Des Moines Heritage Center

The Des Moines Heritage Center is a beautiful venue! We are very happy overall. Sarah is great to work with. We had our ceremony in the event center, cocktail hour outside with a room flip and then reception in the event center. We used the Depot as a place for kids to hang out during cocktail hour. It would be well-suited as a getting ready room, but we didn't feel that it offered enough privacy. A rack was provided to hang up garment bags, but there are no hooks in the bathroom or anywhere else. The conference room with glass walls inside the Depot definitely detracts from the feel of the room. We were happy to have plenty of parking space in a location so close to the heart of East Village. The bride's room is very nice, and direct access to the restroom is very nice. The bridal party got their hair done in this room. We appreciated that the room remained locked during our ceremony and could be unlocked whenever we needed anything. We used the projector screens to display a photo slideshow. It was easy to connect a laptop to the built in AV system. We loved all the natural light in the room! Again, we are very happy overall!

We researched several venues for our wedding with a potential of 300 guests (ended up at 228). To budget for our wedding, it was important to balance venue cost with catering/bartending costs. They allowed us to hire Smokey D's for our wedding caterer as long as they could agree to their vendor agreement (no issues there) which helped us keep cost down while providing great food for our higher guest count. Catering and bartender cost for our wedding had a higher impact on overall budget than venue so we were able to balance that out. As an architect, I loved the Des Moines Heritage Center's clean, modern aesthetic adjacent to the historic brick building of the train depot. You can tell a lot of care went into the planning process and the venue was great the day of the wedding. Having the bridal room directly connected to the women's restroom was also nice - our makeup artist ended up setting up a table/chair in the women's restroom for added space/they liked the lighting while hair happened in the bridal room. Groomsmen were able to hide in the Train Depot during father-daughter first looks to avoid my future husband seeing me ahead of the first-look. Tim and Liz did a good job of accommodating and helping us with the wedding and were very flexible. Having helped a friend set-up their wedding previously, it was super nice that they took care of all set-up of the tables, chairs and most of the linens. That takes a long time to do and is super nice that they'll take care of it! Their wedding venue coordinator for floor plan layouts was very easy to work with and made that process go smoothly as well. The day of the wedding Tim and Liz helped direct confused delivery drivers for bagels/Jimmy John's to the correct places, added a couple tables outside because of the nice weather, did a small flip for us, and helped with some of the clean-up which we definitely didn't expect. They also allowed us to move all of our decorations to a storage area overnight to pick-up mid-day on Sunday instead of having to have every little thing in a vehicle Saturday night. Only require that gifts get taken out for obvious reasons. Minor things to note that could help with future wedding couple's planning-we didn't realize that they don't provide linens for tables where food will be served (buffet line, cake table, etc.) or for vendors. The website advertised linens, contract wasn't clear and it showed up in paperwork ~1-1.5 months prior. We ended up needing to purchase a couple linens for the DJ table/cake table. This made it a little confusing at clean-up when our families helping and we ended up losing one of our tablecloths because it's not clear to others whose white table cloths are whos. Luckily they were pretty inexpensive from Amazon. Lastly, storage overnight for clean-up the next day clean-up doesn't include refrigerator use. We ended up having to throw away our food leftovers because we were all staying at a hotel and didn't have a fridge big enough to accommodate the two catering trays leftover. If I had known that I probably would have made sure an in-town friend or bridesmaid could have taken them home. I'm very happy with our decision to have the wedding ceremony and reception at this location and loved the convenience near downtown hotels to allow guests a safe return back to their hotels after a fun night. The Des Moines Heritage Trust clearly puts a lot of work into the venue and making the day great for couples!