State of Iowa Historical Building

The venue had a great space for our reception. We had the cocktail hour out on the terrace that worked great. Peri was very nice and excited to help. Our guests enjoyed the space. Highly recommended!

We were absolutely thrilled with the venue. The terrace is the perfect place to get married and shows off beautiful views of Des Moines. We had our reception dinner inside the museum, which was fun and kept guests entertained during cocktail hour. Peri and her staff are excellent as is Baratta's catering. It could not have been a more perfect day.

Our night was everything we'd hoped it would be and more! Peri & Zenia were wonderful to work with and were so accommodating with all of our changes and questions. We've received so many compliments on our wedding and the fantastic setting - the Capital and city skyline were perfect backdrops!

We had a bit of a strange experience in that the individual in charge of booking left and was replace during our wedding planning process. We ended up doing our final planning with Peri, who was incredibly flexible, accommodating, and responsive with us. Her assistant, Zenia, was the one who was with us on our wedding day and was absolutely amazing. Our guests really appreciated that the rental included the entire building. We did a cocktail hour and our ceremony on the terrance and our reception and dance indoors. People LOVED the exhibits and our photographer found that both the inside and outside of the building provided us with some beautiful photo ops. I would absolutely do an event here again.

I had my ceremony and reception here. I had the ceremony up on the rooftop terrace, the dinner inside in the atrium, and the dancing up on the rooftop. The venue itself was absolutely beautiful. The rooftop was gorgeous and worked perfectly for both the ceremony and dance. At night, the Des Moines skyline is beautiful from the terrace. My only problem with the venue was that the staff was very disorganized and not very helpful. I had a very hard time getting in touch with the event coordinator, and she left her job (quit or was fired, don't know which) about a month before my wedding, which no one told me until I contacted the caterer with a random question. I felt like my wedding wasn't very organized and no one really knew what was going on. The florist arrived at the building on the wedding day and no one knew where she should go. She ended up waiting around for an hour before someone figured it out. They also don't close the building to the public until 5pm, which was my ceremony start time, but that didn't end up being a huge deal since we were up on the roof anyway. I worked far more with the caterer to plan the entire wedding than the event coordinator, which should not have been the case. Overall, I loved my wedding location because of the beautiful scenery, but would only suggest that the most organized brides choose this location, and know what you are getting into!

I love the planes flying through the building and a lot of my guests enjoyed the large wholly mammoth, a cousin even used their pic as their christmas card!

The staff was receptive to my questions and provided a lot of helpful suggestions on how to make the day go smoothly. Our guests commented on the beautiful view from the terrace where we held the ceremony, and we received compliments on the fun atmosphere of the reception space in the atrium. It is a nice change of atmosphere from a hotel/ballroom venue. They can provide all if not most of the chairs and tables you need, saving time/money on rentals.

Location was great! Free parking across the street. Best view in the state! Baratta's catering was amazing and very helpful

This was a beautiful spot to hold a wedding reception...we had the dancing and music outside on the Cafe Terrace in August and it really spotlighted downtown Des Moines. I had guests who loved the backdrop (including the sunset, Capitol building, and skyline) and who said downtown has never looked so good! They were great to work with too...

Our wedding reception was on the Cafe Terrace of the Historical Building. Sometimes the correspondence was a little slow during planning, but the atmosphere more than made up for that. It was beautiful!