The Sanford Center

From the start we started working with a fabulous group of people. Throughout our year of planning and discussing specifics with the employees, many staffing changes took place so we were shuffled around, but always brought back to the same two people. My husband, finance at the time, told them it was getting ridiculous and they kept us with these two people. The day of our wedding was absolutely fantastic and NOTHING could have gone better.. The food was the best wedding food I have ever tasted and we had many compliments on it the night off and after. The people working the night of we're so nice and catered to us like royalty, seriously.

The people here were great to work with, and patient through all of our changes.

The Sanford Center (BREC) in Bemidji was a beautiful place to hold our larger sized wedding. We had about 500 guests attend the reception and everybody fit comfortably there. Although we opted to have our dinner catered to the church (by Wild Hare Bistro), you can have dinner there as well. We decided to have a couple different snacks set out for the entire night for people to munch on and that was such a great idea. What I had a problem with was that when we discussed price, it seemed very reasonable and fit into our small to mid-sized budget. The manager failed to tell me all of the hidden costs which included personell, taxes, service charges, and (the one that got me the most) paying for booze that guests snuck in. We ended up paying about 50% more than what was discussed, and out of our budget. One other problem was that while we were paying the security personell, they asked my dad to remove a guest who had had too much to drink, instead of addressing it themselves. The facility had great space, reasonable prices (even after the extra costs), was set up easily and conveniently. Over-all, it was wonderful reception. I would just suggest to get all the pricing clarified if you're on a budget.