"We celebrated our wedding at Hotel Santa Marta on 23 May 2026 and also stayed at the hotel. We chose a five-star venue specialising in weddings because we'd expected professional coordination and wanted to enjoy the preparations without having to supervise every detail ourselves.
The setting is beautiful, but the organisation was exhausting and ended with an extremely serious food-allergy incident.
The problems began with our first visit. We explained everything to Milena and left our contact details so we'd receive a proposal with the menus, prices and conditions. We never received the promised follow-up. We had to contact the hotel again and explain everything from the beginning to Sara, who then became our main coordinator.
Throughout the preparations, Sara's responses were often late, incomplete or contradictory. Some information appeared to relate to other weddings or events rather than ours. After calls and meetings, we repeatedly had to request written confirmation or prepare the summaries ourselves and ask the hotel to approve them.
We had to check almost everything. We were initially told that the room would cost €800, but the quotation showed €1,000. When we questioned it, Sara said it'd been a mistake and changed the price back to €800. The hotel also tried to apply a minimum of 80 menus that related to another event space, included a wine package we'd rejected and changed the conditions regarding music several times.
Only a few days before the wedding, Sara told us that our three-hour party would have to be reduced to two hours because we supposedly hadn't booked enough hotel rooms, but this condition had never been discussed before. After we complained, the three hours were reinstated. On the wedding day, it was even possible to add a fourth hour. The constant feeling was that everything began with a “no” and that we had to argue to recover conditions that had already been discussed.
There was also unnecessary stress regarding payment on the wedding day. My husband tried to pay the remaining balance in advance at reception, but he was told that he had to wait specifically for Sara. Later, just as he was supposed to leave for the ceremony, Sara appeared and insisted that the payment be dealt with immediately, adding pressure at one of the most inappropriate and sensitive moments of the day.
We also didn't receive the level of supervision we'd expected from a five-star wedding venue. During the reception, nobody guided us through the schedule or told us when we needed to move to the next part of the event, so delays accumulated. The first course was completely cold, and the fire alarm sounded for quite some time during the groom's speech.
However, the most serious incident happened during dinner.
Only ONE guest at our wedding had a severe seafood allergy. The hotel knew her name and table number, and the seating plan clearly stated “SEAFOOD ALLERGY.” We'd repeatedly confirmed with Sara and the hotel that she'd receive a special menu.
During the tasting, they also promised that she'd have a waiter personally assigned to her, responsible for supervising every dish served to her. That dedicated supervision never happened.
Despite all those assurances, she was served a dish that looked exactly like the lobster and prawn cannelloni served to the other guests. After she'd already eaten several bites, another waiter arrived with the actual special dish and told her that the previous plate had contained shellfish.
She panicked, left the table and made herself vomit because she was terrified of suffering a severe reaction. She couldn't eat or enjoy the rest of the wedding normally.
The hotel's handling of the incident was contradictory. The waiter who brought the special dish said that the previous plate had contained shellfish, while Sara and others told us that it hadn't. The hotel later acknowledged in writing that there'd been a “human error.”
Their subsequent response gave us the impression that, because our guest hadn't ultimately suffered a serious medical reaction, the incident wasn't considered especially significant.
For us, it was extremely significant. The only guest with a known food allergy had been identified in advance, had a confirmed special menu and was supposedly going to have a dedicated waiter. Despite all of that, she was served the wrong dish, had to make herself vomit and spent our wedding terrified that she might suffer a severe reaction.
I wouldn't recommend this hotel for a wedding, particularly to couples expecting reliable coordination or hosting guests with food allergies.
For months, we'd thought that the contradictions and coordination failures, beginning with our first contact with Milena and continuing during Sara's management of the wedding, were simply organisational problems. On our wedding day, we realised that the same disorganisation could also put someone's health at risk."
