About this vendor
Any season is the perfect season at the Heritage. Your wedding deserves the most beautiful setting you can imagine. Let our experienced, professional staff help you create the wedding of your dreams. The only thing that could make our venue more lovely…is adding you! Call us today.
Amenities + details
Ceremony Area
Dressing Room
Handicap Accessible
Indoor Event Space
Liability Insurance
On-Site Accommodations
Outdoor Event Space
Reception Area
Wireless Internet
Covered Outdoors Space
Settings
- Ballroom
- Historic Venue
- Museum
Venue Service Offerings
- Planning
- Service Staff
Reviews
Your trust is our goal. Our community relies on honest reviews to help you make those big decisions with ease.
4.5
out of 5.015 reviews
We cannot speak more highly of Laura, who is the new event director!! She was a dream to work with for our Jan. 2023 wedding, with both the ceremony and reception at the Heritage M...
useum! She was very knowledgeable and helped us with every detail we needed. She made sure every box was checked and every i dotted with the details. Laura was amazing to communicate with and made sure to respond within a timely fashion, sometimes even on her day off! She helped give her input on what might work best for the space, which was super helpful! Laura went above and beyond to see if we were able to accommodate our dogs within our ceremony, which they were!! We cannot highly recommend working with Laura enough! 10 stars!! She was wonderful and would love to work with her again for any of our events in the future!
We recently had our wedding ceremony and reception at the Heritage. The venue is absolutely stunning and we had friends and family raving about how gorgeous it was all night. The b...
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.
We had our wedding reception at the Heritage Museum in September 2021. While the day turned out to be beautiful, we had some problems with communication leading up to our wedding d...
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.
The venue is so pretty and reasonably priced. They did a great job accommodating my wants and needs. Jean was such a huge help and great at communicating with me and the caterer. I...
highly recommend this venue for a wedding!
Email communication was prompt. They go over everything with you and help create a floor plan so everything goes where it belongs. I ran out of chair covers (I brought my own) and ...
they let me use theirs so that everything matched. Shepard Hall is beautiful and elegant. Couldn't have asked for a better location.
Held our daughter's wedding reception at the Heritage recently and everything went great. Lana was tremendously helpful during the planning stage and the support staff was outstand...
ing with set-up, tear down and adjustments as the days leading up to the event got closer. As anyone knows who has had to plan a wedding, things can get chaotic real fast with all the things that go into it but, the Heritage made the facility part a piece of cake.
We absolutely loved the Heritage Museum. While looking for a venue we wanted one in southwestern Michigan because most of our family is living in Illinois. We were so lucky to find...
this venue. It is gorgeous and the staff is wonderful to work with. Even with the freak accident of the venue flooding 4 months before our wedding and reception they always kept us in the loop with how renovations were going. I could not recommend this venue any higher.
I used Heritage Museum & Cultural Center for my rehearsal dinner/welcome party for my wedding. It was absolutely perfect. Tammy was wonderful making sure everything was set up appr...
opriately and we had live music and 8 long tables and 100 people, and there was still plenty of room for people to mingle and hang out. It is a great option for a classy looking venue right by the lake and downtown St. Joe's.
My husband and I had both our wedding ceremony and reception at the Heritage Museum. The building is stunning and needed very little decoration; the light streaming from the windo...
ws was amazing. We got a ton of compliments. Amy and Tammy were easy to work with, great with communication and kept everything well run and exactly as I wanted it. I can't say enough great things about the venue and their staff. It is an amazing place for a wedding and I highly recommend it to anybody looking for a unique and wonderful place to get married.
A beautiful space, but they tend to nickel and dime you for every additional service you may want beyond just renting the space. The coordinators also could have been more helpful/...
responsive. That said, everything went perfectly the day of and I'm very satisfied with how it turned out.
The location is beautiful and the service was amazing. We got exactly what we wanted. The money was worth it. Couldn't have been better!
My husband and I had our wedding reception at the Heritage Center the last weekend of August. The staff at the Heritage Center was wonderful to work with. Amy Zapal, event coordi...
nator, was very easy to connect with and she was full of helpful ideas for layout and timing of events. The ballroom was beautiful and provided plenty of room for dinner and dancing. It was fun to have the balcony to use for the bouquet toss. We are very happy we decided to hold our reception at this space.
The site is beautiful! And Amy Zapal is the best wedding coordinator in the world! Has every option available for ceremony, reception, cocktail hour, areas for the bridal party to ...
get ready in, buffet area, etc..... The place had everything and provided such a beautiful vintage feel. So much natural decoration I barely had to spend anything on any decorations at all.
This venue needed very little decoration as the space is already to gorgeous on it's own. We used the small brick patio for the cocktail hour and the room was absolutely stunning. ...
We had 150 guests and there was a great sized dance floor-any more and I think the floor would have been a little tight.
The Heritage Center is a museum with a ballroom and other rental spaces available. Shepard's Hall--the ballroom--is lovely with high ceilings, chandeliers, hardwood floors, and a ...
balcony. Every room you use is a separate fee, and there are per person set-up fees (which includes tables, chairs, linens, and placesettings that you are required to pay in order to rent the room) in addition to the rental fees. There are additional fees for use of their sound system, glassware, and courtyard--if you would like to be married outside. Overall it was a lovely place for us to be married and have our reception in one place. We only used Shepard's Hall because we felt it was too expensive to rent the other rooms just to use them for changing rooms.
Contact
601 MAIN ST, SAINT JOSEPH, MI
The Heritage Museum