Our daughter had her wedding reception at the Renaissance Chicago O'Hare Suites in December. It was a very bad experience. Sixty of our 150 guests got food poisoning, including the groom. The Marriott would never admit it was food poisoning,... although I gave them a list of names, and the General Manager Jeff Brown suggested perhaps our guests coming from all over the country and locally "all caught the flu" at the same time. We had three entrees and guests were sick from each of the entrees, which suggests cross-contamination in the kitchen. Our guests then missed school, work, family events, college exams, and we also had elderly and pregnant guests. It was very concerning. Even with doctor notes, the Marriott would admit nothing. They eventually gave us a 20% refund, after much foot-dragging and time-wasting, so we still paid for 30 meals for which our guests spent three days being very ill.
As if the food poisoning issue wasn’t enough, our Marriott wedding coordinator Katy Taylor told us she'd be with us from start to finish of the process but instead called me the morning of the wedding to tell me she had a "family emergency." I later found out she ditched us for a family party, which must have been planned months before.
We were then hurriedly assigned to the banquet manager, who of course didn't know the details of our event. The name cards got mixed up for the dinner, so there was mass confusion as the servers gave the wrong entree to many of our guests. The servers were surly and grumpy, and one server told our guest "to just eat it" when given the wrong entree. My husband and I were interrupted constantly throughout the meal by the banquet manager asking us questions and clarifications as to what should be going on.
And to top it off, the food was terrible. The beef was raw, the vegetables were so hard that carrots were skittering off the plates, and the soup was cold. I had told the Marriott during the planning process that the food was the most important thing to me because wedding food is so often not good. The good food we were served at the tasting didn't even resemble what our guests received at the wedding reception.
I strongly warn you away from ever using this hotel for your event. Our daughter's reception was so poorly done, and the Marriott could not have cared less that we were entirely dissatisfied. We did everything we could to get it resolved and were quite reasonable about it. I wrote to the CEO and vice-CEO, and someone eventually called me to tell me "they considered the case closed." Their customer service is not something that you ever want to have to deal with.
Since even the groom lost two days of his honeymoon while feeling wretched as he dealt with food poisoning, would you not expect a hotel corporation to, at a minimum, give the bride and groom a voucher for a weekend at one of their properties and make it right? No, they didn't offer this. Steer clear of this hotel.