Botanic Sanctuary Antwerp - The Leading Hotels of the World

We had our wedding at Botanic Sanctuary. We had the most beautiful day- location, flowers, table decor, elegance, chapel… so many of our guests told us it’s the most beautiful wedding they’ve ever been to. Yet it was particularly painful getting to that place and especially the aftermath of our wedding. We had 4 different event coordinators, as a result having to repeat our wishes, concerns, and requests throughout the process. Little/no pictures to show previous weddings (of food, table decor, visuals…). Severe miscommunication about lighting options. Also, poor airconditioning (Amaryllis room). No service, extras or favours that go unbilled- about a dozen name cards for during our ceremony were charged, a small salty snack for a handful of people in between was impossible, maitre leaving rather early, valet parking for our ceremony car for an hour was extremely difficult to arrange, no one taking charge of timing during reception…Didn’t feel like they wanted to take a weight off our shoulders at any point. We had returning party crashes who we ourselves kicked out. Saw our guests clean up broken glass due to lack of staff during the later hours. Seeing we had a 160 guests who all consumed a 3-course meal we expected more… Great food besides small portions! We had rented a separate secure room, initially a bad weather option for our reception, used to keep our personal belongings and wedding gifts for the night. This room was only to be entered with a wedding staff member (badge access) and one close family member. At the end of the night we picked our stuff up to take it home. We found the gift box in a corner on the floor. After opening our wedding cards gift box, we notice that envelopes have been opened, disappeared and clear traces of money being taken out. We had dozens of envelopes stolen (cards, cash, cheques…)! Upon confrontation with the hotel, they told us they would ask staff and look at the camera footage. It took them emails, phone calls and days to get back, to then conclude they don’t have any camera footage because there are no cameras! We finally asked for a meeting with our event coordinator, maitre and manager. They got pictures of our wedding, which we didn’t have yet ourselves and used a family photo to try to corner us and ‘prove’ mislocation of our gift box in the background- this was false information, extremely unprofessional, let alone invasive to our privacy of photos/guests. They told us most guests book a hotel room with a safe to keep their belongings. Avid on not taking any accountability, they told us that the terms and conditions state that they are not to be held responsible for theft. Turns out that secure room was used by all sorts of staff/cleaning personele and wasn’t always locked. After a long talk, we came to a ‘solution’- a fraction of our final payment was let go and we received a night in the diamond suite. We booked the night soon after and were not given the diamond suite and the room smelled poorly… needless to say this left an extremely sour taste in our mouth. Beautiful spa facilities though, would come back for that. The most stressful part of our whole wedding process was the communication before, during and after our wedding with Botanic. Sadly this is part of the story of how our wedding party went, and always pops up when people ask about our wedding… Thankfully you only get married once!

Connecting a mixture of old buildings through greenhouse-like hallways full of tropical plants, the hotel creates a feeling of grandeur. The staff, dressed peaky-blinders style, is very forthcoming and abundant. The standard rooms are relatively small, but contain all necessities including a desk. Location is quite ok, just outside of the touristic center.