Dining Solutions at Wicker Park

Totally worth it! You 100% must get a Day of Coordinator. Venue is absolutely beautiful! My husband is from Northwest Indiana and I'm from the Chicago suburbs - this was a great spot that was easy to get to for both sides (and SIGNIFICANTLY less expensive than Chicago). We highly recommend you book here, but there are a few things you have to know before: The management is pretty bad - and that's putting it kindly. - I had to repeat my order for food/requests for the day at least four or five times because Kat's organization is pretty trash. -As we were going through our final walkthrough, Kat asked me everything we wanted, I read from an email I had sent to her months earlier and she still acted surprised (and got it wrong). - During the final walkthrough, Kat said they would put flowers in the planters outside. I could just tell she was lying when she said it, and I was right - there were no flowers in the planters. -Not a huge deal, but the served the wrong ice cream. -Bigger deal was that the food is pretty bad, but it's all about what your priorities are - food at a wedding is pretty much always bad. -Kat is really unresponsive, but we just kept telling ourselves "We need her, more than she needs us." -After our final walkthrough, Kat sent us home with the layout of the reception room, but didn't put numbers on the table icons. I knew it would be a problem, but I just hoped for the best. A week before, I sent her a note with our layout, I added the table numbers and assignments and copied our day of coordinator (you HAVE to get a day of coordinator unless you want your wedding day to be dealing with Kat's disasters). The day of the wedding (like she had never looked at the email I sent her until that morning), she had directed the team to set up the tables according to a different number system and the whole thing needed to be fussed with. Luckily our day of coordinator (again you need a day of coordinator) resolved it with Kat. About half an hour before we're going to walk down the aisle Kat comes to find me (I'm not hard to find in a big white dress) and tells me: "don't worry, I solved the tables and we're not going to charge you for it. We're supposed to charge you for it, but I won't." Not only was that not correct, but pretty unprofessional to find the bride before she walks down the aisle to tell her some drama. I just said: Okay. (I wasn't going to let her ruin my day). - The two days before the wedding, we had added three meals to our order (RSVP timelines aren't followed, it happens). We hadn't seen the additional invoice they sent the day before the wedding, and I should have, but we were at our rehearsal dinner. I just figured we'd pay the following week or after the wedding. Instead, at 1am after the wedding was over, they were pretty rude to my dad making sure he squared up before we left. Which is fine, I get that's probably their policy, just be prepared that you could have already paid like $12K and they'll hunt you down for the last $200 that night. It could have been that they thought we were going to skip because I think it got pretty heated between our day of coordinator and Kat. - there's more Kat got wrong, but you get it at this point. I know this review reads like the venue is trash. It's not - it's beautiful, it's amazing! But Kat is really terrible at her job and if you're booking with Dining Solutions, get a day of coordinator unless you want your wedding to be ruined.