Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art

for. The marvelous ficus lighted trees, the awe inspiring Dale Chihuly chandelier, and the rotating art exhibition make for a wedding venue that stands out from the rest. Kay Barbini was the most warm, welcoming and accommodating event manager that we met with (and we looked a LOT of venues). Even when met with rain challenges late the day of, Kay and the MOCA seamlessly adapted to our new plans for the wedding and delivered a beautiful space that marveled our guests from beginning to end. The MOCA has everything we needed in a wedding venue and we cannot recommend it more!

answer to any venue related question quickly and was happy to have us visit as many times as we wanted (which we definitely took advantage of!) The high ceilings, lighting and trees transformed the Atrium into the fairytale venue I wanted. Plus the outside area is a huge plus! I picked this venue because it was beautiful without any changes, but really because it was the perfect blank slate for my vision and personalization. HIGHLY recommend. Also just to correct the details part-- there are dressing rooms available there. They're not huge and we didn't get ready there, but we did final touches and everything back there!

bridesmaids help me with my dress and no audience worrying about that. We just had our wedding at the MoCA and it was absolutely WONDERFUL. They were super responsive throughout the planning, even let us set up all the tables and everything the day before. We had the ceremony in the gorgeous Rodriguez Pavilion, married under a beautiful Chihuly chandelier, and then we had the reception in the atrium. It is such a gorgeous room we didn't have to worry much about decorations. Everything--tables, nice white chairs--even a piano, which we used during the ceremony--is included in the price. There are risers if you need them, a microphone and speakers, even a pretty little arch if you want to use it. Everything was so smooth, it was so easy, so much more affordable than it looked, I cannot recommend this venue enough!!

ed it often, but each time we’d go, the bathrooms would be dirty, and would have little to no soap/paper towels. We brought this up to the event manager and she said she had noticed the same, and would ensure those would not be problems during our wedding. On the big day, bathrooms were dirty, we ran out of paper towels after 1.5 hours, and there was no soap. Let me reiterate. No soap. All of our guests, and our catering staff, were left rinsing hands in just water and then drying them on their clothes or shaking them to air dry. Hard to believe a venue that regularly hosts events and weddings would not supply soap and paper towels, which are very basic necessities. There are also sinks/toilets in the getting ready rooms, but no paper towels or soap were supplied in those rooms. In the women’s getting ready room, the toilet began to leak. After just 3 uses from the bridal party, the room was flooding, and with no onsite manager present, we were cleaning it ourselves. It is hard to believe no one knew about the toilet in advance considering how much it leaked. Now for the grossest part: throughout the evening, there were several HUGE cockroaches running around. One ran into the getting ready room area and the rest were all out where we were eating, dancing, and trying to enjoy ourselves. Some were stomped on, others were chased back into the trees (the venue has lovely trees inside…which apparently house bugs). The most frustrating and disheartening part of this is that we brought up all of these issues to the event manager after the fact, and she never responded. Not even to offer a simple, “I’m sorry.” So again, we do not recommend this venue. There are other gorgeous options to choose from in the Virginia Beach area that will care more about their client’s experience/well-being.