Swedenborgian Church

keep our wedding intimate.

fell in love with it the first time we saw it. It's intimate and beautiful and since it was built in the 1880's, it's got an old, classic charm to it. It was raining during our ceremony but that made it even better since all of the candles were lit and the fire place was blazing. Valentyna was wonderful to work with in getting everything set up and she was incredibly helpful the day of our wedding. This is truly a magical place!!!

a beautiful place, very intimate and spiritual, but extremely accommodating of all religions and same sex unions. We had our wedding and part of our reception here as we were trying to keep costs to a minimum. For the reasonable rate, they include a lot: an organist/pianst, candles, wedding hostess and more. You're only allowed to have the reception hall until 9pm so, after that, we moved everything to a lounge down the street. Working with the church however wasn't altogether easy. The 'event' manager, Valentyna, was pretty difficult and difficult to work with when trying to ask questions about what we could do or not do in both spaces. We would ask her what she's seen people do with the reception space in the past and she would say, "People do what they want!." Then when we'd ask questions about things we wanted to do, lots of the time the answer would be, "you can't do that(!)" When my caterer came to check the kitchen, etc. out, Valentyna was very brusque with her and then kept her waiting for over a half hour before she let her in! Indeed, she made us all feel as if we were a big imposition and somehow keeping her from her real work... Our hostess for the day of, Alice, was wonderful on the contrary. Wish she had been helping us all along! The minister they have, Doug Moss, was pretty hard to get together with and disappointed us a couple of times when we tried to meet with him (which was infrequent as we live in L.A. and could only be in S.F. a few times b/f the wedding). We finally got to meet him at the rehearsal, and he was great, and was also great during the ceremony. A special mention about the organist, Charles Calhoun. He met with us and worked with us on the pieces to be performed at our wedding and, for a while up until closer to the wedding date, was the most gracious, helpful and sincerely concerned person we dealt with! The ceremony was amazing - the space hardly needs any embellishment, it is so beautiful and magical on its own. The reception was a blast. All-in-all, I couldn't have imagined being married anywhere else!