The Heritage Museum

ar package that comes with booking the venue is an awesome rate, and the bartenders who staffed our event were super fun and super kind. They were true professionals and did an excellent job. In terms of those things, we couldn't have asked for more. There's a review just below by Hannah Prokop in which she details her experience with some questionable communication during the planning period. My experience was very much the same, though we booked almost a year into the pandemic and not at the beginning. Perhaps the worst instances of miscommunication included us being left without a ceremony musician less than a month before the wedding due to our contact's neglect (despite insistence that we should allow our contact to take care of it), and my dad having to set up all the chairs for our event on his own when we were told we would have them set up by our rehearsal. I won't belabor the point too much, though, as it appears that the Heritage has recently hired additional staff for weddings. Megan, who is one of their new coordinators, was at our wedding, did a lovely job of managing the day and I have full confidence that she would be an absolute joy to work with. I just wish I'd gotten to work with her sooner! Overall, St. Joseph is a wonderful town for a wedding and the Heritage is a lovely venue. I recommend it so long as you are ensured of personal attention by someone who is focused on weddings. If that is not the case, I would caution brides without organized wedding planners that you may have difficulty getting your questions answered, and find yourself being repeatedly told how busy your contact is despite paying a considerable amount of money for their services.

ay. The positives: The day of the wedding went very smoothly. The ballroom looked beautiful and was set up just as we had asked. The museum allowed our planner to come in early to set up our decor. The bar staff did a great job (if you're having alcohol, you have to use the museum's vendor). We had plenty of room for 120 guests.  The negatives: Communication leading up to the wedding was poor. We understand there were extenuating circumstances affecting our wedding--we booked the venue before the pandemic's start, and the museum, which is a non-profit, had to go through a lot of changes as a result of COVID. However, they did not handle the changes well. After firing their whole staff and temporarily shutting down the museum (which we were first notified of via a Facebook post), the museum's board president was assigned as our main contact for our wedding. When we talked via zoom and met at the venue, she was attentive and helpful. However, via email it would sometimes take her weeks to respond to urgent questions. We had to remind her of our questions and plans again and again. We often found things were changed up on us--one example being when we were at the museum in person, we were told we could use the museum's vases for candles. Then weeks later over email, we were told we could not. (That's just one example of a handful). The disorganization and miscommunications were frustrating during a stressful planning time.  While the Heritage is beautiful, I would consider finding a venue that has a full-time event planner dedicated to coordinating with brides/grooms or see if the Heritage has hired anyone else for this. All of our other vendors, who also faced changes due to the pandemic, were fabulous and attentive throughout the process so we expected the museum to be the same.

highly recommend this venue for a wedding!

they let me use theirs so that everything matched. Shepard Hall is beautiful and elegant. Couldn't have asked for a better location.