Hotel Winneshiek

the opera house. The Hotel provides bar service as well. Venue specifics: The hotel is gorgeous. It’s really a stunning spot and they provide dishes, glassware, table cloths, etc. for you without extra fees –and let us bring in additional décor to set up ourselves. They’ve done tons of weddings and have a good idea of what tends to work in terms of layout, etc., so you’re not completely on your own there. The hotel rooms are well kept and comfortable. The bar service was good and very customizable – and the prices are very reasonable. Definitely ask about batch cocktails (they made two for us, a margarita and a Manhattan which really turned out great!). In terms of communication & setup, we were happy with the information we were provided and the general timeline on responses. We booked the venue about a year and a half before the wedding, so planning and communication wasn’t rushed until we were in crunch time (and that was just because we had some last minute changes and questions, which they accommodated). Whole-hotel rental specific details: We chose to book the entire hotel – all 34 rooms, the opera house, lobby, and breakfast room – for two days, which allowed us to have our wedding reception last until just after midnight on New Year’s Eve (without the buyout, the reception would have needed to end by 11pm). This was a REALLY good choice and ended up being one of our favorite things about the entire wedding – it allowed us tons of time the day prior and the morning after the wedding to set up and tear down décor, it kept most of our guests from having to drive anywhere after the reception, and the feeling of walking downstairs to have breakfast and getting to greet and spend time with our families and friends was amazing. Pricing-wise, the deposit for the whole hotel rental was the equivalent of a reasonable price for two days of access at a beautiful ceremony & reception venue; we asked them to set the hotel room prices at a fixed rate based on what remained after the deposit, which they did for us. While the rooms weren’t the cheapest in town, they were far from expensive and (again) well worth the money for the amenities and the convenience of staying on site for the wedding. Unfortunately, some of our guests either ignored our wedding website instructions or thought we were being silly asking them to call the hotel to book – unless something changes with Hotel W’s system, you’ll want to specifically tell your guests that they NEED to call and CANNOT book their rooms online if you rent the whole hotel. (It shows up as completely booked out online, which made some guests book elsewhere!) We were on the hook for the cost of any rooms not booked by our guests, which we were originally going to pay about a month ahead of the event but ended up paying when we checked out – I’m going to wager the billing difficulties were 90% due to the number of last minute changes from our guests, and 10% that the hotel hadn’t done a buyout in a while (or possibly ever?). Either way, it worked out completely fine and wasn’t any trouble for us. TL;DR: Hotel Winneshiek is awesome, we’d totally recommend it for a wedding (and if you think you have enough guests to book most or all of the rooms, we’d absolutely recommend asking about a whole hotel rental too!).