Briar Patch Bed & Breakfast Inn

We couldn’t have picked a better venue for our wedding! Briar patch itself is stunning, with gorgeous views and a beautiful main hall (Gold Fox room) and Patio. Our guests couldn’t stop raving about the atmosphere. The breakfast served by the hosts was good, and they were really accommodating when we had a last minute request of having only vegetarian food. We’ll forever cherish the memories made here!

We reserved the Briar Patch under their wedding package - an entire weekend with full access to the property for our friends and family. Im not even quite sure where to begin because there were just so many amazing positive aspects of this event. Dan and Ellen were the EASIEST people to work with. It was so laid back and easy-going to work with them and they took the stress out of everything. There are so many options available when hosting a wedding at this location. inside, outside, plans B, C, and D. Having our families and best friends there to get to know each other and spend time together for the whole weekend was just so special. We had the rehearsal dinner by the pool under sparkling tree lights and hillside breezes. The wedding ceremony was to be held on the upper hill, but rain made us pivot and we had the ceremony inside their beautiful fox den hall by a gorgeous stone fireplace. The grounds at Briar Patch were just perfect. Large patios for our s'mores bar and outside beverages, cozy dance floor and gathering spaces. Breakfast was provided both mornings by Dan's brother, who made from-scratch delights both mornings. The bedrooms were nicely appointed, private and comfortable. Having our wedding the Briar Patch was the best decision we ever made (besides marrying each other). We HIGHLY recommend you to host your wedding at the Briar Patch!!!!

We loved our stay at the Briar Patch and are strongly considering another stay this fall. We stayed in the Cottage, and it was a perfect wine weekend getaway. The heat worked wonderfully in December, the kitchen was large and well equipped, and the bathtub was wonderful. It was a cozy but spacious place to curl up in the evenings with a bottle or two of wine after spending the day out and about. There are at least 3 wineries within a 5 minute drive and more than I could count within a 20 minute radius. We were personally able to walk to both 50 West and Chrysallis from Briar Patch, but that may not be for everyone. Middleburg is a short drive down the road. I only corresponded with the owners over phone and email, since Dan was recovering from surgery, but they were pleasant and helpful in those exchanges. Dan's brother stayed at the property to take care of us during our visit, and he could not have been nicer. We were very happy with the breakfasts he prepared during our stay.

What a quaint and beautiful property. The pool was amazing and our room, the Rooster room was perfect for our needs. The Chicken Coop would be so fun to rent out with a few couple friends, but we still have our own privacy. The owner's are very sweet and do everything possible to make you feel welcome and cared for. We had some dietary needs and they were met, with no complaining or making us feel bad. We are looking forward to staying again, great location to many tourist attractions in the DC area as well as delicious vineyards and restaurants all around!

Key Points: This is a decent property that is poorly maintained. Facilities are warm and homey. The cleanliness is problematic: dirty window sills, dirty sheets on a pullout couch. The property is vastly understaffed: 1 person serving the entire property. The food looked like a day-old supermarket purchase. We won't be returning. The resulting vibe felt much more like couch surfing than a $300-a-night splurge. Facts: We waited an hour to find a staffer after arriving at 5pm. Couldn't unpack bags or do anything, while we walked around, waiting, and looked for this person. The Entry room was covered in bed sheets and pillow sheets, being dried. The pullout bed in our suits had somebody else's old bed sheet on it, hairs and everything. The breakfast was a day-old quiche. It was in a supermarket disposable tin pan, which HAD PRIOR SLICES cut out of it, which the staffer offered to heat up for us. So at least a day old. We were the first people to breakfast, promptly at 9am. Nobody else was eating quiche. Speculation: I can only suppose this is in an effort to expand their margins. I can't remember the last time I stayed in a place that didn't have professional cleaning and was provided old supermarket food. Our experience was nothing like the high-rating reviews. I suspect that for weddings, there are a large number of *professional* 3rd party hospitality vendors on hand. And this is the key -- that great staff make a great hospitality experience. And I have a feeling that the "regular rentals" will have the understaffed and disappointing experience that we did. Solutions: Other bed and breakfasts, hotels, and places that we stay tend to use - Professional cleaners - Food service professionals - A receptionist on duty, especially during normal check-in times on the weekend.

I don’t have adequate words to describe how truly disappointing our experience at Briar Patch was. Luckily, we had other amazing vendors who made our wedding amazing & compensated for the extremely poor quality of the venue we paid for. For starters, the place is wildly unclean and not kept up with whatsoever. The owners are rude & snarky when you ask for anything at all. We asked that handprints be cleaned off of dirty windows in the ceremony space & was then called OCD by the owner (see emails below for some horrifying responses from the owners). We quickly realized that the windows were the least of our problems when we went through or guestrooms the week of the wedding, and found that there was a stink bug infestation. There were so many stink bugs that when my little sister tried to use the iron in a closet, they crawled out of the iron. Then, another wedding party guest opened up a towel to shower, and five stink bugs, fell out and crawled on her legs. In the hill house, every single drawer and cabinet had mouse poop in it. There was a mouse nest in the kitchen cabinet. My mom and I cleaned mice poop out of that spot of the venue for 2 hours. Every room, bathroom, and reception space on the property is extremely filthy. When I confronted the owner about the stink bug, infestation and asked for help to clean them up, he bluntly said “it’s called a vacuum.” There was zero cleaning done prior to our arrival with our guests, so my mother & I spent 3 days leading up to the wedding scrubbing the walls of the reception hall, vacuuming up 400+ stink bugs, spraying a stink bug deterrent on the windows of the guest houses, and replacing shower curtains that were covered in pink mold. These are things the owners should have taken care of themselves. Particularly the stink bug infestation — to reiterate how bad this problem was, we had to clean behind every picture frame hung on the walls of the main house because there were 20+ bugs behind each one. Dan, married to owner Ellen, was on site all weekend and couldn’t be bothered to clean up the rotten food that he left in the kitchen sink. This is a communal space for wedding party to get ready and eat breakfasts together, but nobody wanted to be in the space because there were bugs flying around the dirty sink and the smell was horrendous. Dan’s desk is absolutely filthy and disheveled, conveniently it’s located right where guests walk in through to get to their rooms. This should’ve been our first red flag of just how messy and gross this place would be. Dan also showed up in our reception after being rude to my mother and other wedding party members all weekend, and makes himself a plate. It’s convenient that he can come eat free food off us after he did NOTHING to prepare his disgusting venue for the weekend and treated his customers horribly (again, see emails below). You will be treated poorly & ridiculed for asking for basic cleanliness if you book here. Run away like your hair’s on fire. I will