Marquette Park Pavilion

Words can't Express how grateful my husband and I are for DJ Reggie. Planning a wedding is extremely stressful and I was so nervous about absolutely everything . Except the DJ!! We fell in love with his professional personality and he definitely dissapoint. He played the perfect songs. Once I kissed my husband and we had our first dance. Reggie had everyone on their feet. It was like a big party. He played all my favorite hip hop songs from the 90s I'm not just saying this because it was my wedding. But this had to be one of the best weddings ever!!!! He was so great that it was a line of guests running to him for his business card. I'll never forget he made our day special and my nerves eased away!!

My husband and I had an absolutely gorgeous day for our wedding so we were able to have our ceremony outside on the lower terrace. Marquette Park Pavilion has beautiful grounds with a stunning lagoon as the backdrop. With each season the change out the flowers so that brilliant fall mums decorated the staircase outside. Kamishia was a pleasure to work with and was always quick to reply to any questions I had, which happened often as we were from out of state trying to coordinate our wedding from miles away. Kamishia was wonderful helping us every step of the way and making suggestions so that our reception set up and ceremony set up gave us the best use of space. The venue gives and romantic and elegant feel with views from every angle, tucked away near Lake Michigan.

Was really planning on my wedding being here in 2020 but after reading some of the reviews I think I better keep Looking cuz the only thing that will be Messing up my big day is me !!!!

WOW! My wedding was wonderful. Planning: The staff was so incredibly professional. The planning process was easy. The staff was easy to get in contact with, and they responded to my emails timely. They helped SO much with planning and sharing their ideas. They were so accommodating! Wedding: The staff was responsive and available. The catering company was also fabulous. The food was put out HOT and ON-TIME. Everyone loved the food and the service. The bartender was also amazing. Everyone loved her. She was fast and professional for serving 140 people. Venue: The venue was beautiful and clean. The tables and chairs were set up and ready to go. The bathrooms were clean and smelled pleasant. The venue worked well with the photographers and our DJ. The florist had no issues delivering/setting up the flowers. Everything ran smoothly. They were well-prepared and EXTREMELY PROFESSIONAL. I'm so happy, pleased, and grateful for Marquette Park. My wedding was truly a fairly tale. I will recommend this venue to ANY BRIDE!!!!

Our wedding day was 10/14/17 and the reception was wonderful!!! From the first time I visited the pavilion, I knew it would be the perfect place to have my reception. The ballroom is gorgeous and it was just the right size for everyone to enjoy dinner and dancing; we had about 100 guests or so. The lower room for cocktail hour was great, as was the outdoor area - plenty of space for people to move about without feeling crowded. Tiffany and Kamishia were awesome to work with between planning and the day of, along with the rest of the staff at the pavilion. The whole park is really lovely with great views! It's highly recommended for hosting an elegant reception!!

The staff at Marquette Park was wonderful and very professional. It made our special day so wonderful, from the I do's on the beach to the laughter, the first dance and the delicious food in the beautiful pavilion. We still have guests talking about how much fun they had and that Marquette Park was a truly hidden gem. So to put it plainly we all fell in love with it. Mr. & Mrs. Jackson

