Prince George Ballroom

Excellent

What we absolutely loved: + Beautiful interiors. We wanted a red and gold themed Chinese wedding, and the Ballroom was able to deliver plenty of the gold! The ornate columns made us feel like royals. As one of our guests pointed out, the Western style of the venue's interior blended well with our Chinese decorations, and we loved how the end result seemed to capture our personal identities. Also, the Ladies Tea Room is stunning, though unfortunately we weren't able to find a use for the space in our wedding. + Great cause. PGB is run by the non-profit Breaking Ground. Weddings are not cheap, so we loved knowing that our money was going to a good cause + Convenient location. Easily accessible by multiple subway lines and a short walk from Penn Station, this venue was easy for our guests to get to. We also loved that it was near Madison Square Park, which ended up being the perfect place to do our first look and take pre-ceremony photos with our wedding party. The day before our wedding, we had our wedding rehearsal at PGB and then walked to the Eataly rooftop for a very romantic rehearsal dinner. + Easy to work with. We had no problem scheduling multiple walk-throughs of the space with all our vendors (including the night before our wedding, even though there was a high school prom about to happen!). My husband and I both work late hours, but Serena especially was always available to meet with us on weekday evenings, and she was incredibly sweet and helpful every time. Karen and Serena were both very present the day of our wedding and into the evening to ensure everything went smoothly -- every time we needed either of them, they were there for us Heads up / advice to other brides: - A very raw production. What didn't register for us until we got deeper into wedding planning was that Prince George Ballroom really is just a space, and that's it. It has a small kitchen, but no tableware/cookware, limited staff, and no special lighting and sound equipment. Ultimately what we saved on venue fees we spent multiples on in audio/visual set up. We had to put all the nuts and bolts together ourselves, which made for more coordination work on our end than had we gone with a restaurant or hotel venue. On the plus side, this meant we were able to customize a lot more to our specific needs (and ultimately got more elaborate lighting options). And thankfully, the staff at Breaking Ground is great to work with. - Because there is so much color and detail in the space already, you may feel there are more limited color options for flowers / dresses / tables / other decor. It was hard for us to envision whether things would clash with the room -- we really didn't know until we saw it all come together day of. - Limited catering options. Breaking Ground requires you to select a caterer from their list of 6 or so exclusive vendors. While they ultimately made an exception for us because we requested ethnic catering, they still required us to use Breaking Ground's bartenders (so our caterer's waitstaff couldn't pour alcohol). - No natural lighting. There are only two small windows but the way they are situated, you get very little to no natural lighting in this space. That was fine for us for the purposes of dinner and dancing, but it would've been nice to have a more sunlit ceremony. Overall we're thrilled with how our wedding turned out and so grateful to Serena and Karen for all their help!!

1

The staff was so helpful. The place was absolutely gorgeous!