Polaris Hall

Overall, venue was great for what we wanted. We had to move around some things to have enough mirrors in the bridal room, then set it back, but no big there. Loved the overall set up. Many people did have trouble finding it -- not the venues fault! -- but future users might want to inform guests. Also, slightly limited parking simply due to location. Still fit our needs well (nearly 150 people), and just felt right. I recommend a walk through to any one who wants a ballroom that's something to remember. (Though, consider wedding party size and desires.)

We had our wedding and reception at the North Star Ballroom and it turned out fabulous! The venue is already so beautiful that it requires very minimal decorations, all we did was decorate the tables. I was coming from out of town (3000 miles out of town!) and the staff of the ballroom were so helpful and accomodating, they really made the whole day so much easier to organize!

We walked away from our wedding feeling like we got the best deal for what we pulled off. We went with the North Star Ballroom because we were able to bring in our own vendors and the price was the best we could find for what we were getting. On top of that, the manager was fantastic. She was always quick to respond to emails and seemingly deals well with wedding induced ditziness. I knew when I got my contract that there were no garbage cans and that we would need to find a way to haul our garbage out of the venue. Unfortunately, I really had no idea how much garbage a wedding can produce. The only other issue we had was while we were getting ready was that it was REALLY hot downstairs in the bridal room. That's not really the venues fault though. It was 80 degrees at the end of September, and the manager was quick to get the air conditioner on. Instead of waiting around in the bridal room, I moved over to the green room and was just fine. I would recommend this venue to friends who were planning to have the same type of wedding as I did. I did a lot of DIY projects and crafts and we did our own food. We had a really small budget, and I feel that the North Star Ballroom helped to keep our costs down.

We recently held our wedding reception at the Northstar Ballroom in Portland. The venue is nice, attractive and fit our style. But there was a big problem which made the whole experience much more difficult and put a big damper on our event. The venue does not have its own garbage dumpsters and the customer is responsible for removing ALL the garbage and recycling associated with their event before their rental time expires. If you think this will not be a big deal think again. About a month or so before the wedding we became aware of the lack of a dumpster at the venue and the customer responsibility for garbage, so we arranged for our caterers to take away the garbage after the dinner service was over (most won’t do this, we were lucky they agreed to it), thinking that the residual garbage would be minimal and we could dispose of it ourselves. In actuality, there was tons of garbage that we were not really equipped to deal with. The estimate of how much garbage to expect may have been partly our naive error. But we were also surprised to learn right as we were hoping to leave after the event, that the venue has no recycling service either and we were responsible for removing all bottles, etc. We found ourselves scrambling to deal with all the garbage and with hundreds of empty beer and wine bottles. Thankfully a very generous group of our guests stayed with us till the very end helping us to clean up, and allowed us to load the boxes of leaky bottles into their cars. Imagine yourself in your wedding dress, trying to bunch it up in your hands as you bend down and gather up half empty beer and wine bottles and garbage, exhausted at the end of your wedding. With about five large bags of garbage on our hands and no receptacle, we were left to search the neighborhood for an open dumpster. What a nightmare. Not how we would have wanted to finish our wedding night. During the whole pre-event process, the venue staff person that we dealt with downplayed the lack of a dumpster, and did not mention the lack of recycling service at all. It would have been very helpful to have been advised in detail to plan for these unfortunate realities about the venue by the staff person who has obviously seen many other customers go through this ordeal. We thought that by not going to with a full service venue and going with the Northstar Ballroom and a more do it yourself approach we would be saving money. In reality, it cost us just as much if not more to do it this way (renting all the plates, etc), and then we had to deal with a horrendous clean up and the ballroom’s lack of amenities for clean up. My advice if you are considering this venue is to discuss the clean up with the staff person in great detail and make sure that you rent your own dumpster and hire people to clean up, take care of the trash, recycling etc. If this is your wedding night, trust me, this is not what you want to find yourself doing on your own. Good luck.