I wrote a review on Facebook but they deleted my post. So I will repost it on Facebook and I am writing a review here. First off this place is truly beautiful. I love what they did with the place and Dolly Harris is truly amazing. She is the person at the front desk. That is all I can say. The management at this facility is absolutely atrocious, horrible, unprofessional, and has the potential to ruin your wedding plans. I visited this facility early June 2016 looking for a venue to have my wedding at. I thought I found it here until I began to ask for pricing. I worked for a month and a half trying to get some pricing to no avail. I emailed the caterer and pavilion and the Gary Parks and Recs department and still got no where. I received a response back today from the caterer but this is 2 months later. The manager Tiffany is the absolute worst and attempts to deny even knowing about me and my attempts to book this facility. Although the pricing is online for Marquette Park Pavilion there is no pricing for upgrades (all upgrades go through the caterer). I received the run around for 2 months and received a Facebook response from Tiffany saying that she is sorry for my experience and to call her on her work line...Ummm you are sorry?? I still haven't heard back from you from the other attempts I made a month ago. I have emails to prove that I have attempted numerous times. Overall I am truly saddened by this place because it could have been my wedding and reception venue. Unfortunately I can not trust this place nor am I comfortable with entrusting my most important day and thousands of dollars on inadequate, poorly managed, irresponsible, uncaring, liars (I use this word due to your attempt to act like you knew nothing about my simple request for a quote). DO NOT TRUST THESE PEOPLE AT MARQUETTE PARK PAVILLION IN GARY INDIANA!!! Poorly managed and there is no support from Gary Parks and Recs if you take it to a higher level. These people have the potential to make your special day into a nightmare!!! Go somewhere else where you will have support.

My husband and I were married on June 2014, I fell in love with the place immediately but was never warned of what was to come. All the reviews online tell you how beautiful the place was for a wedding, which it is, but nowhere does it tell you how unorganized the staff was throughout the experience. There was only ONE person to contact at this location and her name was Tiffany the so called "executive manager", she was as useless as a car without wheels. When you go to see a place you want the person to sell you on all it has to offer, you want pictures of past weddings shown to you along with detailed reports of cost for everything the venue includes. Here they did not have any of that, they did not want to disclose all the information until a down payment was made. We later found out we could only use their "selective vendors" for food, flowers etc., again no pictures of past examples were shown of any of the vendors. So if you did not like their vendor you were screwed. The day of the wedding Tiffany never once came up to me when I arrived to make sure and see if everything was to my liking, I didn't see her until 3 hours later way after the ceremony (which was held there) and after cocktail hour and pictures. When I tried calling her that morning she did not respond, considering I was the bride she should of had her cellphone attached to her hip on my big day. The day of the wedding the elevator did not work, which I was not told by Tiffany until my aunt in a wheel chair could not access our cocktail hour. Not until after the wedding did I find out from friends and family that the cooking staff was eating my very expensive cupcakes right in front of them! I then found out that they ran out of beer, we had paid for the premium package which should have sufficed. The only reason I am writing this review TWO YEARS later is because I just received in the mail our refundable deposit check we gave them. They just send it today, our wedding was TWO years ago! The venue is breathtaking, unless you have a planner to fight you battles do not waste your time with this location.

I was extremely pleased with the Marquette Park Pavilion. The new management bent over backwards to work with my planner and to make sure we had a beautiful wedding. The food was excellent and I can't tell you how many compliments we received on the whole venue. The renovated building, especially with ADA compliance, helped to have family members attend who otherwise couldn't. The building and facility is so beautiful that you can save your money on decorations. You already have a "silk purse" in this venue.

