Penn Brewery

Their event staff is completely incompetent. If it weren’t for my brother and friend, we wouldn’t have had music. The event “planner” didn’t know how to work the sound system. She admitted this months before the event, but never learned how to use it, which I trusted her to do. I was told I could pay the bill prior to the reception, as we did drink tickets, not an open bar. So, there was nothing that needed to be billed after the event. I asked several times for the bill, and it wasn’t provided due to “a delay with management.” I figured they would invoice me. Instead, the event planner had me, the bride, in tears at the end of my reception because my bank wouldn’t approve a $4,000 expense at midnight. I was told the staff handling food would wear masks; they did not. All around unprofessional and I’ll never go back.

the real selling point. We quickly learned that there's a reason nontraditional venues are not often selected - it's REALLY difficult to plan a wedding at one! We had to figure out a lot in terms of timing spacing (i.e. where to have the ceremony, cocktail hour, dancing, dinner, etc etc). The event coordinator at PB, Lindsay was amazing throughout all of this. She was upfront about the fact that this was somewhat new territory. They'd had a few weddings but didn't yet have an established way of doing them the way a country club might. This was both the fun and the headache. It all paid off perfectly. The old stonework was a perfect backdrop for pictures, the brewery decor was awesome, and there was plenty of space for our 150 guests to be comfortable. Everyone was surprised by how good the food was (you wouldn't expect a brewery in Pittsburgh to have good crab cakes!) and the staff was great. While our wedding was a challenge to plan, Lindsay was so helpful. She dealt with our constant emails and changing plans. Despite our wedding being a week before Oktoberfest (when you'd expect her to be pretty preoccupied!), she made us feel like a priority. I should also mention the buy-out fee is super reasonable for a Saturday night! $15k food and drink minimum (plus 18% tip, this includes the whole venue, staff, bartenders, etc) was far less than what we had been quoted elsewhere (i.e. $40k at Church Brewworks).