtown Brian, that's just

doesn't matter where you live and you have six, actually.

Yeah. Yeah.

So how many people do you what's the the largest event you guys have hosted?

Well, our capacity is like three 80.

We've been at, like, three 50.

Okay, that's good to know.

And what's really nice

is because we're close into town, you're close to hotels, restaurants.

It's somebody forget something and you're like within minutes of

going to grab it at a local store or, you know, what

have you, you're not having to drive, you know, a long way.

So that's, that's the beauty of that.

I like it in your book.

And I was like, Oh, this is awesome.

And I thought, yeah.

So are there anything for you as far as outside events?

Is there anything that's off-Limits that you don't allow?

We have to be careful because we're in the city with fireworks.

Of course, we have allowed sparklers that a fire marshal was present

and there's some extensive like, you know, not paperwork,

but the planner has to be there.

They're there has to be a, um, choreographed kind of thing

with instructions and things. Yeah, exactly.

As far as nothing not allowed, I allow dogs

because I'm a pet lover myself.

But no, I'm not anything else.

That's

probably no open fires.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah.

I would think like the common sense stuff.

Just regular city ordinances.

Yeah.

Okay, so wait, so you just said event planner.

So what services do you guys provide?

Is the venue where the venue like the building manager

I do for weddings require a day of coordinator or planner

or just something somebody

that's going to be able to facilitate what the bride wants.

And we're not planner, so, you know, we don't get to know

the right as well as a and stay up for date or planner work.

So I do require that.

But we we're here two or three of us staff are here the entire time

to make sure everything's clean and stays intact

and checking to make sure there's not anything the wedding planner

needs or anything so any needs that aren't being met.

And so, you know, we're here

the entire time watching the building, making sure everything's cool and clean

and they're not breaking fire safety coach.

Exactly. She's like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I like the behind the scenes

that no one wants to know about is pay attention to the front of it.

Yeah.

So you want to walk inside?

I guess I saw that chandelier. I'm ready.

Yeah, I feel

and welcome to our ballroom.

I love it.

It's pretty chandelier.

So it's so cute.

We need these.

So what do y'all provide in house?

I noticed obviously you have chairs and tables.

Is that what y'all keep in?

How we do?

We keep we keep goldfish of our chairs.

We have 400 and tables to accommodate up to 400.

And we set up and tear down the tables

and you're able to do on layout online on all sitcom.

And so we get with our clients at least a couple of weeks

before to try to get an idea of what they're how they want their floor plan.

So we can get that ready for them

and they're able to help and work with us in setting up their for plan like they

would like.

And then we have rectangle tables you know, several of those

to help accommodate caterers, gift tables, things like that.

We also have cocktail tables, which are the high bar top tables

where sometimes people will lay out here in front of the bar.

So sometimes it's quieter over here if the music's down that way.

And then people can just kind of hang out and talk and have a cocktail.

Also, the cocktail tables come in, in handy outside because it's

sometimes it's really pretty outside when it gets late at night.

And so I'll show you that Astroturf area and a little bit Astroturf.

So if somebody wanted to do like family style seating

with six by 30 plus, could

they bring those in? Yeah, absolutely.

Whatever they you said you had a few of them. That I did.

Yeah.

We don't have enough to accommodate, you know, 380.

So but we do have some

Brian Esty school events coming up this summer.

We recently did their retirement ceremony, which was so cool to be a part of.

I was I worked at Brian last year.

I was a nurse for them.

And so after that I had some Brian

Esty employees reach out to me about having retreats here.

It's just kind of like a neat idea for them to get out of the school setting

and they're able to be somewhere else, go outside if they'd like tea.

So they're having some training this summer here, so I'm excited about that.

And then we do host corporate events as well, such

as this retreats and Christmas parties and things like that. So

would Charles policy on catering,

as long as they're a licensed caterer, you know, all their insurance

and health departments required, fulfilled that are fulfilled.

There's not a caterer that I won't work with just as long as they're insured

and they have their proper inspections from the health department.

So who we are seeing as far as caterers go, who's been in here the most?

Puppies. We love puppies.

They're great.

Well, good they do a lot of wedding catering.

Yes, they do. They do.

But we recently had one with five girls, and I thought that was pretty cool

because I didn't know they did catering and everybody said it was delicious.

So I love anything local.

That's what we're working on right now

is finding those abnormal, I guess you would say, caters.

I don't know if they're abnormal or not.

Because I've only been in this business a year, but Napa Flats, they do catering

and they're great and we love to eat at Napa Flats.

We go there at least once a week.

So yeah, we have them do some of our office stuff yes.

We have a great I do like that.

They have the mobile people pizza oven.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So we've come across some really great caterers.

We even before

our ballroom was open, we even hosted a 50th birthday party

for a friend of ours and they did it around the fountain

and they had a taco truck like parked there on that little walkway.

So that was kind of cool

because people would walk up and order their food

and the seating was all around the fountain.

We also did a green dunk around the fountain

so it was like dunk a ring around the fountain or something like that.

That was really cute.

So yeah, it's okay. Cool.

Do a lot of fun stuff out here. Yeah.

And here's our bar area we actually didn't

finish this ball bar area too, like early fall.

It was kind of a little bit after we opened, but it turned out beautiful.

That's nice. It's nice.

Yeah.

Well, and then so we didn't forget about the guys,

so they have a nice little kind of man cave that they can hang out.

And it's conveniently close to the bar for like right here.

You can be perfect

for like a breakout room if you were having,

you know, a big meeting over there and the exact place.

And whenever I have had like events where it's not a wedding,

you know, like the people coordinating will set their things in here.

It's kind of a place and there's a full restroom and shower in here.

So like if they've been here decorating all day,

they're able to kind of freshen up in that rest area. So

yeah, we so

we have a vineyard out there and it was, oh, well, come on,

if y'all want to learn research with me on how to make wine.

So what kind of grapes are there?

You know,

their why they are black Spanish maybe.

I hate to say black Spanish and it's not.

I know there's a brilliant one called Brilliance.

I planted two kinds back I don't remember anymore

and I don't know which one is what, because we didn't have great slasher.

This is our first year that we're going to have grapes, so.

But yeah, whatever, we'll find out what's your take?

Different colors or anything.

Yeah, but they're specially for, like, roses

as like, uh, roses and jellies.

So I guess this house is 101 years old.

We call it the Century House.

For the last year it was a hundred, but it was on the property and

and we did a little bit of, you know, spikey in up to it.

Yeah. And, but it's just, I love coming here.

I'm here

sometimes during the summer, like just

we just hang out here because it's so comfy here.

So you have this cool dining area, we can have brunch,

and then I meet with clients in here, potential clients

well, thank you so much.

Beautiful piece of property.

We really appreciate you taking time out today.

Um, do you have anything you want to add?

Yeah, hopefully we can have a Christmas party. Absolutely.

I believe it. Let me know.

Appreciate y'all contacting me.

And I'm.

I'm just so proud to be able to show this off to everyone,

and I hope somebody gets the chance to come out here and enjoy it soon.

And if you don't think you can run a venue, you can run a bit.

Yeah,

bye bye.

Thanks for joining us this week on Coffee Talk Summer Series.

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and if there's a local space we should check out.

I'm Sarah.

And I'm T.J. Thanks for listening.

Summer Series - Reserve At Cottonwood Creek

Rosa Villanueva

Sarah Chrastecky

Tracy "TJ" Hefti

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