NIU Naperville and DeKalb

We had a great experience! Our wedding reception was beautiful at the NIU Alumni Center. Terry was SO helpful in planning our day, helping with arrangements and deliveries (since we live in TN and weren’t able to make a ton of trips home). Barsema was already lovely, so we did not have to decorate too much. We just had a few things on the tables and flowers to add some color. We were able to have access ALL DAY the day before our wedding to decorate and drop anything off. This was great, since other venues only give access the day of. Overall I would highly recommend Barsema as your wedding venue. Great help, great amenities, and a great day!!

Great venue! The staff was so amazing and helpful. They made us feel so comfortable and welcome! The staff set everything up to our specifications and it looked amazing. The patio was a nice addition!

NIU has an amazing staff and a beautiful venue. They did an amazing job for our wedding and are very detail oriented. They helped us set up for our wedding. Everyone was very nice and friendly, very easy to work with. They made the day completely stress free. It is a perfect place for your whole day with ceremony, cocktail hour, and reception! We had a July wedding and beautiful outdoor ceremony. They gave is ideas were we could have our tea ceremony. Also, the best place for our bagpiper to play! They had flowers to help decorate the archway for our wedding. Nicole & Suzanne are amazing and would highly recommend this venue for your wedding.

NIU Naperville did a fantastic job. Everyone was very nice and friendly, very easy to work with. They make the day completely stress free. It is a perfect place for your whole day with ceremony, cocktail hour, and reception and there are multiple choices to have an indoor wedding as a back up. They have a great team that really strives to make you day perfect and give you the vision that you have been dreaming of. I highly recommend NIU Naperville as your venue for your wedding.

NIU Naperville was awesome!!! Barb and Gina did a fantastic job, and the venue looked even better than I had imagined. I didn't want to share my venue with any other weddings, so it was perfect that we were the only wedding there that day. The outdoor patio was beautifully lit up at night. The spacious atrium was perfect for cocktail hour. All the floor to ceiling windows made everything even more beautiful. The uplifting was perfect (and very reasonably priced as well). About 2 weeks before the wedding, my "getting ready" venue plans fell apart. I was heartbroken. NIU was very accommodating and allowed me and my bridal party to get ready in a spacious upstairs conference room with lots of natural lighting. It worked perfectly!!! I was very pleased with how everything turned out, and I cannot thank the staff at NIU enough. I highly recommend them to everyone. I have received so many compliments from my wedding guests who were highly impressed with the wonderful job that NIU did with my wedding. My wedding was about a month ago, and everyone is still raving how wonderful everything was! :) Thanks, NIU!!! :)

We recently booked our wedding at NIU-Naperville and we couldn't be happier with that decision. Right from the start they were friendly, professional and organized about all of our wedding details. We had the pleasure of working with Gina, who did a great job at making sure everything was done correctly and we were well taken care of during the actual wedding day. The venue looked beautiful and every single staff person we interacted with was kind and helpful. We would highly recommend them for a wedding!

This location is amazing and provided an awesome setting for our wedding reception. The staff was extremely helpful and friendly. We received endless compliments on our venue!

Gina from NIU is fantastic. She is organized, responds to emails/phone calls very quickly, is fun, creative and will work with you until you feel 100% confident/comfortable. NIU's venue is Naperville is SUPER flexible. We were able to bring in our own alcohol, our own decorations, were able to select from 3 different catering vendors. They even let us set up a custom bags (cornhole) set for the patio during cocktail hour. The 2-story atrium is beautiful and GREAT for pictures! The outside patio is fantastic, great for pictures, a great gathering place for guests and makes for a nice "breath of fresh air" during the reception. Our wedding was PERFECT and it had a LOT to do with the flexibility and look/feel of Northern Illinois University Conference Center. Do yourself a favor and at least check out the venue. Gina is great, you won't be disappointed.

The place did not look nice at all and they charged you for everything you would need that they would just have sitting in a closet anyway. Also, they charged $3000 or more to just rent the facility.

I had my wedding at NIU Naperville and it would have been perfect if it wasn't for the staff at NIU. They were awful to deal with through the whole experience. The wedding still turned out beautifully but I could have avoided a lot of stress. Pros- It is a beautiful location, we had our ceremony outside on the patio and my florist made it look great. I loved the reception room with all the windows and the fact that I could have everything in one location. Cons- The staff were very had to deal with during planning process. Shirley was my main contact and she was very hard to get responses from and most of the time she didn't know. I had to repeat my information to her many times because she would never write it down, remember or take the time to look anything up before responding to me. I had a really hard time working out the fees and contract with them. They made multiple mistakes and took many revisions to get the correct pricing. She didn't send me the final "contract" (in quotations because all it was was an excel spreadsheet, not a contract) until after the first payment was due. I asked about hanging paper lanterns over the dance floor and if we could use a ladder. I was not informed that it was something NIU staff would do. The day before when we tried to get the ladder, I was informed we were not allowed and NIU staff would have to do it. Fortunately Eric was kind enough to hang the lanterns last minute but it could have been avoided if Shirley had been knowledgable about policies and told me. On the day of my wedding I was harrased by the staff to decide if my ceremony would be outside or inside. It was sunny but scattered rain was predicted for the day. I asked multiple times for them to set it up outside and if it rains we would move inside. They were very concerned about their chairs. We offered to wait and set up the chairs ourselves when it was closer to ceremony time but they refused to let us touch the chairs. They were rude and demanding to me as soon as I arrived at the venue to get dressed. I felt they were pressuring me to move inside and told me it was raining in the west but I said I wanted it outside. Low and behold it didn't rain all day and they were able to leave at 2pm like they wanted. The last straw was when they turned on the lights and told our DJ to stop playing at 11pm when we had the place booked till midnight. I argued with the staff who said this happens all the time and they agreed to let us stay till midnight but that Shirley had told them it ends at 11pm. We lost almost 20 minutes of time discussing it and many guests left during this time. It was an awful ending to my reception and it didn't have to happen. Our original agreement signed with the deposit clearly stated we had the room until midnight. If you are interested in this venue please find out who the staff are handling events. I heard Shirley will be retiring so maybe they will hire competent staff. However at least two other staff at NIU were rude so I can't say I expect much improvement. It is very unfortunate because every single one of our other vendors were wonderful.

Atrium area was spacious and bright for our cocktail hour and dinner event room has windows on 2 sides that look out to a pond and fountain. Reception venue staff wanted to make it as beautiful as possible and were very accomodating. We were able to work with their caterer to get exactly what we wanted.