Do not let the beauty of this hall fool you!! My husband and I just got married at Marquette May 23 2015. All though the hall and views were amazing we are very disappointed in the service we received. The staff was very helpful at the beginning of our process but once we booked with Marquette all communication fell off. We were not told who our caterer was going to be until about 2 months out from our wedding. Which held up our planning process quite a bit. It seemed like everything we made decisions on few weeks would pass by and we would be told we had to change because our choice was no longer available. So frustrating! When we were finally told who our caterer was, we were very excited and arranged to meet with her for our tasting. The food was amazing! The presentation of the food blew us away and we selected our menu that day. She told us that she would have champagne and food in our bridal suites for us the day of. Well the day of the wedding we did not have any of that. The air was not on in the bridal room it was terrible. My mom could not even help me get dressed because she was fixing all of the mistakes the staff made around the hall and at the ceremony! When I arrived I mentioned to the lovely staff that our dance floor was so small and that I wanted a few tables pushed back but the response I received was that it was fine and she didn't think we needed to move anything. I have a million examples of how rude the staff was but this review is only allowing me so many words. Not only were they rude but they were embarrassing. There is no dress code apparently here and a few of our guests interrupted a make out session that security was having during a few points in the night. We did not have champagne on the head table for toasts, like we were promised. A friend of mine noticed and had to beg some servers to get that for us before the time came. While we were eating our salads the chef decided that would be a good time to serve our guest's our mashed potatoes. Which made absolutely no sense! But after that lovely time of eating our salads and potatoes and rolls (which should have been garlic bread) the staff took so long to clear that our guest got up thinking that was it! When dinner was finally served my husband and I were not served first and when we saw the food we were so mad. The chicken was cold and dry and was not how we decided to have it presented at all. Majority of our guests complained that the food was cold. We found out later on after the wedding that they do not have warmers in the kitchen to keep the food in after its cooked! After dinner we cut our cake. I asked staff members to move the table off the dance floor (since space was limited). AND OUR CAKE SAT THERE. No one cut it and served it. it sat all night. My husband had a grooms cake and he had to fight the chef Angela to cut. She wanted him to cut it himself!! I have never been so disappointed in my life. Please save your self the headache and the money. Pick a different hall! I wish we would have.

The newly renovated facility and it's setting are gorgeous! It's the perfect venue in the Chicagoland area for a beautiful indoor/outdoor wedding and reception anytime of the year. The Marquette Park Pavilion is situated within the sand dunes on the shore of the park lagoon steps away from Lake Michigan. I would highly recommend this venue!

Great facility and beautiful park!

Anyone else getting married here this summer 2012?

When booking my wedding they had said construction would be finished in time and it was not. We had a beautiful wedding on the beach though and the tent was nice. Certain things we asked for were not done...I was told I was going to have a bridal suite and I only had it to get dressed and was kicked out the minute I was finished and the bar moved in. Hence nowhere to keep my things. No table #'s which last minute I had to make myself with a marker and missed taking my family photos. That was very upsetting. The table for the sand ceremony was forgotten about until we asked again for it. The gate to the parking lot was locked and my fiance and his family asked multiple times for it to be opened since equipment needed to come in. Finally, a parks person cut the lock open. We felt like our needs were pushed aside even after stating what they were. Beautiful location though. The caterer and catering staff were excellent!

We loved the venue. It's a beautiful, historic place. I only had a few trips home to plan the wedding. They were a bit difficult to deal with in terms of calling--either no answer/closed, etc. It would be really helpful if they had email. The same would be said of in the in-house caterer. We were told that a lot of our questions would be handled through the caterer (table linens, set up, etc.) so we went through them. The week of the wedding, nothing was what it was decided. It was a lot of no, we can't do this, no we can't, etc. The day of the wedding, the tables weren't set up correctly, even though we had drawn the plan out three times. Everything worked out, but not without yet another discussion, visit to the venue, redrawing of the floor plan. They are undergoing renovations this fall. If there is an event the night before, I'd highly recommend that you look for a specific cleaning of the grounds in the contract. They got most of the trash, but there was a lot by the stairs leading to the lagoon that we were kicking out of the way with our photographer.

What a beautiful place! I had lived in Northwest Indiana for nearly 23 years, and had NEVER heard of Marquette Park Pavilion! My sister randomly found it and I absolutely loved it. The pavilion was built in the 30's and it just has so much extra character you can't get at all the other reception halls. It is nestled in Marquette Park, and sits right on the lagoon. We had the ceremony outside on the patio (it's big enough for probably 300 guests - we had about 200). Debra, Chalette, and Mr. Graves were great to deal with throughout the whole thing. I live in Texas now, and had to plan it from 1000 miles away! They were very accommodating and helpful. I would definitely recommend the pavilion. I only gave it 4 stars because some renovation does need to be done, but I know they are starting that this fall (2010). Overall, it was perfect!